HALLOWEEN CELEBRATIONS!

We hosted a haunted house in our apartments Friday AND Saturday night, and sticking true to form, we waited until Thursday to begin preparing for it. Actually, all we did Thursday was go to the Korean market with Alice and Zoe to buy a few necessary items for our room. Brian, Derek and I were in charge of the "mad scientist" room. It was simple enough; we had a white sheet draped between two coat racks. Behind the sheet was a couch and a lamp with red plastic over the light to create an eerie glow. We also had creeping music playing in the background. Then when our visitors would come to our room, the doctor who was behind the curtain would perform surgery on the patient and pull out his/her intestines, put them in a bowl and hand the bowl to the host who would pass the bowl around to the visitors to feel the intestines. Then the doctor would do the same thing with eyes and tongues. Since the light was behind the doctor and patient and the rest of the room was dark, you could see the shadow of everything the doctor was doing to the patient. It was pretty cool. Our Chinese friends ran that part of the show (Dacy was the host, Zoe the doctor, and Alice the patient). Brian dressed up like Frankenstein's monster, and when Dacy gave the cue (after everyone had felt all the disgusting body parts), he came from my front balcony into my living room to scare the visitors. The first couple times Brian came into the room, he had his arms stretched forward as he walked towards the people, but I guess they thought he was wanting a hug instead of their brains (which was what he was supposed to be going after), and all these boys in the room kept giving him hugs. It was pretty funny, but Brian changed his approach and raised his arms a little over his head so it didn't look so much like he was searching for love! Antasia had fixed my face to look pretty disgusting (like a zombie), and after Brian started scaring people towards the door, I would step out of the closet that's by the door to scare them from behind.

Andrew, Jaime and Darla created a maze of sorts in Brian's room using furniture stacked up on top of each other and strategically placed things like brooms or balls hanging from the ceiling throughout the maze to touch the people as they went through. Then Andrew shaved his head and haunted the people as they tried to make it through the tiniest maze ever created!

On the second floor in Derek's apartment, Antasia, Courtny and Breanna created a fortune telling room. I never saw what they did exactly, but I think they gave people bad fortunes and screamed a lot.

We made a couple dummies too: one which was hanging by a noose outside our building by the entrance to our apartments and one which was just sitting in the stairwell. Derek also dressed up like a dummy and sat between the third and fourth floors. He looked just like the other dummies so people weren't expecting him to jump out at them. I think he caused a lot of traffic jams because once people knew he was alive, they didn't want to walk by him.

Jeremy dressed up like the Grim Reaper. He had a special costume made which looked awesome, and he was in charge of crowd control. He was pretty scary looking, and he carried a toy gun around with him that shoots caps/fireworks of some sort. So if the crowd got a little rowdy, he would shoot the gun off in the air, and it would light up the sky when the bullets exploded.

Cindy had a snack/relax room on the third floor. I don't really know what went on in there because I never got to go, but many of the students who went through the rest of our scary rooms were too scared to even go into Cindy's room. There were several children who kept coming through the haunted house, and they took practically all of Cindy's candy. Cindy only did the snack room Friday night and bowed out of participating Saturday so we just had candy in each of our rooms Saturday which we handed out as everyone left.

Friday night we invited the students at our school, the automotive school, to come through. I don't think we ever counted how many students came through, but there were a lot. We began at seven and went until nine, and there was a crowd near the entrance of our building the entire time. Darla would let small groups go through one at a time since our building is too small to allow big crowds through. The unfortunate thing about Friday night is that our students could recognize us, and they would say things like, "Miss Sides, Miss Sides" while waving their hands in my face. But Saturday night students from the medical and technical colleges came through, and they didn't know Brian or me so we were terrifying to them. We had girls crying and falling on the floor, guys jumping and screaming, and with big groups, a mosh pit erupted as the students would slam into each other, into the wall, into our set just to get away from either Brian or me. We also had more help on Saturday night. Dacy's guy friend, Chery, wanted to help as did our friend Grease. Grease was awesome. At one point, Brian, who was about to die of heatstroke from his costume, allowed Grease to play Frankenstein. He did such a fantastic job! While Grease was playing Frankenstein, Brian hid behind the sheet that was blocking off my kitchen and grabbed people's feet.

Anyway, it was good fun, but I'm glad it's over. It was a lot of work!

Friday night Antasia and Zoe spent the night with me. I planned to go to bed semi-early since Saturday was going to be a long and busy day, but I didn't make to bed until two. I spent Saturday morning tutoring some kids and then cleaning my apartment which was disgusting after the previous night's festivities (people would drop the eyeballs [grapes] or the tongues [dyed mushrooms] on the floor, and then they would get squished. My floor was one giant, sticky mess.

In the afternoon, Alice and the Lewis girls came over. We played badminton, and then Courtny and I went on a wild goose chase for butter. I wanted to make banana bread because after the party Saturday night, we were going to have a girls' sleepover and I needed something to feed them for breakfast. So my afternoon was shot by shopping and baking, and then we had to prepare for Saturday night. After a late dinner at Happy Guy's that night, we returned to my apartment, cleaned up and settled in. Darla, Alice, Zoe, Dacy, Emily (aka, the Chinese girl formerly known as Orange), and the Lewis girls all spent the night. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Sleepovers are great ways to get to know people better!

Sunday morning we had a full house and after lunch together, many of us came back to Derek's apartment to learn songs that the Chinese don't know very well. We sang for quite awhile - until several people had to leave, and then some of us watched a movie while others of us opted for much needed naps.

Sunday evening Derek and I went over to the Lewis's for dinner. Rena makes amazing home-cooked meals! We later went to Andrew and Jaime's to meet with those who weren't able to meet with us in the morning. Jakie and Frank weren't able to spend any time with us this weekend because they had a big test on Sunday morning, but we did see them last night looking pretty relieved but avoiding the topic of how well they did on their test! There are several family members I don't get to visit with very often from the other side of town so I was grateful for last night to be able to see them.