Halloween in Sakartvelo!

So I don't know about you but I'm a huge fan of Halloween. Each year I try to decorate my apartment, create the perfect Halloween costume, watch all the scary movies I can, carve pumpkins, and of course pig out on candy. I decided that though this year will definitely be different, that I would try to bring Halloween to Sakartvelo (What Georgians call Georgia). Georgians, like most of the world don't celebrate Halloween, so finding Halloween themed stuff was difficult. I was fortunate enough however to receive some Halloween decorations in a care package that my aunt had sent me.  My brother, my sister and I hung orange and black streamers around our living room.  Finding pumpkins in my town was also a challenge because the pumpkin season doesn't start until around Christmas time and even then, the pumpkins that are available are usually more green than orange and are often cantaloupe sized. (This proved to be a problem when we tried to use the pumpkin carving kit that my mom sent because all the pumpkins were way to small for the designs). Despite this, we were able to create some very cute jack-o-lanterns. My family and I had the most pimped out house in all of Georgia.

Persimmon/rouge apple jack-o-lanterns

My family's pumpkins 

Seeing as I'm a teacher to 100+ kids, I decided to do a fall festival in the school gym after school on Halloween. To prepare for this I asked each grade to draw and label pictures of bats, monsters, ghosts, spiders, skeletons, or pumpkins. (These pictures served as decorations in the gym during the party). I also asked if students could either donate or bring their own pumpkins/persimmons from home since the bazaar in my town was not selling pumpkins yet. (Most of these kids have a pumpkin or two growing in their backyard. The persimmons were for backup if they could not locate a pumpkin). On Halloween afternoon after classes, my students dressed up in their costumes and attended the fall festival. We had a game of duck duck goose, bobbing for apples, apples on a string, pumpkin carving contest, costume contest and a make your own scary popcorn hand station (those of you from east TN know what I'm talking about).

My sister, my brother (part cat, part superman, part TN volunteer) and me as a cat

Apple bobbing

My counterpart Zaira and I 

The party was successful but in a chaotic way. It was just me, my two counterparts and a few leader girls that were trying to keep the 80+ kids out of pandemonium. I had kids swarming everywhere demanding plastic spider rings and candy....a little less organized than I had planned.

After all of this planning and facilitating, I decided to attend PC volunteer party in the city of Kutaisi planned by my friends Ann and Lady. About 20 something volunteers from all over Georgia got together this past weekend to play a city wide assassin's game. We were handed a map of Kutaisi with all of the mission spots labeled on it, as well as the name of the person in our group we were trying to "kill" and how to "kill" them. For my target, I had to somehow get a hold of my friend's phone without them knowing that that was my mission. When a new group of friends approached us in the city, we would all become suspicious and paranoid of them until we learned who was "dead" and therefore not playing and who was still alive and hunting. It was definitely a good way to see the sites of Kutaisi while still having some kind of involvement with the rest of the larger group.

Some of us at lunch (first time I've had Chinese food in Georgia!!!)

Assassin Mugshot ("Arrested for kidnapping a wine truck")