Halloween in the Marshall Islands

Halloween, and the fall season in general, has been very strange. It's the first time I've been so near the equator that there is no division, as I've typically thought about it, between the seasons. Sure, we have a windy season, a rainy season, a dry season, a typhoon-ish season, and a king tide season, but none of those could really be classified as my idea of the fall.

For Young Womens (I'm one of the leaders of the 12- to 18-year-olds girls at church), we were going to have this great Halloween party, and the other weekly activities (called "Mutual") leading up to it would help the girls learn how to plan and prepare for a party. So one week I taught them how to cook, the second week another leader taught them how to dance the hula, and then two days before the party we split up and one group came to my house to make cookies and salt dough ghosts, and the other group made origami bats and decorated the gym.

Making salt dough ghosts.

Making Molasses Crinkles (a blue-ribbon recipe from MamaZ). And yes, there is one boy there, a brother that accompanies his sister because their parents don't want her to be out alone.

Microwaving the ghosts. That's what the instructions said to do.

These made me laugh. The girls decided that ghosts looked like snowmen. My ghost is the one on the far left.

Halloween snacks. I'm doing my best to avoid encouraging sugary treats (besides Molasses Crinkles...they've never tasted molasses, so I had to) and garbage food (I don't know who contributed the chips, but that wasn't planned), so we had veggies, fruit, and popcorn. I know it sounds boring, but out here, fresh veggies are a treat.

 You can see the salt dough ghosts/snowmen in the background.

The "decorations."

So there were about 15 young men, young women, or young single adults (YSA) that came. And there were about 10 other adults that were there . . . and then there were the 55 random children who showed up! We almost had enough food for all of them. I didn't want to be the bad guy and say that this was a big kids only party, so to solve the food problem we just had the youth get their snacks before the kids. 

We played a doughnut-eating game, musical chairs, cut-the-flour-with-a-knife-and-whoever-makes-the-penny-on-top-fall-has-to-get-it-out-with-their-mouth game, and the balloon-on-the-ankle game (featured below in the video—utter chaos). We also had a few dance performances. It was fun and funny.

That was pretty much my Halloween.  Andrew has never liked Halloween, so he played with Max and put him to bed while I was at the church. Everybody has their quirks, and I love him all the more for his.

There was also an Embassy Halloween party on the afternoon of the 31st, but Max is the only child at our post, so we just ate treats and chatted. Max was an innocent Darth Vader. He could make a sound like Darth Vader's breathing (easy to teach—just say "cookie" softly) and his lightsaber sound (a variation on how a bee sounds).