Feliz Halloween

Folks,

We celebrated Halloween a little early in school. We had the party on Thursday, the end of the week, rather than tomorrow, the beginning of the week.

May the force be with you
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All teachers (and some of the students) dressed up for the Halloween on Thursday. This meant that students were taught by Cleopatra, a skeleton, a bunch of grapes, a mummy, a fairy, a Canadian ice-hockey player, Mr. T, a bumble bee, a pirate, a Martian and Rambo, to mention just some.

I went as Darth Maul, from Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. I had a black sheet with a hole for my head and fastened with a belt, and red and black make-up all over my head. It was a good laugh. I’ll put some pictures up on the site.

The Ticos are a bit wary of Halloween. The Catholic Church attempted to stop it as a festival many years ago because it was perceived as ‘satanic’.

Julie won the competition as a bunch of grapes, covered in purple balloons with a purple tinsel wig and a green ‘stalk’ cap.

We went out afterwards to celebrate. When travelling around the town I was whistled at, stared at, and had truck drivers honking their horns at me! My make-up lasted from 4pm right through classes, the party, the bars and until I came home at around 2.30am. It looked as good as it did at the start.

Out with the Spanish teachers
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There is a divide between the Spanish teachers and the English teachers in the school. Although we share the same staff room, they teach mainly in the morning, and we’re mainly in the evening. When the teams overlap in the staff room, there is a little interaction, but not much. I think it’s really because they’re permanent people, working teaching Spanish as their career. Whereas we’re perceived as gringos on holidays having a laugh.

A notice went up on the board saying that there was a fancy-dress party on Saturday night in a bar run by the brother of Fanny (the accountant in the school). So Julie and I decided we’d go and do our bit for entente cordiale between the two teams. It was a good night, although the bar (in the neighbouring city of Alajuela) wasn’t up to much. We ended up coming back to Heredia and having a few drinks locally. But it was nice to get to know a few of the Spanish teachers, and to speak a few words in Spanish.

Halloween is from the Irish
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I made a rather interesting discovery as I researched Halloween for an article in the Intercultura news, in that Halloween is originally an Irish festival. That it went to the United States with Irish immigrants. And that the carved pumpkins with candles were originally turnips!

Another week, another hurricane
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There have been so many tropical storms and hurricanes this year that it’s set a new record. Twenty three named storms, including 13 hurricanes. And the season has another month to run. They have run out of names – Wilma was the last name on the list. Now we’ve moved onto the Greek alphabet. Alpha hit Cuba last week, and Beta hit Nicaragua this morning. It’s very unusual for a hurricane to be so close to Costa Rica. But we’ve actually had no rain in the last two days, the only two days in October with none. And although the hurricane is dumping tons of rain further up the coast, today was quite nice and far better than for other hurricanes much further away.
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OK, that’s it for another week. I’m back to Spanish classes in the morning. Those of you in Ireland enjoy your bank holiday tomorrow. Until next week.