Students: "Let's Have a Party at Mr. Martini's!" Me: "Why?!?!"
Well I never have been much of the party hosting type, what with all the planning, preparing, and worrying about your guests having a good time... But somehow, Indonesia has a way of turning me into many things I never expected I would be, and sometimes even helping me to realize that I enjoy these new roles I'm being forced to play! And this past week's adventure left me in charge of one of the English club's first events: Halloween.
Halloween went off without a hitch; or, at least, without too many hitches! As Halloween is a U.S. Holiday that has roots in Celtic History, most Indonesians are either unfamiliar with the holiday, or have distorted views of what Halloween means and where it comes from. (To tell you the truth, I didn't know much about the history of Halloween until this experience either!!) So the English club decided to hold a Halloween party for it's members, and since my house is so extremely large, it was quickly voted as the perfect location for Halloween... Which meant I had to clean...
This is how I feel, every day. My mop, my bucket, and me. Oh, and about a million square feet (pardon me, "meters,") of floor to scrub...
I'm not gonna go into it much, but good lord is it hard to clean a massive house all by yourself! I've always considered myself a fairly clean person, but living here has made me look like an absolute slob! I miss carpets. Oh do I miss carpets. Linoleum does a guy no favors when it comes to absorbing dirt and dust... Fortunately with the help of Fitri, a mopping maestro from way back, we eventually were able to get my house into an "acceptable" condition for the Halloween party. All that was left, then, was for me to decorate! (And let me tell you - finding a Halloween decorations in a country that doesn't normally celebrate Halloween is no easy task!) So I had to improvise...
Manford the Mummy, Horace the Headless Haunt, and a pair of friendly ghosts (affectionately known as Casper and Casper's pal, Merl) adorned my house to help scare and entertain my students for the evening. Putting the time in to create (and also name!) each of my "creatures" was honestly more time consuming than it should have been, but I think the students appreciated the effort and the humor of the sketchily made ghouls.
Perhaps the most difficult of the "creatures that go bump in the night" was good ol' bag Spider, who required quite a bit of bobbing and weaving to anchor him to his webby lair. But what's a Halloween party without a spider?! Especially when I couldn't really afford to fly the real Spider all the way over here just for one night! Though I could have really used his impersonation of an attack dog to scare aware all the trick-or-treaters I didn't have...
And I guess, since I'm already talking about Halloween decorations! I should point out that I greaty miss the cobwebs from the Pumpkin Smash at the Clubhouse! I had to improvise and make my own out of dried-out wet wipes... Let me tell ya: don to try this at home. The level of hair-pulling-out frustration and eternal ripping of the whispy threads is enough to drive even the most sane of Halloween party-planners off the edge; and I'm by no means in the category of "sane" at this point! But I refused to have a Halloween without cobwebs and so after a few more mugs of apple cider, I came up with something that slightly resembles cobwebs. They would have to do.
Since it was Halloween, and I wanted to celebrate the right way, we went back to some time-honored Halloween traditions from my more "youthful years!" Just take a gander at the hilarity that ensued...
Bobbing for apples is perhaps the greatest Halloween game known to humankind. Shove your head in a bucket of water, and then try to bite an apple with your teeth. Could anything be more awesome?! Yes. Apple bobbing in hijabs.
I saw many unique strategies: the poke-the-apple-with-your-nose-until-the-stem-appears method, the try-to-go-in-for-a-bite-without-getting-too-wet strategy, and my favorite, the who-the-heck-cares-if-I'm-wearing-this-heavy-hijab, I'm-getting-that-APPLE! method, which involved a full dunking of the head, and a whole mess of wet clothing... I was amazed, impressed, and a little shocked by the devotion to getting that apple! These kids truly take a bite out of life.
But the highlight of the evening of apple-bobbing was the moment captured in the above photo. At the present moment, it holds the position of "top memory in Indonesia." This is the story:
Since the students were all participating, they decided that the teachers should also have a go at apple bobbing. I, of course, supported this whole-heartedly, because I firmly believe that if I'm gonna ask you to do something, I had better be willing to also do it myself! Fortunately, I didn't have to start the shenanigans. That was left up to the woman in the bottom right corner: my co-teacher, Mam Novi.
The students looked to her as the first teacher to attempt the U.S. game of apple-bobbing, since beside moi, Mam Novi was the only other person to have spent time in the U.S. Well, while Mam Novi is usually down for just about anything, she politely declined the offer since she was unable to bend over to the bucket due to her 7 month pregnant belly. Fair enough, right? Wrong. The moment she said it, multiple students collaborated to pick up the bucket and bring it up to Mam Novi so that she would not have to bend over!
Well, when students are that persistent, it's kinda hard to turn away from. So after a little more pushing from the students, Mam Novi agreed to give it a shot. And so I counted down, "tiga, dua, satu, ..." And the second I got to zero, Mam Novi struck like a cobra! Her head flew forward, plucked an apple from the top of the water in 1.23 seconds, nearly knocking the bucket out of the students' hands with her speed! As one student later remarked, "One bite; one get." Let's just say she whooped all the other students' times by multiple seconds... And the best part? After biting her apple out of the water, Mam Novi casually starts to walk away, chomping on her apple, and turns to the students, saying: "That's why I'm the teacher!" Point made.
After that, we had a quick game of "eating-the-apple-off-the-string."
Before I conclude this post, I'm gonna sneak in a few pictures of the event that happened the day after the Halloween party... I was invited to judge a Stroytelling Contest for middle school students from surrounding schools! The stories were all classic Indonesian folk tales, of which I have copies, and the students had to perform in English! So apparently I was qualified enough to judge...
The stories were awesome to listen to, and the students' acting was phenomenal. Even though I kept sliding my desk to run away from the sunshine, I had a blast listening to the Indonesian stories. Though I heard later that they thought Juri 3 may have been from Russia, due to his continual low scores...
Just another day. Doing new things, having adventures, and gathering stories to tell my friends and family :)
Talk to you soon,
Ryan
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