Yes, even here in ‘Nam there is no escape from the Pagan harvest festival. Ok, so we know every man and his dog ‘celebrates’ Halloween as an excuse to dress up as a disembowelled zombie or the like, but it all seemed a little strange doing so here.
Jumpstart fancy dress competition
The school make a big thing of it, encouraging the Jumpstarts to attend lessons wearing fancy dress costumes, whilst Junior, Senior and Elite classes make posters, carve pumpkins and write poems respectively. It’s a nice touch, but can go a little too far. As part of the weekend’s celebrations we were instructed to take our Junior classes (6 – 10 year olds) to the Haunted Halloween House (a.k.a. two of our largest classrooms with an retractable adjoining wall, suitably decorated).
I have two Junior classes, one of which has a very small, timid, although extremely clever six year old student. I have likened him to Rainman in the past and see big things ahead of him in the future; or I did before he was subjected to the Haunted Halloween House!
Upon entering the ‘house’ (armed with my camera to catch some magic moments), we watched a video showing scary screaming faces etc, after which one of the Teaching Assistants, who had donned a witch’s mask, black cape and green, warty monster hands burst through a black curtain, popped a balloon in my students’ faces and quickly fled. You can imagine how much screaming and grabbing of random limbs took place on the part of my students.
Now, trying to get 18 young learners towards the looming darkness and fake cobwebs/plastic spiders hanging from the ceiling of the next section took some effort: from both myself and my teaching assistant. I didn’t know I was capable of walking with 3 children pulling against each of my limbs, but we got there in the end after persuading them it may be scarier to turn back, than to carry on to the exit.
Having made our way past numerous office staff dressed as corpse brides, zombies etc we reached the final section. When Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ started to play the kids seemed to calm a little, until the green lighting highlighted the outlines of an army of zombie corpses that were approaching! By this point my students all recoiling to the corner of the room, trying to make themselves as small and unnoticeable as possible. Also by this point, I regained full control of my limbs and took the opportunity to capture this magic moment on my camera for posterity! The lollipop rewards upon our exit made it all worthwhile and fifteen minutes later all was forgotten… until bed time no doubt!
The flash from my camera added a nice 'lightning' effect,
but sadly doesn't reflect the true ambience of the room!
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