Move aside 12 Days of Christmas and say hello to Taiwan’s 2 weeks of Halloween. The obsession here is pretty big, but I guess as an outsider the holiday is perplexing. There isn’t much like it. The idea that you dress in all ranges of costumes, not just ghosts or skeletons, and get candy from people you don’t even know. I grew to understand the draw of experiencing the holiday a little last year when a 2nd grader told me he would travel to the US just so he could be Captain America on Halloween. Their enthusiasm shows me the magic in the day a little bit more, a side of the holiday I enjoyed as a child.
Now, however, I feel like I can call myself an adult because all the planning for the lesson plans and games surrounding Halloween just drained me. I was like the Scrooge of Halloween. I continued to put off things like getting materials for a Halloween costume, dressing up was a request from the school, and finding candy I thought the children would like without breaking the bank. I really can’t imagine the stress my parents and grandma were in every year as I had a homemade costume almost every year. Despite all the stress and pressure being the only person in the school to be able to share this with the students and not wanting to reiterate past teachers, I think I found some success. In 7th grade we made paper Jack O’Lantern which now litter their desks in the classroom giving November the feeling like Halloween is still in the air. The 9th graders attempted to learn the Thriller song and as much as they enjoyed the music video, the lyrics were a bit of the fast side for them to grasp it. The 8th graders on the other side were able to watch a little of the movie Hotel Transylvania. I haven’t actually seen the entire movie, but I was able to get the gist of it in summaries online. When I was preparing for the movie class, I felt a bit like Cameron Diaz’s character in Bad Teacher. For a portion of class I just put on the movie and watched along with the kids. I also incorporated a worksheet, but that was definitely not the focus of the class.
Don't be fooled by the lack of smiles, the students were just annoyed I insisted on pictures after the bell rung
I think my favorite thing about teaching Halloween was addressing the viral Home Depot Skeleton. The skeleton is 12 ft and towers over the houses. I had both the 8th grade and 9th grade students guess how much they thought the decoration was worth. I blew their minds when I said multiple people bought the skeleton for 300$. The best part was saying that it really is used for maybe half of a month.
The Halloween festivities ended on Friday the 30th where I came to school in costume. First look at the picture below. Do you know what I am?
I tried to think of something out of the box because I introduced the idea of DIY costumes to the kids. I also was pretty confident that they would know the English name for Bubble Tea. When I first got to school and the kids spotted the candy bucket I brought, I was greeted with lots of “Happy Halloween” and “Trick or Treat.” I told the students that the first 4 students in each grade to accurately name my costume in English would get a special Halloween candy, a gummy Lollipop in four different shapes (witch, skeleton, eyeball, and pumpkin). The students stared at me and pretty much gave up, shrugging their shoulders and saying they didn’t understand my costume. I gave them some hints like saying the most popular place to buy bubble tea near school and only then did they make the connection. I ended up printing out that logo of the shop, Dingo, and taping it on the front of my shirt. It seemed to help the students greatly in identifying my costume, but I did take the original hardship in knowing my costume to heart a little because I thought it was a pretty good DIY costume under limited access to materials.
I gave away skittles, chocolates, gummy bears, and gummy fangs and literally was hanging kids' handfuls before I left because I didn’t want to be stuck with all that candy on my own. I could just picture myself eating all those chocolates in bed and seeing as I am not working out much, it didn’t sound like the best idea.
After school I caught a taxi and headed off to the train station, Taipei was calling my name. For the past two years, Halloween and Pride have overlapped and I think the combination of the festivities makes the best celebration for both. I had plans to attend the pride parade again like last year with the hopes of restarting filming for the short film I want to create. It was only two days before I left that I found out the reason my students kept running during their afternoon break was to train for a county-wide relay race in the city that weekend. The gym teacher invited me to attend and I felt awful saying I had made other plans already. Despite the small amount of guilt of not being there for my students, I was on the train. I got in a little after 9:30. Sean knows me too well at this point and had a pizza already ordered for me when I arrived. So definitely a good way to start my pride weekend.
We expected Pride to be a little smaller this year because foreigners couldn’t attend. A large portion of last year’s crowd were from other Asian countries who don’t accept the LGBTQ+ community to the extent Taiwan does. Even this year, Taiwan is supporting the community even more, including a LGBTQ+ couple in the military in their mass wedding the day before the parade. Sean and I arrived when the tents were still being somewhat set up. There was people, but enough room to not feel crowded. We milled around a little and there was really only two notable things that happened in the morning. 1) one of my camera lenses decided it didn’t want to work and instead would show an error message prohibiting the use. 2) there was an actual film crew at the parade filming a small family. I don’t know what their film is about though. I did ask, but they were not too happy to share that information with me, only telling me I couldn’t take a picture of them while they were filming, like I wanted to. I can’t be that annoyed because sometimes as a PA on commercials you are asked countless questions and aren’t able to actually disclose what you are filming, but he could’ve done it in a nicer way. If even a foreigner like myself can pick up on his annoyance you know it's pretty apparent.
Our interactions with the film crew seemed to chip away at my own confidence in why I was even bothering to film in the first place. A professional crew was there and I was already down a lens. Sean picked up on my mood and decided it was probably best that we take a break and return to his apartment to hang out with his friends, the event didn’t start for another 2 hours so there wasn’t anything more to try to film either. casey ‘s room was a welcome relief. I met her two new roommates, some of their friends, and caught up with Sam and Jason (two of Sean’s friends I met before). Casey did literally everyone’s makeup, guys included. Let me tell you, her years of figure skating makeup paid off with the different looks she was able to do. Sean went for the attention with a bright pink, I tried to do something similar to Sean’s, but “more toned down,” and Jason and Sam were very understated. To make the get together even sweeter Casey and Sam had made rainbow colored blondies with m&m’s which got a little burnt, but tasted amazing. It was a great pick me up until we returned back to City Hall for the rest of the festivities.
In the morning, Sean and I had caught up and met an advocate for LGBTQ+ families in Taipei who implored us to come again later to see their child parade. It was described as a parade led by the children of LGBTQ+ couples. Although the group was smaller than we originally believed, the child parade was adorable. They had the children color on a banner celebrating the families. Nothing can really top seeing little kids marching in a Pride parade in Halloween costumes. Yes, Taipei celebrates Halloween a little bit - there are more costumes versus just selling candy in Taitung.
Having got the child parade on film, we thought we would catch up with Sean’s friends again. We didn’t think it would be as hard as it was. We kept thinking we were almost with them only to find that the float balloons near us were just very similar to the one’s Casey was describing on the phone and they were actually blocks away. After maybe 20-40 minutes of attempting to meet up we finally caught up. The rest of the parade was spent marching along with our friends. We danced with the music from the floats around us, waved to diners in restaurants observing the parade, and even saw a rainbow over the crowd following the slight drizzle. Approaching City Hall our group broke up with plans to get back together in a couple hours. We each had our own jobs. Sean and I were to go to the foreign grocery store, Jason’s, to buy snacks for a pregame. Sam and Jason were to get some drinks and picked up their clothes for their costumes, and Casey and Alex handled food.
Jason’s is becoming one of my favorite places in Taipei because it offers everything from Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (a pint is almost 30 USD), every kind of cheese, and tortilla chips. The only thing they don’t carry is mac n’ cheese.
Following grocery shopping, we had only an hour for showers and relaxing before the get together. It was then that Sean corrected his earlier statement that no one was wearing costumes. Sam and Jason decided to surprise Sean with a “costume.” He was asked to wear pink or bright colors and no other explanation. I didn’t know that costumes were a thing, last year I went with the Pride idea and didn’t dress up for Halloween. Staring at Sean’s closet I did what I promised myself in college I would never do. I dressed up at Tom Cruise in Risky Business with tall socks, spandex shorts, and one of Sean’s shirts. The most basic of halloween costumes. Fitting for a night that started off with baked goods, playing Kings, and then heading to a club.
Halloween brought to you by: Pikachu, Jiggly Puff (Pokemon), a zombie, Risky Business, a Unicorn, a Bunny, and a witch
The line for the club was out the door and around the courtyard. Originally we were going to go to a gay bar in the city to carry on our Pride celebration, but Jason’s friend told him most of the bars were too crowded to be any fun anymore. Instead, we went to the same club, Triangle, that Sean and I went to last year. We paid the cover and got in and the first thing that hits your senses is just the wave of BO and just heavy air. It was nasty. Before you say I should’ve expected it being a packed club on Halloween, I’ve never once seen this bar as packed as it was that night. There was no dancing even possible, only slight swaying which I guess works out great for all those Frat Boy guys who don’t feel comfortable doing anything. On our way to the bar, Sean and I may have accidentally cut the line for drinks which wrapped around the entirety of the bar. The man who stopped us could quite possibly be called the male version of a Karen. He didn’t even attempt to politely tell us there was a line. Instead, he went straight to blaming us and point at the line which blended into all the other people standing and or slightly swaying (dancing) in the club. We apologized and moved to maybe join the line, but then noticed Sam and Jason had followed us and just ordered their drinks, cutting the line as well. The man who called us out took one look at Sam and decided not to pick a fight with him, probably the best choice this man made that night, allowing them to continue ordering. Their order just also happened to include the drinks of our whole group and I couldn’t be happier when they got the 8 drinks and the man just looked on.
The best part of the dance club was that on Pride/Halloween to accommodate all the people going out, the area turns a portion of the courtyard into another outdoor venue with a live DJ. After getting our drinks we headed out to join that party, loving the wave of cool air when you stepped outside the club. Pride/Halloween differs from any other night going out because no one has a care in the world. People are in costumes, everyone is dancing together, and literally there is no way not to have a good time. Loved dancing with my friends to Mamma Mia songs and belting out the lyrics to whatever would come on next. I did run into some other Fulbright ETAs, but we were at different points in our night. I was just getting started and it seemed like the group was about to start heading out, calling it a night pretty early.
I think we got back around 3 in the morning. To say I didn’t get much done the next day would be an understatement. We got up around 11 and tried to make pancakes. However, neither of us wanted to get regular flour and instead attempted making pancakes with flour for dumplings. I assumed that flour is flour- a completely wrong assumption. The pancakes came out a mix of wannabe crepes and a paste. The blueberries saved them in the end. It also helps that I don’t get pancakes often so even messed up ones are delicious. The rest of the day was spent lesson planning on my part, downloading the footage from the parade which I haven’t yet looked at knowing that I won’t have much time for that project until I finish the Fulbright video, and eating cheese. Life is good.
Weekends such as these make me so relaxed. I can never truly discern why. It might not even be one factor. It could be the combination of the city feel which I also miss, the delicious food of every known kind, and of course just getting to spend time with Sean even if for only a day or two.
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