When the electronics go down...

I'm not a big fan of McDonald's (although I do like McDonald's in China better than in the US), but there is one almost directly across the street from my school and today was exam day (day 3 of 3). I was giving my Chemistry exam right after lunch and so I decided to join a couple of my coworkers at McDonald's for lunch. McDonald's is usually an easy place for foreigners because they have kiosks where you can order in English. Today, however, as we walked in we noticed that all the kiosks were down. We then proceeded to the ordering counter (as opposed to the pick-up counter) to order and discovered things were even more interesting. Apparently, McDonald's entire electronic system was down. At the counter, two women were taking orders on paper and then telling the kitchen staff what each person's order was. This made ordering quite a challenge because while there was a partial menu on the wall, there was no complete menu available. I decided I wanted a plain hamburger, a small fry and a bubble tea (something delicious, but definitely not available at McDonald's in the U.S.). This order was more challenging than you might imagine. First, the Chinese word for hamburger is not specific to, well hamburger. A hamburger in Chinese could be made of beef, chicken, fish (possibly other things, but those are the only choices at McDonald's). Next, I not only never order in Chinese, but plain hamburgers aren't very common. I told the woman I wanted a hamburger and she asked me if I wanted chicken, I replied, "no, beef." Then I told I want just the beef nothing else on it. She then replied you want a single burger, right? Yes. The small fries were easy and the only thing with the bubble tea was I had to specify that I wanted a cold one because it comes in hot or cold. Then they had to figure out how much I needed to pay. They didn't know how much a plain hamburger costs. Luckily I did (at 7 yuan, it's actually more expensive in China than in the United States). One of the women knew how much a small fry (which is truly small unlike the small fry I ordered at Arby's when I was in the States for Christmas) cost and they both seemed to know the price of the bubble tea. One of my coworkers tried to pay with a debit card and they told him cash only. This caused me a bit of concern because I didn't have my wallet on me, only my phone. I asked if we could pay with WeChat (the Chinese version of WhatsApp, but it also has a pay function that works similar to Apple Pay) and thankfully we could. Thus, after they added together my order I scanned a woman's phone and paid via WeChat. I saw afterward that it was a personal account and so apparently she was collecting all the payments and would eventually pass it on to the restaurant when they had their systems restored. I can't imagine a restaurant in the U.S. operating this way, but I guess it works. I got my food and hopefully, the restaurant will get their money.

Chasing Santa - a really long Christmas Eve

It's currently Saturday evening and I have just finished packing my bags to go back to Beijing. I can't say I'm really looking forward to the return trip, but the time differences always make things interesting. This trip, I'm departing on the morning of New Year's Eve and flying west. As I fly west the time will get earlier and earlier until I cross the International Dateline at which point it will become 2018. There won't exactly be a countdown for the new year. Of course, this is sort of making up for my trip from Beijing to North Carolina.
I woke up on Christmas Eve morning and went to church. We had a good service and then went to the home of a couple of the church members who live very close to where we meet (in the German Center). We had an awesome church-wide Christmas party which included having pizza and snacks and singing Christmas songs. I left about 2:30 in the afternoon (the party was still going strong) and took the train (the subway to the airport express) to the airport. I flew to Detroit landing about 10 minutes BEFORE I left Beijing. (I called my grandmother from the Detroit airport. She mentioned that you can't be in two places at the same time and I replied, "Oh, yes you can. I was in Beijing on Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 5:40 pm and I was in Detroit on Sunday, December 24, 2017.")
My flight to Detroit was pretty good. After I checked into the airport, they told me that I could go over to the table that said Merry Christmas and get some Christmas items (It was actually kind of funny because the check-in was conducted mostly in Chinese and so he told me this in Chinese with Merry Christmas being in English because the table had an English banner which said Merry Christmas). I walked over to the table and saw that they had headbands with antlers, santas, and other possible items on them; slap bracelets; and buttons. I chose a really cute antler headband with a bow between the antlers. Then the woman was like, "Oh chose something else." I was surprised that I could have more than one item, but I chose a reindeer slap bracelet. Then she told me to get a button so I got a stocking button. The conversation with this woman started in English, but out of habit, a number of my replies were in Chinese and eventually the conversation turned to Chinese. I don't know if it was because of my Chinese speaking or being a foreigner or what, but next thing I know she's asking to take a picture of me.
When I boarded my flight, the flight attendants all had different Christmas headbands like what I had seen on the table (it was a Delta table and I was flying Delta after all), but none of them had one just like mine. They all reacted instantly to my headband, asking me where I got it and commenting that they hadn't seen one like that. There were additional comments as I deplaned as well. I was a little surprised to see that nobody in Detroit had any of these acutraments. I thought they were probably a Delta-wide thing, but apparently they were in a Delta in Beijing thing.
My flight to Greensboro was delayed a bit because of back-up on the de-icing which was the result of weather systems delaying other flights, but when we boarded the flight attendant was like, "We've got to get you all home before Santa arrives." I managed to land in Greensboro at about 11 pm and made it to Mom and Dad's house about 10 minutes before midnight. My Christmas Eve was 37 hours long and I definitely made the most of it. On Monday, I kept telling stories from the day before and my dad was like, "Your yesterday was a week long." It definitely felt like it. This Sunday however, I am essentially skipping.

A Trip to a Public Hospital in Beijing

If you've read my blog for a while, you know I have clearly been to a hospital in China before. For that matter, I have definitely been to the hospital in Beijing, (You can read about my adventure with gallstones here.) but I've never been to a public hospital (as a patient - I did observe an open heart surgery in a public hospital in Baotou years ago, but I digress). Last week one of my friends had a lot of problems with ringing in his ears, but his insurance only works in public hospitals. Therefore, on Saturday and Sunday I went with him to help him figure out the hospital (sort of the blind leading the blind) and to translate.
In China, especially in a city like Beijing, there are many different types of hospitals (and by the way there is no such thing in China as a doctor's office. You see doctors usually at the hospital, occasionally in a clinic). When I had issues I went to an international hospital (Beijing United Family) and an international clinic (Vista Clinic). I tried going to another international hospital before I went to Beijing United Family because my health insurance covered care at the other hospital (Oasis) 100%, but at Beijing United Family it only covered 80% of the costs. Unfortunately, the day I went was a public holiday and so everything was closed (including the emergency room), except pediatrics and OB/GYN. Since I don't qualify for pediatrics and it wasn't an OB/GYN problem (it was complications from Influenza A that I had picked up during my Christmas travels), I had to bite the bullet and go to the more expensive hospital. At the international hospitals and clinics it's just like being in a hospital in the US. They have the same standard of care, they same general procedures and often even the same brands of supplies (I don't just mean the big stuff like the medical equipment I mean even down to the little stuff like Kimberly Clark toilet paper dispensers). Of course, the biggest advantage is nearly everyone, from the doctors to the receptionists, speaks English. If they don't (or they can't understand you), they can quickly transfer you to someone who does (they may even be a native English speaker). These hospitals even employ many foreign doctors (although the ones I had were all Chinese). The downside is they come with a U.S.-size price tag. If you don't have health insurance that covers treatment at the International hospitals you probably can't afford to go there (and without insurance that they can bill, you will have to pay upfront for your treatment).
My friend didn't have insurance that covers private hospitals so that meant he needed to go to a public hospital. Now, there is quite a spectrum when it comes to public hospitals. I googled public hospitals with international wings and found one not too far away (this is a very relative term). My friend didn't have time to go on Saturday because of a party our friends were throwing so we tried to go to a nearby hospital (meaning in walking distance), but they didn't have an ENT. I thought he could handle going to the hospital himself, but he asked me to go with him on Sunday so I met him after church at the subway station nearest the hospital (Peking Union Medical College Hospital) . We followed the directions on Apple Maps (remember all Google products are blocked in China) and this led us to the main entrance. Unfortunately, the main entrance didn't include the international wing and it was closed. There were quite a few people gathered outside the hospital waiting and long electronic signs that appeared to be listing the specialties and which days they had available appointment times. From my reading online I knew they had an international wing that should be open at that time, but I couldn't find directions on how to get there. The hospital area was comprised of several buildings, but there was also construction going  on making it more difficult to find the International Medical Services (what they call their international wing). We wandered around and eventually found signs pointing to the emergency room and IMS (in the same location). We walked in the door and had no idea what to do or where to go. We just stood there looking around, puzzled. A guard walked up to us and asked if we needed to see a doctor and then told us to go to the nurse's station. I figured since this was the international wing the nurses would speak English so I instructed my friend to talk to them, but they started to panic and picked up the phone. I then told them it was okay, I would translate. After telling them he needed to see an ENT we were directed to the cashier where he had to pay 5 yuan to buy a card and 1000 yuan (about USD 150) to see the doctor. He could use his debit card to pay for the doctor, but had to buy the card with cash. We were then directed back to the nurses station where they gave him some paperwork and then directed us to an exam room (she tried to tell him in English, but mixed up her numbers leaving us very confused until I clarified in Chinese).
We got to the exam room and there was no one there and so we just waited outside the room (there were chairs just outside the door). The doctor walked up and greeted me (in English) and asked me if I had requested an ENT. I told him I hadn't my friend had. This was one of those really funny situations that happen a lot. My friend is Filipino so the doctor thought he was Chinese. Thus, he figured W was the translator and I was the patient rather than the other way around (this is probably also why the nurses didn't freak out until after he spoke English to them). I waited outside while he examined my friend. Then in order for my friend's insurance to reimburse the visit, he needed some form official diagnosis form. The doctor had to go an get an official paper and fill it out by hand. Meanwhile, my friend had to go back to the cashier to pay for the form (250 yuan or about USD 35) and his medication. Then he took the card he'd bought to the pharmacy where they used that to match him to the prescription. Finally, we went back to the exam room and got the form from the doctor. Definitely, a new experience for both of us.

You're an interpreter in disguise

A while back I heard about the Christmas Bazaar held each year at the Germany Embassy here in Beijing. I heard that it was really awesome and a not-to-be-missed event. Having lived in Germany I was even more interested because it was supposed to have all the typical German Christmas foods. Life got busy and I didn't think about it for a while. On Friday, December 1st I was looking online to see what activities were going to be happening that weekend and I came across the Germany Charity Bazaar (the actual name of the event). I looked into and saw that there were advanced ticket sales, but not online. They were only selling tickets at three locations around town none of which were anywhere close to me and considering the bazaar was the next day it wasn't going to be possible to get an advanced ticket (I never considered the fact it would be quite so early - it doesn't really feel like Christmas around here even now on the 12th). According to the event website tickets would be sold at the door depending on availability. They had to sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon, beginning at 2 o'clock. I had plans for Friday night and live about 1.5 hours away from the German Embassy so I didn't figure I could make the morning session, but I thought, "If I show up right at 2, it should still be early enough to get a ticket." I shared the word with my coworkers and a few of them decided to join me. One had been the year before and she hadn't had an advanced ticket, so I wasn't too worried. I should have been.
I arrived at the Germany Embassy just moments before 2. My directions actually had me coming up the opposite side of the embassy from the bazaar entrance and so I came across a REALLY long line. I decided I didn't want to get into a line that I didn't know what it was, plus I saw people had tickets in their hands, so I kept walking. And walking and walking. Eventually I found the front of the line and sure enough it was a good thing I hadn't gotten into that first line. It was for people with advanced tickets. The line to buy tickets was on the other side. I found that line and there were some people speaking Chinese who had tickets in their hands. Thus, I told them in Chinese that they were in the wrong line. They thanked me and went to find the correct line. I then stood in line for a long time. After a while I started speaking to the people around me. The women in front of me were Chinese so I spoke to them mostly in Chinese. The couple behind me were a Canadian woman and her Chinese boyfriend. I spoke to them in English. My own friends arrived after I'd been waiting in line for about an hour and a half. They decided they didn't want to wait that long and decided to skip it, but I figured they were letting people in until 5. They would clear the line of ticket holders and then start selling tickets. Since many people had dropped out of the line, I thought I would make it. The couple behind me thought the same thing. We were wrong.
Around 4 pm (after I've waited in line, in the cold, for a little over two hours) a couple of people working the bazaar came out to inform us that there was zero chance of getting in. They had so many advanced ticket holders that they would not be selling any tickets. The gentleman behind me didn't really believe it. Meanwhile, another gentleman was clearly upset. He went up to them and in German explained how they had stood there for two hours and it wasn't right to turn them away. The staff told him (also in German) that they were sorry, but there was absolutely no possibility of getting in. He continued to disagree with them and they continued to be firm and tell him it wasn't happening. I very quietly translated this conversation to the couple behind me. The girl looked at me, "I think you're a secret translator. You speak Chinese AND German. Do you speak Arabic too?" (I would like to learn Arabic, but in case you're wondering, no I don't.)
While I was in line I also met a Chinese girl and a Hong Kong British citizen (meaning she was ancestrally from Hong Kong and has a Hong Kong residence card, but a British passport) who has literally lived all over the world (and is completely fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin) and her Chinese coworker (they were somehow friends with the gentleman behind me and had joined the couple in line). They invited me to go to another Christmas Bazaar that wasn't too far away so that the long trip wasn't a total waste. I decided to go and we took a DiDi (the Chinese equivalent to Uber) to the Hutongs and went to a Tapas bar that had a little Christmas Bazaar going on. I had a good time, but I didn't get the good German food I had been planning on (we were all quite hungry because we had eaten very little lunch in anticipation). Next year, I will make sure to buy an advanced ticket (and probably to make the morning session as well).

I'll admit it, I make mistakes.

We all make mistakes, this is a surprise to no one. We all make language mistakes. Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. One of my tenth graders has created a joke out of my asking Siri. I didn't realize at first just how often I ask Siri to spell a word. Now, anytime I wonder about the spelling of a word one of my students goes, "Hey Siri, how do you spell..."
When I was an exchange student in Germany (and thus learning German) I thought the word for tired (müde) was pronounced just like the word for brother (brüder). As you can probably guess from looking at these words, that simply isn't true. The thing is when you learn a foreign language, especially when you learn it from immersion rather than a classroom setting, you often don't hear the words/sounds quite right.
Other times you fall into the trap of false cognates. In German the word information is Information (although note, it is pronounced a little bit differently). Computer is Computer, and meter is meter (although German nouns do have gender and I realize I'm leaving that part out - on purpose). Additionally, you have words that are very similar like mother in German is Mutter and book is Buch.   But then there are the false cognates - words that look similar or even sound similar, but have rather different meanings. One of my favorite of these is the verb putzen. It sounds a lot like put, but the meaning isn't the least bit similar. One of my fellow exchange students, Laura, told us a story about her misuse of the word putzen. Because she thought it meant put she used it all the time. She would tell her host family she was going to putzen the letter in the mailbox. Now this story gets really funny when I tell you that putzen actually means to clean! After getting over her embarrassment, Laura was able to laugh at this and even shared the story with myself and some of her other foreign exchange student friends (by the way, I don't usually use real names, but I haven't seen Laura in over 20 years and if by some chance you're reading this and your that Laura, please contact me).
Like Laura, I have been forced to accept that fact that no matter how hard I try I will always make mistakes. Sometimes they are grammar mistakes (I make those in English too), sometimes they are mistakes in word choices (now that I think about it, I sometimes make those in English too) and sometimes they're mistakes in writing (I mean spelling, but since I'm about the speak about Chinese which doesn't have an alphabet I chose the word writing).

Here's a screen shot of me typing a Chinese character
here within this blog. If you click on the little drop down
menu on the right, more choices will appear. When you click
anywhere on a new row the numbers will be assigned to
the characters in that row. You select a character by
hitting the number associated with that character.
There are different ways to have the characters sort,
but I usually leave mine sorted by frequency.

As I've mentioned in my last post, I teach a seventh grade science class that didn't go well until I started teaching it bilingually. While this is useful for the students it results in a lot of mistakes because, well let's face it Chinese is a tough language! Today, I gave my students a quiz on organs of the human body. On this quiz, I had typed the Chinese name of the organ and the students had to write the English name. I can type Chinese a lot better than I can write because when I type, I type in pinyin (the romanization of Chinese characters used on the mainland) and pick the character from a list that pops up on my screen. Using this method I only have to be able to recognize the character to type it. One of the words on the quiz was 肾 which means kidneys. Unfortunately, I accidentally chose 神 which means God. Two of the students, knew what I meant (the pronunciation of these characters only varies in the tone) and simply corrected my character. The other students started laughing and putting their hands together and pretending they were praying. The teaching assistant went around the room, correcting their papers and it was all good.
The other day, my mistake was a little funnier. We were reviewing the English names of the organs and I was giving the students the Chinese name and having them
say the English name. Unfortunately instead of saying heart (心xin - first tone), I accidentally said sex ( 性 xing - fourth tone). Now in reality the word for sex, as in how the students took it is 性爱 (xing ai), what I said more like gender, but these are 7th grade boys. They laughed uproariously and that day I didn't have a TA in the room to help me (actually I often don't). Thankfully one of the kids said enough for me to figure out what I might have said. After class, I asked one of my Chinese coworkers some questions in relation to what I might have accidentally said and he turned all red, but didn't answer. Thankfully, my dictionary doesn't get nervous about telling me what words mean.
When I first started teaching this class I felt like it was the bane of my existence. After all, it's not only middle school (not my favorite grade to teach), but it's also life science (my least favorite science) and the kids don't really speak English. Nonetheless, the class has really grown on me. They are still middle schoolers, but they really get into the videos I show them and they bring a unique energy that is actually a lot of fun. Then there are the decidedly middle school actions. For example I introduced the concept of the larynx in class today and wrote the Chinese word on the board. The first character in the Chinese word for larynx ( pronounced yan) sounds the same as to smoke. One of the students got up and jokingly said I had the wrong character and changed it to the character to smoke - I guessed that was the character he wrote because I could recognize the part of the character that means fire (and then the TA confirmed it). A couple of times in class I have introduced the word esophagus (食管 -shi guan) which is pronounced almost the same as the second and third characters in embassy (大使馆 -da shi guan). The shi in esophagus is second tone while in embassy it's third tone (if you don't know anything about Chinese tones second tone is a rising tone and third tone is a falling then rising tone). When that one came up there was no TA in the room, so I was pretty happy that I recognized what the kid was conveying.
While, I do make a lot of mistakes I think it is good. You learn more from your mistakes than you do when you get things wrong. Thus, I'm learning a lot of Chinese (of course not only from my mistakes, but also from preparing for class). I'm also modeling for the students. I need these students to be willing to make mistakes, especially in their language learning. If they aren't willing to try they won't improve. Thus, since I keep making mistakes I keep modeling the fact that its okay to make mistakes and that you need to just keep on trying. And isn't that a lesson that extends well beyond language learning?

He laughed so hard his belly ached.

My school is set-up very much in a Chinese style. Even though we more or less follow an American curriculum, the students attend all of their classes together as a class, much like it is in an American elementary school, except that the different subjects are taught by different teachers. Also, the students stay in one classroom and the teachers come in to teach the students. Because our school is very small (less than 50 students spread out over grades 7-11 - no 12th grade because the students all of to our sister school in Virginia for 12th grade) there is only one class per grade and those grades can be as small as 4 students (8th grade). The largest grade is 10th grade (the start of high school in China). Our 10th grade class has 15 students which is our maximum for any grade.

I teach 10th grade chemistry and calculus I (we call it calculus I because its really the AP curriculum taught over 2 years) and also 7th grade life science.

One of the questions people commonly ask me is, "do you teach in English or in Chinese." Usually, the answer is in English. My 10th graders can more or less handle the English (that's not to say it isn't really difficult nor that I don't spend a lot of time helping them understand what things mean), but my 7th graders are an entirely different story! We started the school year with four 7th graders. Of these four one spoke pretty good English, one spoke decent English and two spoke no English. We then moved a student down from 8th grade because his English was sufficient to handle to 8th grade and we added a 6th grader who wants to attend our school, but joined a year early (we start at grade 7) to learn English before he needs the year to count (in other words he has been planning to repeat the 7th grade next year from the time he began). This makes trying to teach a 7th grade American curriculum very challenging. Most of the material we are learning is new for the students (meaning they've never learned it in Chinese either) and all but one of them really cannot learn the material from English. I have two assistants who take turns attending the class, but they tend to not know the science words in English (and often not in Chinese either) and so this makes life very interesting.
As a result, I end up teaching my 7th grade class bilingually (or at least to the best of my ability). I prepare vocabulary charts in which I give them the English word and the Chinese word (I check with a coworker to make sure I got the right word from the dictionary. He often has to do a Baidu search to confirm the word because it has been a long time since he's taken Biology). Sometimes I included the pronunciation of the Chinese word. This is for me because during class I have to use the Chinese words repeatedly and sometimes in the beginning I cannot remember the pronunciation. We then go through the material using videos, powerpoint, models and other visual aids. I often ask my questions in English and then repeat them in Chinese. If there is an important point that I cannot say in Chinese, I ask the TA to translate. One of the TAs will usually do so (she also gives me individual words if I need them), the other usually will not (I don't think he can). Some of the students will try to ask their questions in English. Some of them really don't have the ability to ask the question in English. The other day, I had a student who had a long question. He spoke on and on and on in Chinese for about two minutes before I stopped him. I said, "I can't follow all of that." He looked at the TA and replied, "but she can translate." I told him, "yes, but she can't remember so much to translate all of that. Start at the beginning and go slowly." He started at the beginning and I could understand the first sentence completely. Then he kept going and the TA started having trouble translating, but between the two of us I got the main idea. As we progress through a topic the students learn more and more of the English words and the class moves from almost entirely in Chinese to maybe 60-70% in English. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever gets beyond 70% English. This has resulted in my Chinese definitely improving, and sometimes with some of the strangest words (my Chinese vocabulary now includes the names of most organs in the body, cells, blood, mitosis, meiosis, the stages of those processes and even odd words like dialysis. Unfortunately, while I can describe the entire process of cell division in Chinese, I cannot tell you I'm sad or frustrated). One day recently, one of my students said (in English), "Miss Cannon your Chinese has upgraded."
One of the funniest moments occurred yesterday. The day before yesterday I had given the students a new vocabulary sheet. This one was on major organs in the body. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to include the stomach. Therefore, I wrote the word stomach (in English) on the board and told the students to add the word stomach in both English and Chinese to their sheet (I told them this in Chinese). One of my students then asked me, (in Chinese) "How do you write stomach?" I replied (in Chinese), "the English or Chinese word?" "The Chinese word." I just looked at him. Another student explained to him how to write the word. A third student then asked me, (in Chinese) "teacher, how do you write stomach in Chinese?" I looked at him (all of the students are male) and said, "You're asking me how to write stomach in Chinese? Me? I'm an American. You think I know how to write it?" (all of this was also said in Chinese). I then proceed to look up the character in my dictionary and showed it to him before I wrote the Chinese word for stomach on the board. A fourth student was laughing and laughing and laughing. Next thing I know he tells me (also in Chinese), "Ms. Cannon I laughed so hard my belly aches. The Chinese student needed the foreigner to tell him how to write a Chinese word!"

Halloween Chinese style

A few of our students trick-or-treating. Some
of them really dressed up, but I didn't think
to take pictures.

The entrance to the school. Notice that the pumpkins are
quite large, are the traditional jack-o-lantern
shape and are orange (or at least mostly). None of
these are common things in China.

I'm sure it surprises no one to hear that Halloween is not a traditional Chinese holiday. Back when I lived in Inner Mongolia (2002-2005) basically no one in China had ever heard of Halloween. My first year in Baotou (the city I lived in in Inner Mongolia) I taught a really cool class that included afternoon culture activities. That year we had a big Halloween party where we not only carved jack-o-lanterns, but made our own piñata (I didn't have anywhere to hang it from though so I stood on a chair and held it while my blindfolded students swung at it with a plastic bat). One funny thing I remember is I instructed my students to all bring in a pumpkin, preferably orange (traditionally most pumpkins here are green) to carve jack-o-lanterns. That student came to class laughing because when he was shopping for pumpkins he was looking for the biggest one he could find (they are traditionally quite small) and the seller told him, "but the smaller pumpkins taste better." He told us he replied, "but I'm not going to eat the pumpkin, I'm going to play with it!"

Fast forward to 2017 and its an entirely different story. Two weeks ago I was shopping

Some of us dressed up more than others.

in a large chain store (as opposed to an import store) and they had a whole section of Halloween decorations, costumes and more. At my current school the students all live on campus as do all over the foreign teachers, except me. The students asked some of the teachers if they could do trick-or-treating at the teacher's apartments. The teachers agreed and we all went and bought candy (I teamed up with someone else and we each gave candy out from her apartment). Then in the evening the student council threw a Halloween party. This Halloween party included a haunted house (where I managed to scare the kids trying to scare me instead of the other way around), lots of face painting, fake blood, costumes and or course candy. A couple of the biggest surprises for me were the fact spiderwebs and the large jack-o-lantern size pumpkins (they weren't carved though). It sure was a very different story from 15 years ago when my students only knew what I taught them about Halloween. Enjoy a sampling of the photos from Halloween.

I don't know who procured the Scream masks, but
there were several of them. This is me with one of my 7th
grade students.