Halloween

If someone were to ask me what aspect of American culture the school has most successfully brought into its own community, I would have to say Halloween for sure. The reason that I can talk about the school's reception to Halloween already, when Halloween is still one week away, is that, last night, the entire school community decided to celebrate Halloween a week early. I say "the entire school community" because I didn't see just the students enjoying themselves. I saw students, faculty, and even faculty children. The program was for the evening was so extensive that the school even arranged for a shuttle to drive weekday boarders and day students into Amman when the evening's events ended at 11:00. The Halloween program for last night included pumpkin carving from 4:30-6:30, a pumpkin and squash themed dinner from 6:30-7:30, trick-or-treating from 7:00-8:00, a Halloween dance from 8:00-11:00, and even horror movies in the dorm from 11:00-???.. Although, the school had to create the halloween experience from nothing, I was still very much impressed with the quality of the events and how well the students responded to idea of Halloween. I think I'll first write about pumpkin carving. Pumpkin carving took place in a centrally located courtyard that is surrounded by three dorms. I arrived at exactly 4:30 because I was looking forward to this Halloween event the most. When I arrived I saw one of the heads of the office of student life standing with about 35 pumpkins around her. When asked where these pumpkins came from, she responded by informing us that they were all bought at the vegetable market in Amman. One thing I should mention about these pumpkins, however, is that none of them really looked like a traditional New England pumpkin. For the most part, they were small and either gray-orange or green-orange. But we soon found out that they were carvable and that were just as orange, pulpy, and seedy as any other pumpkin we've seen. And to my great pleasure, they even smelled like real pumpkins. The only thing that was missing at that point was the brisk, autumn air that nips just enough to remind you that it's not summer anymore but not quite winter either. But we soon had that too because the temperature started to drop about half way through. In total, I'd say I saw about 25 students carving pumpkins. It might have been more if the juniors hadn't gotten out of their Yale information session one hour into the event. So a modest success in terms of numbers but a complete success in terms of the quality of the experience. For dinner the dining hall had pumpkin-cheese ravioli, pumpkin/squash soup, squash, pumpkin crumble squares, as well as chicken and hummus on the side. I really can't call dinner a success simply because it was meal that I think we all would have gone to anyway but I can say that I gave and heard great reviews. I can, however, say that trick-or-treating was a success because I saw practically the entire student body (remaining on campus) participating. For about 45 minutes, packs of students migrated from one candy station to the next. The school set up candy stations at various dorm entrances and exits and assigned a faculty member to greet trick-or-treaters and hand out candy that the school had bought a few days before. I was especially happy to see that the assigned faculty members were only giving candy on the condition that students actually said the words "trick-or treat!" This way students who had never experienced Halloween before would understand that the school wasn't just giving away candy on a random night. The dance was just a dance, so that's all I'll say about that. But I completely forgot to mention the students and their costumes. Unlike all of my previous schools, King's did not allow its students to wear their costumes during the class day. The school instead highly, highly encouraged students to dress up for trick-or-treating and the dance. The school even encouraged its students to the point where a week earlier it organized a shopping trip specifically meant for costume shopping. I therefore had to wait until dinner before I started seeing any costumes. Sure enough, though, I could see students sporting their costumes by dinnertime. I am happy to say that it seemed as if practically every student was putting at least some thought into his/her appearance. I did find, however, that there were a lot of repeats- princesses, brides, and blood stained victims and killers. This isn't to say that I didn't see some especially interesting costumes. I saw jokers (from The Dark Knight), cow girls, and a face book page. So, Halloween I think was a great success. All I think that needs improvement now is the students' creativity for costumes. High school students back in the U.S. generally think outside the range of just witches and zombie killers. They use the opportunity to be as creative with their appearance as they want and sometimes even spend weeks in advance thinking of their costumes. But I think that the school needs more time before it really sets a high standard for Halloween costumes.