It's the Great Pumpkin!

I had a small belated Halloween celebration with my 8th grade classes today. I passed out a bunch of Halloween candy (smarties, twizzlers, dum-dums, and starburst) that the Hawleys were nice enough to send (thanks!) and we watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The kids seemed to really enjoy it. They did think the part with Snoopy acting as the "WWII flying ace" was a little weird -- especially when he was crawling through occupied France, but I think that's a bit weird, too.

I also taught them the little rhyme that goes along with "trick-or-treat." They found the idea of making someone smell your feet hilarious and they were pretty embarrassed when we translated what it means to "pull down your underwear." Oh, Kazakhs.

I was definitely a lot more comfortable showing the Charlie Brown movie than the Simpsons episode Justin and I showed to our English club last week. We both totally forgot that the Simpsons could be a little (or a lot) inappropriate for school. It was one of the Halloween specials (Treehouse of Horror XVI) and there was an extraordinary amount of violence -- it kept getting worse and worse. We could both only imagine what the kids told their parents they learned that day in English class.

Anyways, everything else is going well. Our teacher's workshop is still going strong. A few of the teachers expressed a desire to practice their English outside of the classroom, so we introduced the idea of a "happy hour" in which anyone interested can meet at one of the local restaurants for a drink and casual conversation. Today is the first such meeting. A couple hours ago I got a text message saying "Hello Teacher! What time is happy time today?" Ah, it cracked me up. Wish me luck at "happy time!"

Here's a few pictures from today:

I guess it's difficult to see, but I asked the kids to hold up their "American candies." Thanks again, Hawleys! Oh yeah, these French maid outfits are not costumes -- they are the standard Mongolian uniforms for girls. Don't ask me where they came from...

This is my counterpart, Anar, wearing the mask that Ashlee brought back from UB. She got a real kick out of using it to scare the kids. Since this is my last Halloween in Mongolia, I told her she could keep the mask -- which made her really happy.