Halloween at EF, 2008!

Tonight we held our first of two nights of Halloween parties at our Center in Beijing!  Tonight was ages 9-15 and tomorrow night will be ages 3-8.  It was a true madhouse! ha  We have nearly 600 students in our Center now (we were also recently named an "Emerging Star" by EF headquarters, complete with a nice glass trophy to display in our Center).  Tonight we have 200+ kids (most 9-11 year olds) and with parents we topped over 300 in our Center at once!  Lots of the kids dressed up and we had prizes for best costumes.  There were 6 rooms that the kids traveled to in groups of 20 for games and fun and also a Haunted Room (a big hit!).  There was a refreshment room with drinks, cookies and popcorn and teachers in each room had big bags of candy to hand out to everyone.  The kids had a GREAT time.  Teachers and staff members were just exhausted and glad it was over! ha  Tomorrow night shouldn't be as bad, with a smaller crowd and activities scaled down to the young ones' levels (including Alisa doing face painting).  So...here's some pics:

Tons o' kids! :)

This is Hannah, one of my TB students.  I recently taught a Life Club class on country music and taught her and others how to dance the Electric Slide! ha  She really loved it!

ha ha!  This is Alan, one of our teachers from Australia, who was in charge of the Haunted Room and did a great job!  Kids in China love to be scared and parents even encouraged us to make it very scary! :)  Gotta love that!

Kids in China don't celebrate Halloween.  They get a taste of it from their western/ex-pat English teachers so coming in costume means lots of different get-ups! ha  This beautiful young girl had on angel wings, carried a butterfly wand while wearing a freaky blue punk wig! ha  I just loved it.

This little girl, Lucy, is just 4 or 5 and came tonight because she couldn't attend tomorrow night during her age-appropriate time.  So very cute!  We chose her as a "winner" of one of the prizes for best costume based entirely on her cuteness! ha

Cute little twins in my "Pass the Vampire Bat' activity.  See the green straws in their mouths?  Kids lined up like in a relay race and had to suck on the straws to hold a cut-out of a bat from a kleenex and then pass it to the next person who sucked in and took it onto their straws.  They had great fun!

Prize time at the end of the evening!  I asked my Center Manager, Cathy, if we couldn't just say "Okay, folks, GO HOME!" ha ha  I'm just kidding, of course, but we were all ready to just clean up and go home and though the party was over at 8:00, it was closer to 9:00 before everyone left.

 Me, dressed as an American (yeah...very original) at our 2007 Halloween party!

Me, tonight at the party!  Yeah....I've aged a bit in the last year! ha ha ha

Comments

[Todd Tyrtle]

Love your John McCain costume :)

[Lynette]

Hilarious! I bet you won for most scariest American! I think you have found your true calling in life. I think you should teach when you get back to the States.