halloween

in the end, a ninja ghost... 

so this morning i went to a class of 7th, 8th, and 9th graders to talk about my (american) perspective of u.s. elections.  i was invited by one of the teachers who is husband to one of my classmates.  the school was perhaps like a charter school in the u.s... private, with public funding.  the government provides the school with 75% of the per-child funding it would give to a public school and the parents make up the difference (plus some... which helps keep class sizes down to 18 students).  this school's 'theme' is community, so they do a lot of group work and activities and extra-curricular events outside of school. each morning they meet for a morning assembly where they sing religious hymns.  he told me this isn't really a religious school, but since there's not a strict separation of church and state here, they sing them.  i sat through the morning assembly, led by one of the students, and which was also a time for teachers to make brief announcements, and then gave my presentation to three of the classes-- about 54 kids.  you don't want to hear any more about the election, so i won't go into the details of my talk, but apparently the kids were curious enough about the political campaign ads i showed them, that they watched some more during their english class later in the day.  perhaps hard to believe for those living in swing states who are seeing nothing but these ads, but they don't get political commercials here.  they hardly have commercials at all, about anything.

then it was home.  greg was here today!  that was nice.  we planned for halloween, but in the end, didn't create the elaborate haunted house i think we both imagined somehow we'd be able to pull off.  we did buy more candy however... and bacon... because as you know, if you know danish william, he is a kid who loves bacon, ever since those early days of 'bagels 2 go.'  (is that what it's called?)

oops...


we picked the guys up from school.  watched and listened as william comprehended a paragraph's-long sentence from his teacher, just completely amazed that he gets it all, and made him wait an excruciatingly long time as we made and then ate dinner (bagels à la greg), before starting trick-or-treating.  

speaking of danish, henry's new favorite phrase is 'nej tak.'  ("no thank you." 'nej' rhymes with 'why')  oh, it's so cute, and so polite.  

"do you want to get into your pajamas?"  

"nej tak."  

"should we change your diaper?" 

"nej tak."  


so, trick-or-treating... it consisted of going around to all the doors in our house...

henry the farmer.

including the work shed out back... 

and then back again... about three times.  here he got a trick.  a dirty diaper.

he was a happy guy to be trick-or-treating.  it didn't matter that he picked from the same bowl of candy each time or saw the same mama at each door.  the important thing was, for him-- he got candy (and a couple fruit and nut bars, disguised as candy).  also, he learned, he will have another chance to trick-or-treat this friday.  so... the celebration lives on.  at least for a couple more days.

happy halloween!