Pulling a Julie Andrews

One of the great things about teaching freshmen is that they are experiencing a lot of "firsts" that we get to see. For many of them, we are their first foreign teachers, which means that we get to introduce them to a lot of "firsts" about American culture. For example... Halloween. I asked some of my students in class today what they knew about Halloween, and I got answers like:

"Candy!"
"Ghosts!"
"Masks!"
"Candy!"
"Pumpkins!"
"Trick or Treat!"
"Candy!"

They were all so excited to ask me questions about Halloween, and it blew their minds that you could go up to someone's door, knock, and receive free candy and treats. Little did they know what was in store for them tonight...

Kayla and Laura planned a few days ago to treat the freshmen with some goodies on the night of Halloween. All freshmen have to study in their classrooms from 6-8 p.m. every evening, which is perfect for teachers who want to randomly surprise their unsuspecting students.

Of course, we wanted to dress up in true Halloween form, but costumes aren't exactly easy to come by in China, so we had to be creative.

Kayla happened to inherit a cape from last year's team...

... and Laura decided to fro her hair into a "lion's mane."

I, however, was at a loss for what to do earlier this afternoon as I sat in the office. I looked around the room, hoping for any little bit of inspiration that could spark an idea, but there wasn't much to go off of. Chalkboard, desks, couch, curtains... hmm... the curtains...

Suddenly, it clicked. As I walked towards the curtains and thoughtfully considered their satiny gold material, I felt like Fraulein Maria from The Sound of Music before she cuts up the drapes into play clothes for the Von Trapp children. Now, don't worry... I didn't cut the curtains, but I did wrap them around me, toga-style, into a "princess" gown.

That's right... I pulled a Julie Andrews and made my costume out of drapes.

You can imagine that the three of us felt a little ridiculous walking across campus dressed like this, but we were so excited to surprise the freshmen that we hardly even noticed the stares that we were attracting (hardly). It was well worth it in the end... we visited all four freshman classes, and each welcomed us with thrilled gasps and then immediately whipped out their phones to start taking pictures of their crazy American teachers.






My cheeks were hurting afterwards from smiling so much! And if that experience wasn't enough, I also got this precious text from one of the students when we got back to our apartments:

"Your smile lights up our world! Wishing you a Halloween bright and glowing as you are! Happy Halloween! Have a good day! Have a good dream!"

Now I'd say that's the proof of a successful night!