It's Friday! I mean...Thursday!!

Hola!

Another week of school is finally over! This week I have been teaching my students about Halloween, because although they know of Halloween and in recent years more people in Spain have kind of been celebrating this "holiday," Halloween is primarily an American tradition. Anyway, all of the activities I have been doing with the kids has been putting me into the Halloween spirit. I decided that I am going to try to track down a pumpkin to carve and try to make a Halloween dessert to get into the spirit of things. If all works out as planned I'll be sure to post pictures!

As I have been doing some research on Halloween this week so that I can better explain to the kids about the different traditions associated with Halloween and the origins of it, it quickly became apparent that I know so little about a celebration that is largely considered American. I mean, for most Americans anyway Halloween is about dressing up, trick-or-treating, and eating ridiculous amounts of candy. I read that Americans spend something like $6.9 billion on Halloween annually, which in retrospect shouldn't have shocked me like it did because isn't is just so American to take anything we possibly can and sacrifice any true meanings of it in order to make it commercial? Anyway, a few things I was surprised to learn was that Halloween started in Ireland; originally in Ireland they would carve turnips instead of pumpkins, but when Halloween came to the US we had lots of pumpkins lying around and since they are much bigger and easier to carve we began using pumpkins instead; and finally, the tradition of trick-or-treating came about when back in Ireland/Scotland on Halloween (the eve of the day of the dead) poor people would beg for money or food and the more affluent would give them sweets in exchange for them praying for their dead family members. Anyway, I also read about a lot of other really interesting traditions I had never heard of before, but I thought I would share these few facts with you, dear friend or family member.

As an additional Halloween treat, I have Monday and Tuesday off next week because of some Spanish holiday (please note once again, the Spaniards love their holidays). So I have a nice long(er than usual) weekend ahead of me. I'll post whatever pictures I take this weekend as I take them! Love you guys!

XOXOXO