A long weekend=halloween party and family dinners

Wow. I have seriously been slacking off on my blogging efforts. Since I went home I have not written at all. It seemed as if I was just swamped with work. My trip home was wonderful to be with family and see my friends. It made coming back so much more difficult knowing that it would be a while before I had that opportunity again. But, as I came back so did all the other staff and students from Eid vacation. And if you have never taught before let me tell you. Students and teachers alike are pretty much useless for a whole week after any long vacation. But, I got back in the swing of things with my first progress reports due and my classes starting their first novel soon. My girls have been especially sweet lately and we have had a chance to bond very well. They painted my hands with henna one day at lunch and wala (I swear) I had 12 girls crowded around me as I got my hands painted in the Arabic style of henna. They explained to me that the arabic style is like you'll see in my picture below. And that the Indian style is when your whole hand is covered with the henna. The day after they did my henna one of my girls, Sanna, brought in a grandmother's mask for me. The traditional dress for emirate women is an abaya and sheila. But once they become older and grandmothers they often wear these gold colored masks with the sheila like my scarf is in the picture below. They want me to wear it for national day when I will dress up in an abaya but, the woman who is an emirate supervisor advised me not to so I 1: don't get laughed at and 2: don't offend any grandmothers who come. Regardless, the gesture was sweet and it is a perfect momentum to have of my time here and the culture.

This weekend is a long weekend because of some other national holiday so we get an extra day off which is nice. Since we cannot celebrate halloween in the schools or even in public (Dubai has big parties and events but it is spendy) in this town my friends Amy and Lindsay threw a halloween party at their house. I helped them get ready for it all week and it was the most intense halloween party I have ever been to. We painted all the light bulbs red so the rooms were filled with creepy lighting. Had a huge mural painted creepily. Cobwebs everywhere, a floating hand and eyeballs in the juice. Ha needless to say it was a blast! I can't post some of the pictures here because they are harem (forbidden in this culture) and if someone from here came across my blog those people would get in trouble. The only really harem costumes were two guys dressed up like pigs with "har" and "em" on their backs. One woman dressed up like an arabic man. And one guy dressed up like lady gaga. Needless to say the pigs won the costume contest. But Amy, Lindsay and I won second place for our costumes that you can see below along with a few other costumes of some of my co workers.

The night after halloween was an awesome night. Since we have an extra day off we decided to play some ultimate frisbee and have a big dinner. I opted out of the physical activity and stayed in with my friends Stephanie and Sara to cook the meal. It felt like a family dinner when we have all 15 people home because there literally was fifteen people ha. Roasted tomato stuffed chickens. Salads galore, garlic bread, cheesy mashed potatoes. And funfetti cake and ice cream for dessert (yes everyone from UP I am still making funfetti cake on a monthly basis. Some things never change). It felt like Thanksgiving meal. And we sat and ate for four hours talking but mainly trying to solve riddles. One of the teachers has an inhuman amount of riddles and jokes stored in his head and it was a blast to see who could figure out which riddles first. Below you can see the food all laid out before we dug in :). I am sorry I haven't written in a while. But, hopefully this updates you on my life a little bit. And I will try to get better about writing on here! Now, I have a full day filled with planning and grading laid out for me that I need to get started on. Thanks for reading my blog, it means a lot to me that people back home read it.