Holidays Overseas: Halloween

Sometimes celebrating holidays overseas is hard, for example, Christmas in 90 degree weather with no family around.  Wait a minute...

But seriously, we've spent many a holiday abroad, and have always tried to make the most of it even though we missed family, friends, snow, cheesy potatoes, hot chocolate, fires in the fire place, turkey, Peeps, you know Americany holiday-ish stuff.

Thanksgiving 2003 in Mole National Park Ghana

 Valentine's Day 2005 in the middle of the Sahara Desert, Mali

 Thanksgiving 2009 in Rubondo National Park, Tanzania

 Christmas 2009 in Kigali, Rwanda

And now, of course, Toto is spending her holidays in foreign countries too.  We try our best (even though she won't remember it, but who cares because we will force her to look at pictures to show her that we tried to give her a "normal" life) to make our own holiday traditions no matter where we are. This "fall" we went to a pumpkin patch held by the Manila Girl Scouts. Yes, pumpkins cost $30, and no I did not care because we were going to have Halloween come hell or high water.  

Pumpkin patch was more like little pumpkin nests.

One dollar plastic decorations?  We'll take seven.

Our building is awesome and got totally decked out with witches, scarecrows, ghosts, and cob webs. Every time we passed this display, Toto would point to the pumpkin and say "dada."  There was even trick-or-treating in the building.  With over 100 kids jammed in an over-heated stairwell going to apartments on 30 floors, well, let's just say it was not your normal trick-or-treating, but she had fun. And we had Halloween.

That hanging thing terrified me everyday for weeks.