Halloween in the RMI

Hello and Happy Halloween!

Unfortunately I'm not in the States this year for Halloween so no candy corn, jack o lanterns, or goofy costumes for me. Although it's not all bad because with help for the Dartmouth teaching supplies and 3 hours on the internet downloading the monster mash, I was able to piece together a little celebration for my kids. This is a run down of my lesson for Halloween: We watched a slide show I created about the history of Halloween and it's roots (complete with pictures of Olivia in her Halloween costumes). Then we made masks and I had the kids decorate them with spiderman, cats, bats, pumpkins, whatever they wanted. After the masks, we put them on and then I taught them the Monster Mash, which I made up my own dance too. They loved it! Then there was a scary story and finally, we sang the Hearse Song and ate candy (courtesy of Shelly G). It was a lot of fun and the students really had a great time. I've got some great and hilarious pictures and videos of my kids dancing and singing. Hopefully I'll get them uploaded soon.

The week has been pretty busy what with Halloween, the speeches by the candidates for local government, and the Dengue Fever outbreak. For those of you who don't know, Majuro has recently had 199 confirmed cases of Dengue Fever. One of the volunteers on Majuro is hospitalized with an IV. They don't know how long or how many will be affected. Fortunately, there hasn't been any dengue on Woje atoll yet. I'll try to keep everyone updated on what happens.

Thank you so much to everyone for your letters and packages. It's all appreciated and I don't think I can express how thankful I am for all your support.

Kathleen's Mama: I sent you an email with an update of Kathleen. I forgot to tell you that I beat her at Cribbage AGAIN and she really appreciates the candy especially the candy corn. I'll let her know about the Christmas stuff. She had a lot fo fun with her students on Halloween. She got some great pictures of them in their masks. Unrelated, she also taught them the song, Wild Thing, for her W day with her Kinder class. Thought you might get a chuckle out of the image of Marshallese children running around singing Wild Thing. :)