Halloween in Israel

I've been doing halloween-themed lessons in all my classes this week, and have never seen kids more excited to be introduced to the joys of pumpkin-carving and free candy (though almost all of them already have a basic, albeit fractured, understanding of the holiday apparently gleaned from "Hannah Montana" and other American TV shows)

I dressed up like a ghost which thrilled the kids and, as a delightful side-effect, confirmed for all the other Elhareezi teachers that their illiterate, stuttering colleague was also completely MENTAL.

We read a spooky story in the dark (sort of. pitch-blackness is hard to achieve on an 80 degree, unremittingly sunny day) by flashlight, wrote a ghost story of our own together, paired up to administer "Are you a Witch?" and "Are you a Werewolf?" quizzes I found on a funny ESL lesson-planning website(sample questions: Do you like your hamburgers extra-rare? Do you ever wake up confused and full?), and tried to answer some Halloween rhyming riddles (During which, somehow the question, "What type of Halloween monster hates sunlight and rhymes with 'fire'?" was answered with "Ooh, my brother!". . . "A liar?" . . . and, finally, Hagit!" . . . which is the name of a certain class's homeroom teacher (pseudonym used to protect the innocent)).

But the most eagerly-awaited moment of the whole lesson was the last five minutes of class, spent trick-or-treating. We "trick-or-treated" at the secretaries' office (who were very confused about the whole thing, and possibly thought I was giving the candy to *them* when I dropped it off and tried to explain it before class), the teachers lounge (where one of the long-suffering Kita Vav (5th grade) teachers silently gave out candy with one manicured hand, while clutching an unlit cigarette in the other) and the medic's room (Where the medic pretended, with a complete straight face, not to recognize any of the costumed kids, which was a big hit. And yeah, they have ex-IDF medics in the schools here instead of nurses. because it's Israel, and god forbid something should happen, the medics know how to evacuate people and/or respond to trauma. But ours, Elad, mostly gives out ice packs, cleans scrapes, and serves as a beloved confidante/therapist/recess sparring partner).

I was happy that a lot of the kids dressed-up for the occasion (though I couldn't resist asking more than a few, "How can you remember every piece of an elaborate costume ( such as the pirate get-up comprised of lace-up blouse, boots, wig, hat, hook-hand, felt eye-patch, and plastic cutlass) yet you can't remember to do your homework, or bring your pencil case to class?

Besides the already-mentioned pirate, I also had a cow-girl (very eager to perform her country line-dancing moves for me and the class, a super-woman (complete with a pink satin cape and a giant "S" logo that twinkled with little battery-powered LED lights), several soccer players (the boys, obviously), and a sequin-spangled rock star so committed to her costume's alter-ego that she insisted on speaking into her glittery plastic microphone every time she raised her hand in class)

And though the kids liked the trick-or-treating the best (free candy plus no discernable academic benefits=WIN!) I loved some of the spooky stories they came up with. Even though I tried to prep them both last week and during this week's lesson, a lot of the kids had a much smaller knowledge of halloween ghouls to draw upon than the average American elementary-school student. Consequently, the expected ghostly adversaries of many of the stories were supplanted by other more universally familiar but perhaps less Halloween-typical "bad guys" such as Bowser the evil dinosaur from the Super-Mario Brothers video game, various Pokemon villains, and "Pharoh."

"You mean, a mummy?" I stupidly asked, when that particular baddy was added to one of the stories. "Looooo(No)!" came back the exasperated reply from this particular author, "You know, Becky, the one in Egypt(as opposed to all the non-Egyptian pharaohs, I thought to myself), the one who Hashem made all the plagues for, and then Moses came?"

"Ohhhh, right" I said, a smile forming in spite of my best efforts, "Who's scarier than that dude?"