Booo!!!

Happy (belated) Halloween!
Halloween is still a very American holiday. I’ll ignore the fact that it is a day centered on evil, scary things and instead be proud of our creativeness. Other than a few skeletons and monsters decorating the mall in Tirana, Albania has not yet taken advantage of our candy depravity. In keeping with the Peace Corps goal to spread/share American culture, we introduced Halloween to two cities.

Granted we didn’t actually celebrate Halloween with any Albanians, they were able to observe our odd attire and the displaying of a Jack-O Lantern.

On Halloween, I ventured over to Kucove to celebrate with Ryan and Juliet. We made a tasty stir-fry dinner with items purchased at EuroMax (the comparatively enormous grocery store I like to call Heaven) in Ryan’s new apartment. It was his first hosting duties in his new place. His new place is an upgrade in almost every way. Before he had one room and a small room/area in front of the bathroom. His “kitchen” consisted of the sink in the bathroom, the cabinet in the ante-bathroom, and the stove on the balcony. Now he has, well, a kitchen. All the kitchenesque things all in one room. Crazy. He now has a western toilet instead of a shower head directly over a Turkish toilet (squatty potty if you prefer). The new apartment even comes with a room for entering (aka foyer), a room for sleeping (aka bedroom), and a room for entertaining (aka living room). Nice. Where was I?

With me I brought from Berat the lone pumpkin in town. It was small and mostly green with a huge funky spot on one side, but it was the only one I could find. I was put in charge of designing our Jack’s face. Luckily my creativity was fueled by a box of Good & Plenty that Juliet brought, knowing that I am quite the fan of licorice (sp?). Juliet worked on the gutting of Jack. Ryan, hmph, I don’t know what Ryan was doing. Big bum. For some reason I was also in charge of implementation of the facial reconstruction I had designed. Using a rounded-tip steak knife, I created my masterpiece. Behold.