We experienced our first ever Halloween last night. Most of our Canadian friends have been quite surprised by that, and many did not realise that Halloween is not really celebrated much outside of North America (although I think some parts of England and the UK might do it). Australia though, has never really been a Halloweening sort of place. I did see a story on the Sydney Morning Herald website about it though, and I liked the way the SMH story described the simplicity of Halloween. Dress up, demand confectionery. That about sums it up.

I used to think that you had to dress as a scary ghost or witch or vampire for Halloween, but that's not the case. Dress as anything you like. The little kids that come to the door in their cute little rabbit suits or batman outfits or ballerina costumes are quite adorable. For a couple of hours you get continual knocks at the door, and answer it to find these cute little kids there saying "trick or treat." Then you hand them some candy (lollies) or chocolate... anything sweet really. . Alex (dressed as Dr Evil) and Kate (dressed as Shakespeare's Juliet) were both out wandering the streets collecting candy of their own, so Donna, Natalie and I decided to dressed ourselves up just to get into the spirit of things, and apart from scaring some of the little kids (notably Lukey from next door) we had a pretty good time.

We also managed to carve a couple of pumpkins. That was fun. We did carve one at school the other day, but that was mostly my students doing that. Kate and Nat and I carved two more at home for ourselves, stuck a candle inside and put them out of the front porch. I must say they looked really good. We might even have to start celebrating Halloween when we get home just to make some more pumpkins, although Aussie pumpkins are a vastly different proposition to the Canadian variety and would be much harder to carve into a face I think.

When Kate and Alex finally arrived back home after their trick or treating we couldn't get over how much stuff they had! They have enough candy and chocolate to feed a small African nation for six months! One of the houses they visited during the night must have belonged to a dentist, because as well as candy they were also given a tube of toothpaste! Nice to get a bit of balance.