Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Halloween Weekend!

     Well this past weekend was crazy. As you all know it was the weekend of Halloween! Surprising people here actually celebrate it. But they also combine it with Día de los Muertos and Todo Santos. So I am a little confused but people definitely celebrate it that's for sure! Saturday I met up with one of the Scottish volunteers in Montenegro (a little shopping area near our house) and tons of kids we dressed as zombies. Everyone had make up on and were trying to scare us. A day early, but at least they are enjoying the fun. Helen and I got to spend some time shopping and just spending time together all day. We both had to buy some clothes and find Halloween costumes because we were having a party the next night, of course! Our original plan was to dress up as the powerpuff girls and having Matt be MoJo JoJo. Sadly, we didn't think that anyone would know who we were and surprisingly none of us had solid dresses of red, green, and blue. So then we jumped to plan B, Grecians. This seemed so easy cause all we needed to find was a sheet and wear gold jewelry. Little did we know a sheet was about 80 Bolivianos, roughly $11. Okay so it's not that much but that's a lot here in Bolivia. So when we met up with Brie for lunch we kinda just left it at figuring it out the next day because that night we were going to a football game!
Cheesy photo, but you get the point. 
When I say football I mean real football of course as the rest of the world sees it. To clarify we went to a  soccer game. And not just any soccer game the biggest one for La Paz! It was between the two teams of the city, Strongest and Bolivar. We had a hard time choosing between the two teams because Strongest represents our zone of the city, but they are the worst team. We finally chose Strongest when we found out the Bolivar tickets were 60 more Bolivianos. After our day shopping, Helen and I rushed home with Brie to get ready for the game. Brie, Helen, Matt, Noelle, and I were going to the game and meeting up this some brothers and sisters from the church. We got to the stadium at 7:00 with the game starting at 7:30 but were then met with tons of stands selling jerseys. We had to buy one of course! So after spending about twenty minutes buying our jerseys were we met by a huge line into the stadium. After waiting in this line for about 15 minutes, it surprising went fast, we entered out section of the stadium to find out there were no seats. NONE. The city sells more tickets than seats and since it's general admission some people don't have seats. But of course we were not gonna be these people. The next thirty minutes we were running around the stadium to the different sections seeing if there were seats. As soon as the police officers told us that there were none, a group of like fifty starting sprinting to the next area. This was actually so much fun cause we were like this huge herd running as fast as we could to get to the next section. Eventually after thirty minutes of running and then twenty minutes of the fans yelling at the police men, they let us enter another section. We entered and all the seats were empty... like seriously there were so many seats. So we missed a big portion of the first half, but worth the experience of course! The game itself was so much fun. Strongest lost of course, but it was an awesome time to hang out and get closer. It's funny we've all become such a family. I don't know what I'm gonna have to do when I have to leave my family!
                                         
     After getting home at like 11pm, we went to sleep quickly cause Sunday was just as busy as Saturday. We woke up in the morning and went to church. This was awesome cause Helen came with us! After an awesome service of singing and an incredible lesson by Edson, we headed back home to prepare for our big party! The past week and a half we have spent planning a Halloween party for some of our neighbors and friends! We made awesome invitations with the requirement that everyone dresses up. Mandatory dressing up. After church Helen and Matt came over to help Brie and I set up for the party. We spread spider webs across the living room, orange and black tablecloths, and spooky food. Ew I just said spooky; I guess all in the mood of Halloween. Anyways, the food was awesome. Ashley had the great idea of taking english muffins and making little zombie pizzas. We covered them in pizza sauce, slices of cheese, and then olives for the eyes. They were pretty impressive I must say. We also had the regulars of course; brownies, chips and salsa, soda. I have to give Matt props for making the brownies. They were perfection. And we spent the whole time listening to country music which made it ten times better. At about 4:30, an hour before the party, we realized we still had no idea what we were gonna dress up as. This turned into a frantic search of all our clothes. Brie had been suggesting decades and at this point we were so desperate that we went with it. The best is when we tried to get Matt to do Risky Business. He wasn't a fan of the shorts he had to wear. So finally we settled on a Strongest football player for Matt and the 50's, 70's, and 80's for me, Helen, and Brie. As much as we gave Brie a hard time about it, I give her credit for the time crunch she worked under and with the little clothes we have. 





The guests soon started arriving and I was so surprised by how they all not only dressed up, but some went all out! One of the guys from church, Victor Jugo, dressed up as Charlie Chaplin and another as Captain Jack Sparrow. I was impressed. We spent the night dancing awkwardly between American and Spanish songs. It's kinda embarrassing how Americans can't dance... at all. We tried to teach them the dougie and bernie before we suggested we just turn it to salsa. It was so funny though watching them trying to jerk. After we played "conejo gordita" or chubby bunny as us Americans call it. This might have been the highlight of the night. It was so much fun showing them one of the American classics and watching them stuff their faces with marshmellows. We finished out the night playing a huge game of signs, a camp classic. Surprisingly most of them already knew how to play and we pretty good! The party ended up ending at about ten, two hours after it was suppose to. I would say it was a pretty hopping party. I am just so grateful to be here and to make these memories with all these amazing people! Okay that was really cheesy but whatevs, I'm in a sappy mood.

p.s. thirty seven days until my brother Morgan comes to Bolivia to visit us! Ahhh I'm so excited!

No comments:

Post a Comment