Trick or Treat?

Boo!


All trick, no treat.

Enjoy your Halloween.

Scary Glowing Pumpkin Faces

Yay. Nothing like carving pumpkins and turning them into jack-o-lanterns.


Students from my ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) conversation class managed to stump me. They asked why we call them jack-o-lanterns, and I had to answer, "I don't know." The best answer Wikipedia gives is the origin from the latin phrase ignis fatuus which is sometimes translated "will-o'-wisp, corpse candle, jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, gunderslislik, and wisp, a Folklore depiction of ghostly light sometimes seen at night or twilight over bogs, swamps, and marshes." Meh. That hardly helps. And the History channel will tell you a folk tale, but I think the common thread is that we don't know.

So why are you called jack-o-lanterns, scary glowing pumpkin faces?

King's Dominion Halloween Haunt

Sorry my posts are so sporadic as of late. I hardly have time to breathe on some days, so blogging sometimes falls right off my list. I know you are saying, "Wait, Jenn, blogging is next to breathing." And yes. I hear you. Maybe I just don't have my priorities right...

Anyway though. Last weekend I went with a group of friends to King's Dominion in Virginia. We thought it was perhaps a little closer than it really was. Or maybe it just seemed farther away since we hit Friday DC traffic. The rollercoasters were worth the trip though. Oh man. The volcano. The dominator. Plus others. For some of our friends, this was their first time at an amusement park, first time on a rollercoaster. Good stuff. Welcome to American culture, now hold on before you get dropped 150 feet to the ground.


Also, the park was doing a Halloween Haunt which include scary people in scary costumes jumping out at us and chasing us around in circles. They also set up a bunch of haunted houses around the park. Ahhhh.

My throat hurt so bad by the end of the night from screaming so much. I'm not sure whether it was the haunted houses or the rollercoasters...

Pumpkins Continued

We also made English muffin pizzas (a few in scary faces) and toasted some delicious pumpkin seeds. And to be honest, pumpkin seeds with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on them weren't half bad.

We couldn't find a pumpkin patch nearby, but at least we got to pick our pumpkins and take them inside. Who said we had to pick them straight from the vine?

Pumpkin Carving

Alright. Some backtraking. A few weeks ago, some friends came over to my house for a pumpkin-carving-good-time. We went to the little farm store, Maplewood, got our pumpkins (in the pouring rain) and went to work. We used the little tools that Emily got, that actually cut better than large sharp knives. It was amazing, really, that little plastic things could function so much better. Here you see our lovely creations. Mine went from scary face to sad French guy with fangs. hmmmmm, yeah. I made the eyes slant the wrong way and the mouth was too mustache-looking. I think I have some pretty talented friends. Theirs all turned out pretty well.

Scavengers

Nicole took me on the strangest scavenger hunt ever at one of her friends' house. We dressed up in Halloween costumes and took to the streets of Chambersburg. Nicole was a convincing Shakira and I went as a cowgirl. Some of the items we had to find or bring back included: a Red lobster bib, a black gum ball, a grave stone rubbing, a fortune cookie, a manager's business card with their signature, a red straw, a McDonald's monopoly piece, and many others.

Some of the tasks we had to complete were to pump a stranger's gas, wrap a stranger in toilet paper as a mummy, lay on a bed a Kohls, carry someone's groceries to their car, ride on the horse at Kmart, find someone with more than 4 kids, have a stranger sing "I'm a little teapot," and get a picture of your team with a flaming dessert (our happened to be ice cream).

It was quite interesting Halloween fun. Not only were we asking for ridiculous stuff, we were also dressed up. People thought we were crazy for sure.

Jack-O-Lantern

*evil laughter*