Halfway down the Danube

'tis the season

Oh, yes, and and if you think that you will be busy, imagine our situation. We're US and German living in Romania, and this is our holiday plan for the next three months:

October 31: Halloween (US)
November 2: Election Day (US)
November 11: St. Martin's Day (GER, kids parade outside with paper laterns)
November 25: Thanksgiving (US)
December 1: National Day (RO)
December 6: St. Nikolaus Day (GER, kids get their boots filled with goodies)
December 24: Christmas Eve (GER, presents for the kids)
December 25: Christmas (US, presents for the kids)
December 31: New Year's Eve (US, GER, RO)
January 6: Epiphany (GER, end of Christmas season)

Oh, and my birthday is somewhere in there, too.

Now, many of those holidays are very much kid-oriented. They also often requires certain equipment and decoration, like pumpkins, paper laterns, turkeys, cranberry sauce, advent wreath, etc.
Some of these can be quite a challenge here in Romania. I placed a huge order of craft supplies with a German craft store some days ago. My Mom will send the package on to us and then we can make paper laterns for St. Martin's. Romania is not very well stocked with craft supplies (which makes sense when you think about it but that is maybe a topic for another post some day.)
I'm also trying to get my hands on one of the original US turkeys that the US Embassy imports for their staff. Now, we're not on the list of the lucky ones who are eligible, but... well, let's just say I have negotiations going on.

We also bought a pumpkin and carved it. Now, that was quite a task. First, there were no suitable pumpkins to be had on the market. We went out to the countryside and ended up buying a huge but green pumpkin. At least it was orange inside and made a nice jack'o'lantern. The kids loved it.

Unfortunately, the fact that it was easy to carve also meant that it decayed within three days. But, wait! Yesterday, all of a sudden the market was flooded with huge orange pumpkins. I bought two and we carved them yesterday evening. They were incredibly tough and difficult to cut but we hope this means they will last at least until Sunday.

Halloween never really did it for me. I guess because I didn't grow up with it. However, this year, it is a lot of fun -- because Alan and David are getting such a kick out of it. We cut spiders out of paper and hung them up over the dinner table and Alan made little tissue ghosts at his school. Every morning, David thoughtfully looks at the chandelier and then blows to make the spiders dance. They cheer over the jack'o'lantern. Alan runs around in this batman costume all day long. It's great fun.

Since Alan's school's out this week, we had an early Halloween last Friday. The school is situated in the French Village complex, and seven local parents volunteered to open their houses to trick'n'treaters.

So we met in the afternoon, with the kids all dressed up, and started trick or treating. There were about fifty kids, divided into six or so groups. I have to say that Alan got the hang of knocking on doors and getting candy for it pretty quickly. He was dressed up as Batman (he was very proud and kept saying "I'm a bad man!"), and David was a gorilla. My little pudgy gorilla, he was incredibly cute.

Next stop: St. Martin's.

Posted by claudia at October 28, 2004 10:29 AM