Happy Halloween Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

The party last night was so nuts, and I was bust for so much of it that I don't have that many pictures or videos. I'll try to post the video from the English club once I get it. I first came to the gym where we were going to have the party at about 4. The party was scheduled to start at about 6:30 and go until a little before 9. I got there before Ken or David or who had done more of the planning so I wasn't really sure what to do when I showed up. The gym was filled with a bunch of people playing basketball and a ton of people playing badminton which made it pretty difficult to set up. Eventually we got them all to leave, and by eventually I mean that I think the last basketball game stopped at 6:15. We had paid for and reserved the gym for 6:30 but apparently the guy in change of the gym wanted to play basketball so it took the student in change of English club about half an hour of arguing with him until he finally got anyone out. When Ken arrived we carried stuff from his house to the gym. We had about 150 masks, some more stuff for mask making, two large tubs and 200 apples, about 700 RMB worth of candy, that's enough to fill 5 big bags, about 400 balloons, and a bunch of poster boards. We had the students start blowing up balloons in one corner of the gym where they weren't playing a game and then having them stick them up everywhere. Other students started getting the stuff ready for the games we were going to have. There was basically this chaos of students coming and going and people trying to get ready until just before the party started. I'm usually OK with the Chinese laid back attitude but when trying to get something this big going it just made me crazy.

Finally it was a little after 6 and were were getting things into good shape for the party. Some of the student volunteers came to run the games and a bunch of people were setting up the huge speakers and AV system that the English club got us. A little before the party began we put out the masks on some of the tables set up near the entrance to the gym. I'd say it took about 30 seconds before a swarm of students had taken all the masks. Students had been filing in for some time before 6:30 and there were already hundreds in the gym when we were ready to start. David had me put out the candy on the table. I basically spread a few bags worth of candy on the table then got out of the way before I was trampled. I think that if this was the US people would walk by and maybe take a piece or two here they took all of the candy in about 45 seconds. That's about 15 RMB worth of candy a second.

The first thing we had on was some street preforms who had agreed to so some dances at the beginning of the event. That took a few minutes then David called all the Americans onto stage. We were going to practices before hand but we never really got a chance so we just started right in on lip singing and dancing to YMCA. I don't think the students had any idea what was going on but they loved it taking about a million pictures from the crowd of hundreds huddled around the stage. A few students got into it by the end and made the YMCA hand gestures, but most just watched. We danced around for a while and tried to improvise some stuff I tried to slide along the stage but it wasn't really slick enough so I just scraped my knee. After the song David told the kids there were games in the back and you could just see about 200 people peeling off and going for the back. I didn't see what happened at the games until later but it must have been something. In less then an hour they had gone through about 20 rolls of toilet paper, for a mummy rap, almost 200 apples and everything resembling food or a prize we had. It looked like a swarm of locusts had descended and just devoured everything. I thought there was no way we'd go through 200 apples for apple boobing, but we could have done 500.

A ton of people showed up for the party, besides the students a few teachers and various older Chinese people showed up. Also a guy named Jeff who apparently teaches at a nearby school heard about the party from one of his students and came. It was just crazy. I spent most of the time walking around talking to some people and taking pictures. I dressed up like a rock star, wearing blue jeans, a white shirt, and my brown leather jacket. I also had my guitar hero guitar guitar slung around my back and a pair of sunglasses on. I was actually sweating pretty much the whole time I was in there. There were some Chinese people dressed up but I think they were performers of some kind since they all seemed to be in a group. Most of the rest of the party was occupied by various dances. Some times we'd try to teach them some American song or dance, the Chinese students seem really unwilling to do anything that's not a group dance. After a while though the DJ just played more Chinese songs they liked and they showed us some strange dances that involve hopping around like a bunny.

Besides the candy and masks the students took everything that wasn't nailed down. They took all the balloons off the wall in about 20 minutes and I even posed for one picture with a girl who was holding a Jack O'lantern that she had taken from outside. At about 8:30 we told them the party was over. I've never seen people leave a party in such a neat and organized way. They simply announced that the party was over and asked if they could take some trash off the floor with them as they left. If you'd say this in America people would probably make more of a mess, but here they just all grabbed some trash and quietly left. The English club, with us helping a little, did the remainder of the cleaning in there with some brooms, We didn't need to worry about the balloons which had long since disappeared. We carried out everything left and that was pretty much it. All in all it was incredibly fast and crazy. Even with the money we spent and the preparation we were in no way ready for that intensity. It was though a lot of fun, and there may be more parties like it in the future.