I love Halloween

I love halloween. Last year I dressed up as tetris pieces with some of the Trans-labbers (the lab in the Engineering Building where I spend 17 hours a day calculating runoff coefficients and other such things for my senior design project) It was a blast. Not only did we manage to go to the worst bar that we could have possibly gone to. We still had fun. 

This year I hope for halloween being as equally if not cooler than last year. I made my costume in my mud hut using automotive car paint. Which is impossibly to get off your skin. It should be fun. 

So Monday night Amy came to my site. She arrived just as the sun was setting. We chatted for a while and then took off to have dinner with my family. It was to. The worst food ever. With the worst sauce ever. We ate enough to make it look like we touched it then headed back to my hut. I bought Jaabi, which is a leave that is crushed into a powder to dye our feet red. All the malians think it’s great. We started the taping process when my neighbor comes into my concession. Baro Sisi is her name and I’ve almost adopted her as my new mother/friend/person to look up to because my real mother in my family is not very nice. She usually just keeps asking me why the teacher isn’t teaching me because I don’t understand. I say well I understood that MOM. But anyways. So she came over because the other lady next door Niani Catile’s baby’s 1 month anniversary was that eve. We walked over and gave some blessings. She then came over to give us BEANS. After eating horrible to for dinner we got beans. On a silver platter no kidding. They were so amazing. Beans and onions and oil. It was the best thing ever. We then dyed our feet red until three in the morning. woke up looked at it and it was not that great. the lines we had drawn were not very straight but the malians still thought it was beautiful. 

The next day we spent all day making amy’s halloween costume. She’s a bumble bee from the No Rain – Blind Melon music video. It was fun. Then at around 4:30pm we took off to her site. She bikes fast so we we got close to her site and I took a wrong road. Asked for directions and then got to her house the back way. I beat her to her house which was awkward when I greeted her dad before she got there. Where’s Amy he asked I had to explain in my poor bambara that she was coming soon and that I had got lost but I’m here now. It was pretty dark and hard to ride bikes in sand. Sometimes it’s like riding on the gulf of mexico. So much sand. 

The next day we took off to Djoro to find a car to take us to Segou. On the way I got a flat tire in the hottest part of the day. We stopped and someone fixed it for us. There were two holes that had to be patched. Then when we got to Djoro it was flat again. We patched it again and it went flat again. We patched it once more and it’s currently flay sitting at the bureau. It was such a pain. 

We went to dinner last night at a restaurant called the Alphabet which was really nice. I had pasta and then pretty much crashed when we got back to the room. Which we did get a room. With airconditioning. I woke up in the middle of the night freezing. It was the first time in 4 months that I had been cold. It was a good feeling. 

Now we are heading to san soon for the Halloween bash. I’m excited. I’ve heard that there might be pumpkin bread and perhaps a little rocky horror picture show. I can’t wait. Everytime I think of the RHPS I think of Halloween Junior year in High school where I went with Kristen to Grandledge to watch it at this really sweet old movie theater. I fell asleep during it of course because I’m a early riser as opposed to a late nighter but It was great. We dressed up as characters from the movie. It was fun. 

Ala Ka i ka halloween yiriwa. 

May Allah bless your halloween.