Happy Halloween!

   Throughout all of October I was told over and over again that Halloween is not celebrated in France. This, and the lack of decorations around town and candy in the grocery store got the message, that I would just have to live with not having Halloween this year, to me pretty quick.

    Well, I pushed that message aside, and celebrated Halloween with my own little party! And I mean little quite literally, two other American girls here on AFS came over to my house to spend the night.

   With my Australian host cousin (who said that she has always wanted to celebrate Halloween) we walked to the grocery store and got the ingredients to prepare chocolate chip cookies and cupcakes. 

We also had a Trader Joe brownie mix and usual Halloween candy, which my friends had brought with them.

   We spent the afternoon of Halloween in the kitchen baking and snacking on candy corn to keep our energy going. When the last tray of cookies was finally out of the oven we went upstairs and decided to dress up.

   Albeit my knack for putting together last minute costumes, (I’ll take this time to throw in an anecdote about when I was little and I put together an elaborate Junie B. Jones costume the night before Halloween) we had trouble putting something…anything together. I suppose Halloween was just not on my mind as I packed my suitcases back in August.

   However, we were not lacking in the make up and hair department, and so we relied on that to make us feel dressed up, me as a flight attendant, my host cousin as a bride, and my friends as…girls wearing lots of make up.

   As we were finishing up our looks the doorbell rang.

Now, who in France would be ringing my doorbell, after dark, on Halloween? Little French witches of course! I’m not sure how well they were accepted at the other houses in town but what I can tell you, is that I was very happy to see them. The two groups of trick or treaters that rang my doorbell that night were very well received and given lots of candy!

   We ate dinner and then all of our yummy desserts and at the end, I had that same so-full-of-candy-my-stomach-is-going-to-explode feeling I get every year on the 31^st of October, which I would say makes our American Halloween night in France, a success!