Trunk or treat Ljubljana style

One of the nice things about moving overseas for a year is the opportunity to recognize some of the great things about America.  Halloween is definitely one of those things.  Like Christmas it is a hilarious combination of American ingenuity, excess, and capitalism.  Kids get to dress up and then get plied with piles of cheap candy bought by happy homeowners, who also buy pumpkins and skeletons and lord knows what else, likely all made in China.  No such thing as Halloween here in Slovenia, and of course it is sort of puzzling to try to explain it to them.  (On a related comparative law note, last class I learned that there is no tooth fairy in Slovenia, but there is a magical "tooth mouse."  I expressed some concern over a magic rodent that crawled under pillows to collect human teeth, but was shouted down by defensive students).

Anyhow, the girls attend the American school, so last weekend they ran a "trunk or treat" celebration.  The student body is only 30% American and a bunch of those kids are embassy kids who have barely lived in the great U.S. of A., so the school itself has this nice mix of foreigners and Americans, while gamely trying to recreate an American private school.  The trunk or treat was a great example.  Kids dressed up.  Parents bought candy.  the school's courtyard was decorated and they had a laptop run a Halloween loop of music with Thriller and the Monster Mash. It looked great:

The girls dressed up.  Georgia as Hillary Clinton (including a great imitation where she lowers her glasses and brassily says "excuse me" to any question:

Dahlia and her local best friend Nella did the only respectable thing eighth graders can do and brought the makeup.  Dahlia was Marilyn Monroe and Nella was catwoman:

I was impressed that Dahlia's desire to get candy outweighed her desire to be cool and not dress up.  Next year I predict a refusal to dress up coupled with a desire to "distribute" the candy (in a one for you two for me mode no doubt).  

Indya also got in the spirit:

You could tell that some of the Europeans were a little puzzled about the whole thing.  A Mexican family decorated their car 100% in their national team's colors and they had this fun carnival style soccer game in their trunk.  Super fun, but not so Halloweeny.  

The best were the little kids who were doing it the first time.  I actually made a Slovenian 4 year old dressed up as Captain America cry by trying to force some candy on him.  But of course if I get too fired up I tend to have that effect on the young and old in the US, so it was probably me, not him.