Helowynas

It‘s October – it‘s time for Halloween!

For the scariest day of the year deserves some celebration we organized a party at the school’s dormitory together with Kristina and Rasa and the educators of the dormitory. Since now, in the week of the real date of Halloween, there are holidays and all the pupils aren’t around, we had to organize our party a bit earlier, precisely for the 22^nd of October. That meant a bit less time for planning; that Kristina and Rasa weren’t around the week before meant even less time for a whole lot of work. But of course that’s not a big problem for volunteers like us ;)

Together the four of us thought of some program for the party finally turning out as sort of a big paper chase with different stations and tasks for the children and youths. Laia even wrote an own story for the game so we had some scary background for the tasks. That story basically went like this: Long time ago the school area was a popular place to celebrate Halloween where the whole town met to spend this night together. One time a scary looking old woman appeared and wanted to take part in the celebrations but the people there wouldn’t let here because of her looks. Angry about that she put a spell on the area that would turn everybody into fierce little animals who dared to celebrate Halloween at that place again. So to be able to really have a party, the children and youths had to break the spell first by finding all the pieces of the map which told the location of the magical potion that had the power to do so.

When Kristina and Rasa came back from their work trip to Austria, we discussed our ideas with them and finally made up a concrete plan about what’s to be organized for the party. With only two days left for preparations we got really really busy but in the end we managed to get everything done on time, also thanks to the help of the educators.

us volunteers with Kristina, Rasa and educator Rūta - and how pretty we are ;)

The party really went by fast for me since there always was something to do for us. We started with welcoming the children and youths to the second floor of the dormitory which was amazingly decorated before by the educators with ghosts and spiders, eyeballs and spider webs and a lot of burning candles in the dark. When they all came together in the theatre room, Kristina started to sort of moderate and although I hardly understood what she was saying she really sounded great doing so.

The first thing to do for the children and youths was to cut out pumpkins – for me it was the first time ever to do so. Though I really didn’t think it was an easy kind of work the children and youths were done very quickly and the result were some really good looking pumpkins. 

After that Laia’s story was read to the children and youths by Rūta, one of the educators. At that time I went off to prepare my station. You know, each of us volunteers had an own station to host during the game, there the groups had to fulfil different tasks. The children and youths were divided into four groups – two younger ones and two older ones – and according to their age they had different stations to visit. Probably one of the best stations in my opinion was in the basement. Unfortunately I didn’t get the opportunity to look at it myself but it must have been so much fun. The basement was Laia’s station and she decorated the corridor there together with Emily in the afternoon. It was full of “spider webs” and dark with the exception of a few candles lighting the way. The two older groups had to pass the dark corridor, always hearing noises and getting frightened by the people who were down at the basement, and in the end they found Laia hanging from the ceiling with a rope around her neck and they had to find the hidden piece of map somewhere in her pockets. Still days after the party I could hear the youths at school talking about Laia all the time and her hanging from the ceiling as a “dead person”. Scary!

After all the groups had fulfilled their tasks they met altogether and put together the pieces of the map they had gotten at the single stations. The story ended with their finding of the magical potion which had to be poured around the dormitory building to break the spell. Then finally the party could start!

A part of the party was celebrating the birthday of all people born in October. The dormitory organizes such birthday parties every month and since Halloween is such a great occasion for celebrating, it was done on the same date. Emily also took part in the games for the birthday people since hers was just a few days before she came to Lithuania (I’m not sure whether she knew about that before but it looked like a lot of fun for her). After some scary games the birthday people all got some small presents.

Besides the things for the game we also prepared some food for the children. That also took some time but it wasn’t the worst job, you know, whilst cooking we could have all the fruits and chocolate that was left over ;) Also the results looked very nice and luckily for us, none of it was left when the party was over.

om nom nom!

When the party was over and the children and youths went to bed or got picked up to go home I felt like the evening had just started, that’s how fast everything went by for me, for of course the whole party had lasted for some hours. I think all of us were really really tired then but also satisfied and happy. Almost all of our plans worked out without problems and the children and youths really seemed like they had a lot of fun during the evening. In fact they’ve been talking about the party days after and that’s what makes us also a bit proud I think. It was the first time that the four of us worked together to organize something and the result was something really good. That definitely calls for repetition.

all the brave kids and educators who partied with us :)

Viso gero,

Monika

P.S.: If you want to see more photos of our great Halloween party, check out the school’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Panev%C4%97%C5%BEio-%C5%A0viesos-specialiojo-ugdymo-centras/1463001787321178