Party in Prison

Every year, the foreign teachers hold an open house for the freshmen English majors at our apartments.  The goal of the open house is to familiarize the students with the teachers and to lay groundwork for relationships.  It usually equates to several crazy hours of posing in front of cell phones for pictures while dozens of students crowd around you.  This year, we were unable to host an open house at our apartments since the students are currently not allowed off campus (for the reasoning behind this prohibition, read this).  Since the freshmen couldn’t come to the party, we brought the party to them.  This past Thursday evening, we threw a Halloween party for the freshmen in one of our teaching buildings.  Considering they’ve been locked on campus for over a month now, they were quite excited to have a special event to attend.  We had an entire hallway with three classrooms and our foreign teachers’ library in which to hold the party.  As students arrived, they were greeted by Robb, who allowed small groups of students to enter the hallway at fixed intervals of time. 

Just in case Robb wasn’t a frightening enough sight, we made the first stop of the party a haunted house. Anthony was the gate guard to the haunted house.  He told a scary story about the ghost of a student before they entered the haunted house.  Consequently, some students had to be pushed through the door.The inside of the haunted house was pitch black, and was inhabited by student volunteers.  The volunteers were armed with flashlights, which they would shine on their scary faces as they jumped out at passing students.  We scripted out how the haunted house was to run, but the quality of the haunted house definitely declined throughout the evening as our student zombies got bored with their duties.After the terrifying beginning to the night, students were ushered into the game rooms.  The first room featured a ball toss manned by Kami…And a shooting game manned by Daren.In the shooting game, students aimed a Nerf gun at a collection of figurines.  Our figurines were quite chipper despite their impending doom.The next room featured a face-painting station, run by the ever-so-talented-heart-and-rainbow-artist, Lauren.Musical chairs was also in this room, manned by Wu.  We discovered that students are NOT so skilled at following directions.  They would constantly all sit down before the music stopped, which required a constant yelling of “Go!  Go!  Zou!  Zou!“The last room was a Jack-O-Lantern “carving” station, where students could cut out a paper pumpkin.  We collected the pumpkins, and the student with the most skillful carving won matching Halloween “Lovers” shirts.  In China, it is very common for stores to sell male and female identical t-shirts for boyfriends and girlfriends to wear together (hence the name “Lovers shirts”).  Surprisingly, the prize t-shirts came from the states.All in all, the students had a grand time.  More exciting than the games and prizes was the opportunity to meet and take pictures of all the foreign teachers.  The shy students would try to sneak photos on their cell phones when they thought I wasn’t looking.While the bold ones would saunter up and say, “Would you take photo with me?”  If one was bold enough to ask the initial question, that meant about 20 more students would immediately follow suit…which must have resulted in quite the plastered, fake smile on my face by about photo #13.

I don’t teach any freshmen, but many of them wanted pictures because they were attracted to my costume.  I threw together a Chef’s outfit about twenty minutes before the party.  What you can’t see in the picture below is my awesome “utility belt” of spatulas and other random kitchen utensils.  The hat was crafted from two pieces of cardstock and a shower cap that came free with my last purchase of body wash.  That’s right, I’m a high roller.