Pumpkin Fun

One of the best (and most anticipated) things about getting to live overseas is getting to participate in new traditions and cultural experiences. I can't say that I'd given it a lot of thought before leaving home but and I guess that to some extent that's because as a commonwealth predominantly anglo-saxon country I guess I didn't expect things to be overly different to home.

It's not like when we lived in Singapore and found out about the amazing traditions like the Festival of the Hungry Ghost. Having said that we'll embrace anything that looks like it's going to be a bit of fun. And so as the end of October drawers near, we are getting into the Halloween spirit in a way that we've previously only seen on TV.

We really started on Saturday night with a Halloween masquerade ball with a part of the Suncor organisation. All I can say is that when it comes to dressing up, I am a rank amateur! Then on Sunday we had some help from some locals to really get into the swing of things. They invited us around to carve pumpkins!



It was certainly an initiation over and above what I would have expected. Of course when you think about it, it makes sense that there’s patterns and specialist tools etc to help you carve your pumpkin but when you’ve given it no thought, its a big surprise.



I was fine with the decorative carving bit, but like the kids, wasn't interested at all in the de-gutting of the things.