Trick-or-treating and a small Halloween party today.
Moldovans don't do Halloween yet, so the small American community does it on their own. The US Embassy organizes it, which is nice. Between twenty and thirty parents showed up -- most with small kids, of course. We walked around the neighborhood to houses where expat volunteers had agreed to dress up and hand out candy, and afterwards we went to Marine House and had pizza and cupcakes and popcorn.
It was pretty tame, but a tame expat Halloween is much better than none -- the boys had been looking forward to it for days. The boys went as ninjas (Claudia had brought back ninja masks, plastic swords and nunchucks from the States), while Leah went as a very small princess (princess dress courtesy of her grandmother, who goes in for that sort of thing). The walking was pleasant -- it was a lovely autumn day, cool but clear and sunny. (The weather has been turning cold the last few days, with frost in the mornings and leaves coming off the trees all at once. Moldova has a continental climate -- long hot summers, long cold winters, spring and fall go quickly.) We stood around chatting for an hour or so while the kids ran around, then packed them into cars and headed home.
And that's about it. It's a small but friendly expat community here. Armenia had more Americans, and more stuff going on, but was also... how to put this delicately... a bit more dysfunctional. Here it just seems like a nice group of people. We didn't make close friends with anyone here, but then with just eight months in the country (and the kids not in school) that was never very likely.
Anyway: Halloween. Followed, as always, by days of slowly rationing out candy.
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