A Bad Neighbourhood and a Knife

My job is to help ensure the dominance of English across the planet. Every time I show up in an office or home, I'm committing a manager or child to the path of Western-led globalisation. Yesterday, I added cultural hegemony to linguistic hegemony when I cycled out to a government-assisted language school to teach the savages about Halloween. 

It's not a widely celebrated holiday here. Children dress up in February for Carnaval, and there's no set day for a massive candy giveaway. My first Halloween here, I turned heads and stopped conversations dead in their tracks as I walked through the streets painted blue with a Frankenstein bolt through my head. 

It's becoming more known now. Some stores decorate their windows in black and orange with skeletons and such. The kids I teach have learned about it at school. But this is not enough. While the local custom dictates that the 31st be dedicated to roasting chestnuts and eating little cakes, I took it upon myself (for a fee) to explain to a bunch of adults what the day was really about.

I cycled across the river at the edge of the city and into Badalona. The name sounds like a joke; some bizarro-world evil Barcelona where everybody has a goatee. That might not be far off, as I cycled past concrete fields of dilapidated apartment towers with graffiti on their walls. I arrived at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas where my friend teaches and had hooked me up with this Halloween-themed workshop.

A group of about 40 people assembled in the small conference room. I taught them a little about the history of the holiday, history which I myself had only learned in preparation for the workshop. I can now add it to my ever expanding bank of trivia that makes me really fun to talk to at parties. Did you know that 2 billion dollars are spent on candy every year in the US? Wait, come back. 

This was followed by a pumpkin carving workshop. I hadn't actually done it in years, so I spent the last few of my kids classes practicing. I would show up at the unsuspecting students' home with a pumpkin and  knife, and proceed to make a mess of the kitchen as I hacked away at the hapless vegetable and roasted the seeds. The parents were game and the kids were thrilled, and thus I was ready for yesterday's main event. 

It went well, as it's not actually that difficult, and the students finished with their own jack-o-lanterns. 

The artists and their creations

My final jack-o-lantern

I repeated the whole process for a second group before cycling home to don make-up and blood, and head to a party in the city.