Army coats, haunted houses, and the rabbit mayor of Florida

I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll start where my last post ended. I was heading out to meet some other foreigners for lunch across town. We had a good time and talked a lot. It was quite refreshing and relaxing. After we ate, some of walked down the street to the Korean Market and wandered around, trying to find some cool stuff to buy for Halloween. There's not much of a market for Halloween decorations in our city, so we have to make up our own stuff. Anyhoo, while we were browsing, Jeremy came across a stinkin' awesome green army coat. It's not just a green army coat, though. It's a huuuuuge green winter army coat with a fur lined collar. It comes down past my knees and fits me quite well. It's also probably the warmest thing I've ever worn in my life. I couldn't pass up something that awesome that actually fit me, so I went ahead and bought it. Only 50 yuan! That's about 6 dollars. Christy would be proud of me. That day was actually pretty chilly, so that night I wore the coat down to Happy Guy's for dinner and everyone got a kick out of it.

Since Halloween is today, we decided to do our annual haunted house this past weekend. My first year here we did it for one night and invited our own students. It has since expanded, so now we do it for two nights. The first night is for students from our school, and the second night is for students from the other two schools in town. It was pretty insane. We did some planning in advance but we didn't really start working on the haunted house until the day of, so Friday we were all running around trying to decorate and everything. We turned my room into a psycho maze type of room. My furniture ended up being turned on its side and stacked to help make the pathway. Andrew and Jaime hung tinsel and other random things from the ceiling using tape and string, so people walked through the room in total darkness and had things brushing against their faces. We also had creepy sound effects playing and Andrew was hiding in the middle of the room banging on stuff and poking people. Pretty effective, considering we only used one small room, some overturned furniture, trashbags, string, and tape. Another room was turned into a crazy doctor's room. We set up an operating table behind a bedsheet and put a red plastic bag over a lamp, so the whole room was red and you could see the shadow of a doctor cutting on someone behind the sheet. We had a host who narrated and the audience got to watch as the brain, eyeballs, and tongue were cut out of the patient. They were then all passed around in bowls for people to touch. Most of the girls just flat out refused to even touch the bowls, but a lot of people did and screamed. The brain was noodles mixed with mashed banana, the eyeballs were peeled grapes, and the tongue was cooked mushroom slices. So after they all felt the brain, the doctor announced that she needed more brains from the audience members and I would come in off the balcony in my huge army coat and a Frankenstein mask. After making everyone scream and run towards the door, Angelyn would come out of the closet next to the door looking like a zombie and scare them all back towards me. It was like a game of human pong, almost. Angelyn had some cool makeup and fake scars and scabs, so she was pretty freaky looking. Then we would give out candy and herd them all out the door. Downstairs was a room with the Lewis girls acting like fortune tellers. You could see one of them telling someone else their fortune. But when you walked around to look at the other girl's face, it was all done up in makeup and more fake scabs. Chinese students are so easy to scare! Probably the best scare of all, though, was in the hallway. I used a backpack and extra clothes to stuff a coat and pants to make a dummy. I sat it in the stairs on the second floor, so everyone passed it coming up. Then Derek was all padded and sitting on the third floor, so he looked like another dummy. But of course, he would move and scare people as they passed by. The funny part was that they would jump over the rail going back down just so they wouldn't have to go near him. Like I said, Chinese students are so easy to scare. I could be talking to a person, put on my Frankenstein mask as I'm still talking to them and then all of a sudden they would scream and fall on the floor. So easy. Overall, I think Halloween was a hit. I'm sure our neighbors are glad that the screaming and noise is finally over.

So yesterday (Monday) I was having class and I was chatting with some of my students. This particular class is two and a half hours long, so it's tough to be interesting and fill up the whole class period every week. I have two guys in this class who always ask if we can watch a movie. Every week they ask! Well I was talking with them and once again they asked if we could watch a movie next week. I asked what kind of movie they wanted to watch and this is what ensued:

"We like a movie that is called 'The Ender' in Chinese. We don't know the English name."
I wasn't sure so I asked them to elaborate.
"It has a very famous man in it."
Okay, every movie has a famous person in it.
"He's in charge of a city and he's very great."
What do you mean, in charge of a city?
"He's in charge of a city in Florida."
In the movie or in real life?
After consulting a dictionary... "He's the mayor of the city in Florida."
A movie about a mayor in Florida? Called "The Ender"?
"He's a rabbit. And he's strong."
A movie about a rabbit mayor in Florida?
"He's the mayor of Florida now. I saw him in the news."
The governor? Do you mean the governor?
"Maybe. Maybe he's the mayor of Florida. And the movie is about a rabbit."
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Is this the man's name? *I write down a name*
"Yes! That's the person!"

The rabbit mayor of Florida is actually the robot governor of California. They wanted to watch Terminator. Yeah, my students are awesome. But it's still funny to think of Jeb Bush as a rabbit.