Let the wild rumpus start!

Me (on the left) as a Wild Thing and a couple of terrifying dolls in the reception area of my school - keep in mind, I teach 2-7 year olds...

My school is really, really into celebrating Halloween and their philosophy when it comes to the holiday is to basically make the children cry as much as possible. It was seriously scary in there - the decorations were really creepy, there were cobwebs everywhere so that everyone taller than 4 feet had to run around hunch-backed all day, and they let me show The Nightmare Before Christmas to small children.

The Haunted House, as it looked with the lights off when the kids walked through

Not quite as creepy with the lights on.

These 6 and 7 year olds were totally unfazed by the screaming, disembodied hand in a box - maybe these childhood experiences are why the Korean horror movie genre is so robust?

The kids are apparently used to all of this though because they were surprisingly unmoved by my school director's attempts to scare them. Only two kids actually cried during the day, which is a good thing since I didn't want to traumatize any of them for real. We all had a lot of fun wearing our costumes, trick-or-treating in the haunted house and watching scary movies.

Because Halloween was a big deal at my school, I decided to make a fun costume for it. I did one of the wild things from the book Where the Wild Things Are. This was one of my favorite books growing up, so it was a lot of fun for me to make the costume. The kids didn't recognize the character, but they loved playing with the mask and pulling on my tail all day.

In case you don't remember the book, this is the character I was trying to copy

I also wore it out to a Halloween party at a local foreign bar called Portobello, where I won the costume contest and got some free drinks! Anna wanted to be the Cheshire Cat so we bought some face paint and I did my best with the make up.

Anna as the Cheshire Cat

Me as a Wild Thing

Happy Halloween!