Boo! and Other Autumn Utterances

Apparently I forgot to do this again.  I start thinking about what I want to say about things as they happen, but then I forget to actually type it out in the "really" world.  Kind of like texting people back...

So Halloween and its associated events were fabulous.  My trip to Tokyo was amazing, starting with my usual foray to the Tokyo Disney Resort.  I decided to follow the incredibly popular trend here and do some Disney bounding.  It involved a couple trips to the thrift stores beforehand, but it was well worth it.

For Disneyland, I dressed like Rapunzel, and the Cast Members, especially in Fantasyland, thought I was adorable (and that's why I do it, really - so that complete strangers will tell me how cute I look :D).

I was also by myself this day, which was interesting.  It's the first time I've done a Tokyo park by myself, and the first time in 4 years to do any Disney park alone.  It was super dead, though, so I got to wander around taking pictures of all the Halloween decorations without getting in anyone's way, and ride pretty much everything.  I skipped the really lame rides (Tomorrowland Speedway), the rides that are awkward to do solo (Mad Tea Party), and Splash Mountain (the flowers in my braid were paper, so that would have ended badly).  I got to eat some fun seasonal foods, do some shopping, and just generally laze about the park, soaking up the atmosphere.

At Disney Sea, I had my trusty Ros by my side as we dressed in clothes inspired by The Little Mermaid, and had Ros's first experience with a character who can actually talk (we met Mickey and Minnie in Hong Kong 4 years ago, and that was her first character experience ever)!  Being a grown adult and not having done this in her childhood, she was completely thrown and couldn't entirely wrap her mind around it.  I fielded most of the Ariel conversation and then had a good laugh at Ros's expense afterwards, because I'm an awesome friend like that.  We did some new rides (new for us, not new for the park - and they were the kiddie rides in Mermaid Lagoon that we usually avoid for the obvious reason that we are not accompanied by a child [physically - my mental age doesn't count]), I got to see a show that I've only ever seen in passing before, and we ate at the fancy ship restaurant to celebrate Ros's birthday. 

We also got to see the Villains show on the lagoon, which was all kinds of awesome and full of fabulous costumes that I want in my closet and the phrase "tentacular spectacular" yelled out by Ursula, which had Ros and I cracking up for a good couple minutes.

The real reason I was in Tokyo, though, was because Ros found a concert for us to attend: The Music of Danny Elfman from the Films of Tim Burton.  Awesome!  She'd sent me a picture of the poster and was like, "Wanna go?"  To which I replied, "Um, obviously." 

I love Danny Elfman's music, especially the creepy Tim Burton stuff (Sleepy Hollow being my favourite, as much as I love The Nightmare Before Christmas).  So Ros got the tickets, we kind of vaguely looked at the website to try to figure out what to wear - on one hand, it's the Tokyo Philharmonic, and on the other, they were having a costume contest, so we weren't really sure - but that was it.  Didn't really look to closely.  Then, about a week or two before the event, Ros finds a blurb about it in an English Tokyo magazine that says actual Danny Elfman will actually be on the stage for the concert and actually singing The Nightmare Before Christmas songs like he does in the actual movie.  Needless to say, I flipped.  Mentally, not out loud, because I was at work when she texted me the picture of the blurb and that would have been really awkward to try to explain.  So off we went, amongst people dressed in some pretty freakin' cool costumes, and sat through an absolutely phenomenal concert.  There were so many times I had goosebumps!  The concert ended with the Nightmare set, and there he was, Danny Elfman, singing and rocking out to the music in a way that really reminded me of Elton John, to be honest.  But he was so cool!  He came out for an encore and performed Oogie Boogie's Song (for anyone wondering what it would sound like if Jack Skellington sang that song, the answer is "odd"), with the conductor playing the part of Santa, while wearing the hat.  So, so awesome.

Back at school, we had our Halloween lessons!  The first years were forced into a Halloween tongue twister contest (Hoot owls hoot howls of horror in haunted Halloween houses), and got to do a word search.  Fun, but kind of bland.  Not my best lesson ever.  The conversation class, though.  That was a whole other kettle of fish.  For the first period of class, we played a game I found online called Bump, which they enjoyed even though they're really bad at actually listening to what the other teams say and miss out on what would otherwise be easy points.  The part I'm most proud of, though, was the second period.  I read them a simplified version of Hairy Toe, and the JTE gave a bit of a translation.  The students had to be paying attention, and making notes of the translation that was given for my reading, because then they had to work in groups to retell the story as a comic!  They had a lot of fun with this, and I got some really great comics!

I assigned a different comic-type activity for my first years, where they were practicing compliments by drawing different scenarios I'd given them.  What did I learn?  Some of my kids are cannibals:

And you should never look to this kid for compliments: