Happy Belated Halloween!

Hi all,

Melissa and I have successfully eaten our way through many kilos of chocolate, thus signifying the end to the Halloween season. We may have gained a few pant sizes, but we installed a plan to even everything out. You see, we shared the sugar rush with our students by making candy a part of our lessons. So, the students are now that much fatter, thus negating our relative augmentation. Yahoo!

Seriously though, we did feed our students candy last week. I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking, 'These kids must need bribes to talk because you're such a bad teacher!' Well, you know what? You know what? Yeah? So???

Actually, it wasn't so easy for the students to get the candy. In order to receive candy, they had to:
a) Sit through a lengthy vocabulary presentation on Halloween-related things,
b) Watch the first five minutes of The Nightmare Before Christmas (you know, the part where they sing 'This is Halloween'?),
c) Stay awake as I read them 'The Yellow Ribbon' (a scary story)
d) Rack their brains and write a scary story, and
e) Tell their scary story to the class.

Most of the kids got into it, which was good to see. One of Melissa's students told a good scary story, which I will paraphrase here:

"There once was a little boy who could only say the word thirteen. His parents tried everything to get him to say anything else, but their child could only say, "thirteen, thirteen, thirteen..." They finally tried a psychiatrist, who dedicated much of his time with this interesting case. They worked together in his office, at a local playground and at a park. They had been working together for many months now, and the child could say nothing but the word thirteen. They took a seat by an old well in the park, and the man again said to the boy, "Why do you only say thirteen?" As an answer, the boy pushed him down the well. The boy watched the man hit the bottom of the well and said, "fourteen, fourteen, fourteen..."

After all of this Halloween goodness, we are rearing our heads over Alaska, as we prepare for America to once again disappoint us. I sent in my New Jersey absentee ballot about eight days ago in Yueyang. At least I know that I did everything that I possibly could have done to discontinue the Bush White House's policies. Melissa, on the other hand, did not even apply for an absentee ballot from her battleground state, Ohio. For shame.

Our fingers are crossed!