Halloween here in Saudi wasn't much different from back home. Our compound had a Halloween party for the kids in the recreation room with pizza and treats. After the pizza the kids went trick or treating to the houses in our compound. It was quite the festive evening. I was surprised to learn though that Halloween isn't celebrated much in England. Most of our British friends weren't quite sure what it was all about but they joined in and had a lot of fun.
Jonny and his friends decided to dress up as rappers and gangsters. This was Jonny's dream to finally get to wear the rapper gear that we don't like him to wear.
Of course he had to show off his guns wearing his wife beater shirt.
Nicole dressed as Justin Beiber, why? I do not know. She doesn't even like him but it was a good costume.
Jack did his usual biker dude get up. He actually had to make his own chops for his glasses this year because the Elvis glasses with the chops that he has used for several years broke last year when he wore them in a student/teacher basketball game at school. He took an old pair of black socks and cut them like sideburns and glued them to his glasses. Yes, he was wearing old basketball socks on his face.
Vika started off as wanting to be a zombie fairy but ended up being a cute kitty cat with long pink hair. Of course she was cute.
I wasn't going to dress up but at the last minute I put on my PJ's and stuffed a pillow in my butt. It was a crack up. We hadn't laughed so hard in a very long time. I then decided to go as a couch potato house wife.
So our theme for the evening ended up being the white trash family....or no offense to our Palmdale friends, but we joked that we were the Palmdale white trash family.
Jonny and his friends dressed up as rapper, gangsters. No Matt is not holding an alcohol bottle and Franco doesn't have a real gun.
Nicole and her friend Marisha.
This is the one thing I wish I would have brought more of back from China. We had found all kinds of cheap Halloween and Christmas decorations there but I wasn't sure if we would be able to ship them here in our shipment. They told us not to put any type of religious things in the shipment because they would be confiscated so I left most of our things back in China, like our huge Christmas tree. At the last minute I threw in a few small Christmas and Halloween items like this pumpkin and they made it here, no problem. Now I wish I would have sent the other things.
At school on Halloween day we had a costume parade for the Elementary and Middle School students. These are a few of my students. I thought these were quite creative.
The parade was fun to see all the different costumes. Vika was her pink haired cat again.
This is my 6th grade homeroom class in their costumes. After the parade we had a Halloween party in the classroom. Overall it was quite the normal festive Halloween day. We've heard that Halloween on the ARAMCO compound is CRAZY!!!!! Maybe next year we can try to go but they say the Arabs all come out just to get the free candy.
The beach is a huge sandy beach that we had to use four wheel vehicles to drive down to the water. Several people tried in their regular cars and got stuck. Not fun! Yes, the women did have to wear their abayas at the beach but it was pretty chilly so we didn't mind.
Jonny and Franco practiced their juggling skills.
Looks like they are practicing for a show.
The sad thing about the beaches and pretty much most of Saudi is the amount of trash people throw on the ground. This was just some of the trash we had to pick up from our site before we could enjoy it.
It was pretty chilly but we had a great fire to warm us up. Yes, it can get cool here where we need jackets and fire to keep warm.
Our nice warm comfy fire.
The food arrived late because the vehicle bringing it to us got stuck in the sand but when it arrived, it was YUMMY!!!! This picture doesn't do justice, but it was roasted chicken and rice. I don't know how they do it but the Arab people know how to cook chicken. 
