The Masses Trick-or-Treat at OUR House

Because of work holiday schedules our neighborhood decided to have Trick-or-Treating this past Saturday instead of next weekend. Lady Hiva was REALLY excited! As I have said before, she loves Halloween so for the last few weeks we have been celebrating. We bought plenty of candy and watched Halloween cartoons. Who knew there were so many ways to celebrate Halloween!

I am what Lady describes as the ‘Scrooge of Halloween.’ I admit, I don’t really like the holiday. Candy is not really my thing, when I was younger I used to hoard the candy under my bed until it was too old to eat (I not sure where I missed out on the ‘sharing boat’). I REALLY don’t like all the chopped off limbs, skulls and gore that accompany Halloween.

BUT.

But before all you Halloween lovers get your feathers ruffled telling me how fun it is, I do try to be supportive. Lady volunteered to be one of the houses in the neighborhood to give out candy, so of course we needed to decorate. I figured that scrooge or not, if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right. No…we did not have gore or skulls, but I did help string up the spider webs, bats and floating candles.

Halloween activities happened all day; we went over to watch the Costume Parade. There were children everywhere! Some of their outfits were really creative. While we waited for the designated hour of Trick-or-Treating, we went to see the Haunted House that the Marine’s made. Now, you know it is scary when even the adults say it is a bit creepy. But hey, this is a Haunted House Marine style, what did you expect?

Usually Lady Hiva gets mad at me when we go to Haunted anything during the Halloween season because I usually just laugh the whole time. I am more interested in seeing other people’s reactions. So this time I made sure that I threw in a scream or two every few minutes for fun…see, I told you I am trying to be supportive. HAHA. The end of the haunted house had two of the marines pretending to be in a dark room with one buy screaming and the other hacking him to pieces. REALLY gruesome actually. The kids were so traumatized by that they did not see that around the next corner was a guy with a chain saw that was going to chase them out of the building and around the corner.

For about an hour, we stood at the entrance to the Haunted House directing people inside and warning parents with children that it was dark—they did a few showing with the lights on—it was fun to watch adults and children alike squirm at the thought of going in. There were a few of both that only made it to the door and upon hearing all the screaming, backed out and waited with me. Sure enough within a ten minutes their children would come running and yelling around the corner with the sound of a chainsaw not far behind them.

It was about time to give out candy, but Hiva was hungry and the party did not look like it was ending any time soon, so we got something to eat. When we came out there was a FLOOD of children flowing toward our houses. I would have taken photos but we were running around the other side of the buildings to make it home before they reached our house. They were already knocking on the door when we got there.

As we ran up we heard this conversation:

One of the parents said: “I don’t think they are giving candy, the light is off.”

Child: “But there are spider webs on the door!”

Parent: “Stop knocking, maybe they are asleep.” (It was 7pm! Haha, we are not THAT old!)

Child: “BUT I WANT CANDY!”

We got there and Hiva apologetically announced to the mixed multitude of gremlins and princesses, (talk about nightmares of horror movies with vengeful village people with torches amassing at your house) “We are here, we’re here, just a minute.”

She started appeasing the masses as I turned on all of the floating lights we had hung earlier. For the next hour we handed out candy to the steady stream of children at the door. It was good that Hiva did order all of that candy online after all. It was funny when some came around a second time and they were shocked that we remembered them. Some would scampered off embarrassed they were caught, but the truth is that Hiva would never let someone go away without some candy, no matter how many times they came to the door.  

Nosebleeds and Panicked Eyes

Lady Hiva and I are the young women and young men Sunday School teachers. Completely interesting considering Hiva does speak Tagalog at all and I learned vocabulary for ‘business Tagalog’, not ‘religious Tagalog.’

In the Philippines they have an expression for when you are speaking too much English, they say, “You are giving me a nosebleed,” and hold their index finger under their nose as a visual. I had finished my first lesson two weeks ago for the young men—they were so quiet, probably because some white guy was here in their class—and one of the adults saw me walk out and said, “Do they have nosebleeds now?” I laughed and said ‘yes,’ then made a mental note to get fluent enough they do not make that joke anymore. I have two years, I can do it. Then I turned to talk with the next guy in the hall and he handed me a card and said, “The Bishop wants to invite you to speak in Sacrament Meeting (mass) next Sunday.” ‘Yikes! There will be a whole bunch of nosebleeds,’ was my only thought, but in reality I felt myself smile and nod while agreeing to speak. I did speak and hopefully it went well. I am not sure how much they understood, but I tried.

The last two weekends have been full of Church activities. Last week I was with the young men as they played games and cleaned the chapel for Sunday services; and Hiva learned from the women of the congregation how to cook some local dishes. It was a blast to get to know them all better.

Yesterday we had the young men, well some of them, come over for a pool party. Again, it was the first time most of these kids had been in a real pool. Most of them did not know how to swim. It was fun seeing them use those blow-up arm floaties for little kids or life jackets so they dared get in.  A few of them ventured to swim to the other end of the pool with me swimming beside them or holding their stomach up or my hand on my back. For some reason my presence gave them courage to keeping going. I would constantly say, “Almost there, you are doing great!” Once in a while they would make it half way across the pool, look up with a panicked fear in their eyes and say (in Tagalog), “So deep now!”

“Almost there, Almost there,” I would assure them it was alright so their panic did not paralyze them.  It was such an achievement they would cheer for each one that made it to the other side.

Lady Hiva and I went on our weekly date Friday night and we wanted to watch a movie. The movie we chose at Mall of Asia was not going on until 10pm so after we ate dinner we had time to kill. We decided to go walk on the boardwalk behind the mall. It is a happening place on the weekends. Several restaurants line the waterfront each with a live band playing. Street vendors sell toys, an amazing array of foods, and drinks of all kinds. In the middle there is a homemade zipline. It starts from the third floor of the mall and goes towards the water over all the people. Lady Hiva decided that we should try it to give us something to do. I was game, so we paid our $3 and went for a ride. (Really Cheap: should have been our first red flag)

You have the option to sit side by side or lay side by side on your stomach. We chose sitting. As we put on the ‘safety’ belt the workers laughed because my legs were too long, I had to contort my body in odd angles to finally get in. (Made for small people: second red flag). We took off and synchronized our swinging feet to speed up. Our weight and the swinging did speed us up quite a bit, people stopped what they were doing and watched us in amazement as we went flying over their heads. I looked up from watching people below and saw we were coming to the end and a really LARGE cement wall was approaching faster than I was comfortable with. (Brick wall, no brakes: Red flag number 3)

The only thing between us and a massive collision with the wall was two old car tires strung on the cable and three really skinny Filipino guys, who were starting to frantically wave at us. (Red flags four AND five) ‘What are they waving about? Do they want us to get off?’ I was suddenly not so sure this was a good idea. I noticed Hiva was not laughing anymore either. I am sure we had the same panicked eyes as the young men in the pool.

But we were stuck. Safety strapped into our ride of death. GREAT.

I held my breath as we hit the first tire and did not slow down at all, the second caused us to swing wildly forward and four hands caught us as our faces and knees swung dangerously close to the cement wall. So thankful we did not choose to lay down face first.

In the movie we decided to sit way away from the ‘mouse wall.’ They can be in the theater with us—there is plenty of food to eat on the floor—but I just do not want to see them! Especially since the other day I was sitting on the couch and Hiva in the dining room and we had or large windows open to enjoy the gorgeous day. I looked up and saw a HUGE rat, mind you this was broad daylight, scratching at the dining room window. We grabbed the camera and then took photos as it scratched at the patio door trying to get in! So nasty. I wondered why the stray cats are not chasing it, then I realized it is just as big as they are, I would not mess with it either if I were them! After realizing it could not get in, it just ran away…no panic on its part.

WHAT DOES YOUR SONG SOUND LIKE?

We were watching a movie the other night and in one part the guy writes a song for his girlfriend and tells her, “For your song I used all the good keys…” Being the sappy, corny person Lady Hiva tells me I am, I really liked the metaphor when I heard it. I thought about it after the movie and wondered if each of us had a song, what would they sound like? Would they sound similar? Or different? There are  88 keys on a piano (36 black and 52 white), which keys are used in your song?

I envision each of our songs are unique, just as we are unique children of God. Some of us with slow peaceful ballads, others with loud pomp and circumstance; a lullaby; a patriotic march; a cheerful melody; a base keeping a fast dancing tempo, or a sullen tune full of emotion.  As I thought about the quote more, I began to disagree with it. Which keys are the bad keys? Which are the good keys? It isn’t the keys themselves that give the song character—one simple key is rather dull and uneventful by itself—it is how we use the keys in succession with other keys that create our personal concerto.This weekend I was able to see how life's circumstances play a part in our song.

We joined some work friends at the pool. USEC (United States Embassy Club) does outreach into the local community. One of the programs is after school for some underprivileged children. 20 of these children came for a weekend pool party. We had so much fun. They were bursting full of energy and loved that all of us were willing to get in a play with them.

Bryan and I would throw them into the pool to see how high they could go. Hiva wanted to introduce them to “chicken fighting.” One person sits on the shoulders of another person and they push another team until one team falls into the water. All of these games we used to play as children but these kids had never seen them before. (We had to stop the chicken fighting because some of the boys got too aggressive and decided pushing was not enough and started punching!)

Bryan showed them what a cannonball was and we then practiced diving. I had to laugh when one of the boys did a belly flop. I physically winced when the loud crack of him meeting the water sounded. I asked him if it hurt when he surfaced, but as soon as he caught his breath he swam to the side and started punching his stomach and saying, “I am strong, my stomach hard!” They were so fun and adventurous. Lady Hiva was teaching one of the girls how to swim and she leaned over to tell Hiva she was “so happy.” It touched Hiva to see how such a simple thing like swimming could bring happiness to another.As we played I could not help but think about the uniqueness of each child and how each one would have a different song to sing.

Their songs are all diverse and extremely different from what my life was like when I was at their age. By experiences alone, their songs reflect a life I only read about in books or heard about when grandma threatened I ‘needed to eat all my food because there are starving children in other countries that do not have anything to eat tonight.’ Yes, I do not agree there are bad keys, just a different chorus.

We all come from so many backgrounds; our life’s song is almost inherently created. Our families, our friends, and our situations all add a few keys to orchestrate the opus. Talents are the tools given to use and with those talents we form the song others hear from us.

What is my song? I am not sure. Most likely it changes with time, but I hope that the main melody is one of happiness and encouragement; something that inspires or makes others want to get up and dance or conquer an obstacle. Most of all, a song  that brings a smile. Often we do not get the luxury to choose which keys fall into our music, but we can use what we are given to weave an unforgettable orchestra.