Tufts Blogs

As soon as I met my host mom, I knew that we had to dress up for Halloween. I was never really a big Halloween person; I would celebrate it when I was younger, but I was getting to the age where Halloween just was not as fun. I knew, though, that this was my opportunity to revive the holiday. Early Friday morning, I began working on my costume. I had the perfect blue shirt, and I had bought a headband for my horns. I was determined to make this the best DIY Sully (from Monsters, Inc.) costume. A couple of days before, we had stopped at a massive mall after our mid-course excursion. There, I was able to find the perfect pink shirt so that my host mom could be Boo. When I got home, I gave her the shirt and very poorly tried to tell her that she should wear it on Friday because it was the costume. My attempts to show her pictures of Sully and Boo helped (at least I think). Yeili helped me cut out purple circles that I would tape onto my shirt while I worked on making horns to tape onto my headband out of paper and tape. Once I had finished, I was already convinced I had the best costume in my cohort.

We all helped set up for the party in the later afternoon and helped the host moms make dinner at my house. We eventually moved all of the food to Yeili's house. We all ate and chatted. Our instructors had gone out that day and bought special snacks and candy for the party. We took lots of photos, and it was great to see everyone in their costumes. Of course, we had to dance after all of our photos. During the week, some of us had been going to Yeili's house to dance; some of the host moms taught us how to do a Thai dance, and in exchange, I attempted to teach the moms how to do the Cotton Eye Joe. I think they really just enjoyed watching us make fools out of ourselves. After dancing, we were surprised with a fire and s'mores. We all gathered around the fire and toasted marshmallows. It was so strange because how could I feel so at home when I was really over eight thousand miles away from home? But as I sat around the fire with my cohort, I realized that our instructors and our host families wanted to make sure that we felt at home. That meant so much.

Halloween ended up being a great success, and of course my costume was the best, though we never had a formal vote, but I just assumed. I realized just how much of a community I had around me and how much the host moms cared for us. It is those moments where we were able to have a meaningful cultural exchange that truly made my experience in Thailand special.