Kiwi Halloween

OK, yes Halloween was a few weeks ago, but we can all remember the feeling, right? Ghosts, witches, spoooookyyyyy!!!!! And candy. In New Zealand, the population as a whole is a bit undecided on where Halloween fits into the Kiwi culture. Some embrace it completely and some reject it completely. Most people fall somewhere in between, so that our experience here as Americans was a bit off-kilter. One thing was certain: all the kids wanted to come to our house on the 31st of October!

Trey had about 10 friends here and Laurel invited 3 girls to join her, but even if they weren't invited the kids flocked here from all over because they knew that we'd have no sign on our gate reading "No trick or treaters (big frowny face)" or "No thanks!" or "We are very ill and cannot answer the door, so please do not knock."

They knew we would have remembered to visit the grocery store and when faced with an utter lack of candy packaged and prepared especially for Halloween, that we'd just go ahead and spend lots of New Zealand dollars on many, many tiny bags each containing 11 Snickers bars (plus Milky Way, Twix, and something called Bounty which appeared to be related to the Mounds bar).

Unlike every other home in Auckland, we did not run out of candy after 15 minutes, and we did not give out biscuits. Americans might not quite have their act together regarding the economy or unemployment, but no one is going to come near us when it comes to Halloween. Just try us, rest of the world!