Saturday, November 03, 2007

Haloween at Al Andalus Housing Complex

G'day

The housing complex in which we live is surrounded by a huge concrete perimeter fence. Our duplex is in a corner of the complex and the roadway outside is a circuit shaped like a "U" thus there isn't much traffic down our end. But there are seemingly dozens of kids ... perhaps indicative of the fertility and age group of most of our neighbours!

Unlike Australia, where we don't celebrate Halloween, here there is a large number of Canadians and fewer Americans who, as well as the Scottish expats, celebrate annually on 31 October. It's been a novel experience for us to be involved in the Halloween tradition with our friends and families and kids we've never met before.

Numbers of people who live elsewhere actually propel themselves to our street to join the celebrations. There was a good number of people this year. Christina went all out and made a fishing pond (hook a fish and get a prize), some suspended sweets people had to eat from the end of string without using their hands to steady the string ... that was interesting. The kids loved Chris's collection of popcorn and sweets and played the fishing game and also some apple bobbing in a water-filled large rubbish bucket. Fortunately none of the kids fell in.

The photo shows our friends Mutlu and Dawn who had both dressed down for the occasion. Muti and I managed to drink some water with grape in it and eat a few snacks including some wonderful quiche Chris had made especially for the occasion. I took a number of photos of the occasion to add to our growing collection of stuff from our Adventures in Arabia.

Stay well.



Robin


PS: We have a holiday coming up in December (UAE National Day) ... yes, another one, and will be travelling to Syria with a group of friends. Before that, Christina is off to India with Kal whose photo appeared in a recent blog edition. She's going for about 10 days. It's a great life and someone has to live it.

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