Halloween "Stories"

Imagine you are looking over a stubbled cornfield during twilight. The fog is settling over the land like a thin blanket. The orange moon sits on the edge of the land. It seems so big and close as if it set itself down on the horizon for a rest before it continues its journey across the sky. Your mind is jostled by an animal that flies past you, leaves rustle and you hear the bells of an old church in the distance. Looking in that direction you can see the lighted spires rising above the trees. This is fall in Noord Brabant; a place that has not traditionally celebrated halloween. But for a land where October 31 holds no more than the marking of the end of the month, who knew that in 2008 that day would mark one of the scariest days in the history of the Netherlands.

For Jesse Garner the day started out like most, he was awakened by the hark of "Daddy up? Daddy up. Daddy up! DADDY UP!!!!" as he removed the toes from his nostrils and stopped the small hand from beating him on the head he realized the horror of what the day was... It was MOVING DAY aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!


Here is a double header news from the ned. Hope you enjoy it.

The Art of Moving (or how to shove your life in boxes)

There is no art to moving. you can organize your stuff into boxes, individualy wrap them, lable them, make a database to keep track of them, tape a list of stuff to the outside of the box and then alphabatize the boxes. Or you can wipe all of your possesions off of shelves and tables into grocery bags, tie the two handles together and hope when you are sorting through things you recognize it as your stuff and not just the garbage bag that has been riding around in the car. No matter wich way you choose or how far you move some things are always the same; one of your dishes will be chipped, your favorite glass will break and you will loose a box(or bag) full of stuff that must go to the same place as left socks. Now I dont think of myself as a packrat but how do I accumulate so much junk ...we have three bikes (and some bike parts), a car ,some furniture, a large pile of wood, two dog crates, some tools, a couple of dozen potted plants and lots of bags (yes,bags tied at the top) full of junk. Thats a pretty big list for 5 months and no money. I guess now is as good a time as any "Hello my name is Jesse, I am a packrat, hide your shiny things". So we have now packed up all our junk, moved it to another location, cleaned, painted, straightened up and vacated our old location. So yes that means we no longer live at schansweg 3A. Yin, Neah, chinook, garcia, myself, and our mountian of junk are now temporaraliy located at my mother in laws. Luckily for us she had some extra room and was willing to take us in otherwise we would have looked a little like a white trash version of the Ikea commercial with the boxes on top of the volkswagen bug (its not that pretty with grocery bags tied around a beat up 80something honda civic held down with 3 bikes and other odds and ends). If anyone needs our address here please e-mail me. Stay tuned hopefully soon there will be a moving part 2 yes bigger and scarier.


Halloween

You don't see parking lots full of pumpkins, isles of stores littered with candy, and little kids running around with misformed dentures. What you do see is roadside stands selling gords as well as some pumpkins and little signs in some neighborhoods advertising halloween and making sure we knew it was on October 31. If on the night of the 31st you were to open your door to the ghouls that romed the streets you would not have been met with the traditional saying of 'trick or treat' but with kids saying 'candy or I'll shoot' (for a country that doesn't allow guns it is not the same kind of threat). Halloween has not been a Dutch tradition but t is catching on. This year a small neighborhood near where we are living celebrated the goolish day and did a great job. The rule here is if you have some decorations outside your house and your outside light is on you are free game. Most people who were participating were also dressed up to some extent,which also made it fun. The houses here are set up very close to each other(most being connected to another one or more) so they have shared spaces. In one of these shared spaces a group of people set up a hobo camp. In this Hobo camp there were hobos roasting bread over a fire on sticks. There were witches, giant spider puppets, and harry potter being shown on a sheet in the corner. It was really cool and really well done. And so, dresses up in her purple fleece winter suit with a pink tutu and a flower tiarra with a pink veil, our little ballarina princess went trick or treating. At first she was a little hesitant because of the people dressed up and the scary music but once she found out that you get candy she would have reached into a severed head without flinching. Once she received a new peice of candy it had to be tested and the old one left for daddy to collect (kind of the story of my life right now). At one point in the night she was just running down the sidewalk yelling "nother one, nother one" going up to any door and not waiting for any parent to join her. For my inlaws this was there first experience with halloween. Yin (being the new expert in halloween) did it up right for them. Before the trick or treating Yin sat us all down for a meal of blood soup with mummy fingers, spiders eggs, and skull sandwitches. It was a perfet meal for the night. After all this was over my inlaws were giddy at the idea of decorating for next year. For most people halloween's scary sights dont come out untill the dark. This year for me the scariest sights were during the day moving out of our house. The evening was full of wonderful images of a land embracing a new tradition and a balarina princess running from door to door yelling "nother one, nother one"



Sorry for the delays in getting these out hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and I am hoping to post more soon. Be on the lookout for my next scary update even a greater fear lurks on the horizon....... THE TERRIBLE TWOS



that's all for now

Jesse