Letter VIII: The Halloween Parade and the Home Economics Classes

Hello, Tim!
It's the Halloween week! We had a lot of fun and see how we celebrated it this year!

The Fault in Our Stars; Gosh the Feels

After finishing off the letter for last week, I gulped down the remaining parts of the book. It was, as I thought, sad and gravitating, but it was not as how I supposed it would go. I understand now, reading through the end, of why many people mourned the climax so much. In the near-end, the female protagonist was pulling all her strings so that she could find literally the last words of her deceased lover. "A desert blessing, an ocean curse." It was the flowing of the poetry seeping out from the book that gave the additional weight on our shoulders, comprehending this book. At some time, the characters showed an amount of depression and irreverence to God that was almost cynical, but it was just how nicely portrayed that it doesn't feel out of place, with the poetic elements that were so rare among teenagers.

Another thing I love about this book is that most of the characters have their own almost Shakespearean lines:

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations."

"It would be a pleasure to have my heart broken by you."

Some might call it cheesy and unrealistic, but hey, this is a novel. At least its unreality was beautifully convincing.

In some parts of this book, I would put it down and stare into nothingness. I was thinking, thinking what if I had cancer? It was not the first time I had had this question in my head before. For a supposedly optimistic, I think a lot about death. I think about where I would be, how the others would react upon hearing about me; I'm scared of being dead, mostly because I wish not to leave the people I care for, and that there are still so many things I haven't tried before. In this book, I was fascinated by how they can be so calm about death. "Hazel is different. She walks lightly. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either." Or the fact that they could still claim to be innocent of the future when they already know of the imminent and quick death. "I fear oblivion, I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

Overall, this is one of the few books I have that are actually talking about death, and I feel like it was such a pity that I hadn't picked this book up when it was first published on 2012. 

At least I get to know it now.

Maybe one day I'll go rent the movie.

Right into the Next Book, Snowman by Jo Nesbo

I still have a lot of books on my shelve, untouched and unread. Therefore, I have to hurry.

This book, also as precedent, is also a genre I don't read a lot about.

Snowman is a detective/mystery/thriller of a novel, a novel that was recently going to be in theaters in the near future. I was in my French class when one of the classmates began to talk about mystery novels. Seldom do I have the chance to interact face-to-face with a book lover, so I delved into the conversation soon enough to catch the word "Snowman". I immediately went on the Internet to look for it, only to find that it was supposed to be a book with the elements of "rather morbid killing methods", and I was attracted to it. I think I was easily intrigued by the title when it sounds innocent enough and only turns out to be on the radical contrary. It was the book I bought last week when I went out to the bookstore with my mother. 

I didn't make it into the deeper parts of the book to form any sort of thoughts, but in fact, it did give me the idea of dressing up as a snowman when I was picking out the Halloween costumes with Candy, Cathy, Angela, and Vivian. Details later.

(Novels worshipping, over for this week)

Questions Answering - Part One

1. The Dodgers are a formidable team, with two of the arguably best pitchers, with a record of 21 consecutive wins and two of the formidable pitchers; what's not to love? 

2. It was said that the Huston Astros are considered the sentimental favorites because they transformed into one of the amazing teams over these years and plus they had supported the people living in Huston when Hurricane Harvey struck in the past. There was an almost camaraderie-like relationship going between them since then.

3. It is currently 2-1, between the Astros and the Dodgers, which means it is only near the first half of the series, leaving with four games left. It is inferred that the Astros fought hard to gain this fruit of harvest, but the future is not so clear right now. We'll see.

4. On Dia de Los Muertos, people go and clean up the graves of the dead, and also offer offerings to them, which is a lot like what we do on tomb sweeping day.

5. There are different kinds of decorations for the dead. For example, you decorate the graves of the adults with splots of marigolds, while for children it would be white orchids left at the grave.

Halloween Parade in School

As promised, here is our celebration of Halloween!

One picture first:

This is us on the afternoon of October the 31st, in our hallway with Ms. Summer. 

Let's first move the clock back to the previous Sunday, to see where it all came from.

In the afternoon of the weekend, Candy, Melody, Angela, Cathy, Vivian and I gathered together to go picking out our costumes together. Sherry and Selena were supposed to come along as well, but they have sudden business to tend to, so we had to help Sherry with her costume. From the picture above, you might not be able to identify where Sherry was, for her face was totally covered by the length of the wig, borrowed from Allison. We picked out the white dress she was wearing from the costume rental and she dressed up as the infamous Japanese ghost "Sadako Yamamura", a ghost that was said to have over-growingly long and unkempt hair, and also to crawl out of televisions. Its description gave us the impression of being silent, and Sherry was all that. She is the kind of girl who can stay very calm and silent if she wants to and therefore she was the one that gained the most screams of the day.

As for the little quartet of us -Candy, Cathy, Angela, and me-, we had a hard time deciding what we will become on the coming Tuesday. Cathy and Candy considered dressing up as pirates or Cleopatras, both of which ran out of stock in basically all the costume rentals around on the street. Angela and I were mulling over all the options without coming up with an actual idea. It was distressing because none of the costumes in display met our fancy, and nor could I picture myself wearing those costumes. That was when Angela -the one who keeps blurting out random characters of ideas- called out: "TELETUBBIES!"

I guess the expressions of the rest three of us were identical: a mortified face upon hearing the name of the program we might all had been watching in the first few years of our lives, then the horror changed into something more serious, a contemplating face. Then miraculously, all at once, we agreed with the idea.

What? We have four people, and the Teletubbies make four! We asked the clerk to get one of the costumes for a tryout first, and it was all satisfactory, we then made a final confirmation that these multi-colored giant babies are what we are to become in two days time and asked for the remaining three sets of costumes.

Uh.

Sometimes you would think that life is doing alright at some point, only to find out that there is always a catch on the corner.

"We just found out that we are in short of the green costume."

Wait. Who is supposed to take the green costume? ME.

We had to go around on the street, into the rentals -there were about ten of them- to hunt down a set of green pajamas that fits my height.

At last, we found one. It was a costume with two dark, bizarre eyes, one ear cut off, the cut part sewn with red strings; with the correct lighting, it can become a cuter version of Frankenstein.

That was what we had to compromise on, then. 

After we had all picked up our costumes, we went to a Coldstone nearby and ordered ice cream, just to chat for a while and have ourselves a merry little afternoon.

THe face Cathy made when she gets ice cream was just priceless.

In school, we were one of the most identifiables of the day, for we have all the different colors, shiny and blatant, in sharp contrast to the beige colored uniforms and the Yankee blue uniform jackets. We the classmates dressed up as all sorts of characters, from zombies to anime characters, from cats to sharks, from witches to Mr. Deadpool and so on. With the costumes we had on, we found more eyes on us, with muffled giggles and laughter. It was slightly embarrassing, but at the same time amusing because I had my friends to experience it with me.

We gave out some candies and took tons of pictures, but I'll let the others do the most of the pictures sharing; I have something else to share.

The Teletubbies quartet at your service.

When ghosts meet Teletubbies.

Home Economics Class Rocks

I should have said something about this in the letter of last week, but apparently, I forgot.

Home economics is a course we only will have in this semester, and it consists mostly of cooking classes. Being a guy immensely interested in cooking, I rejoiced in them. Two weeks ago, we baked tiny tarts while for last week we had tiny cupcakes. I don't bake often, but through that lesson, I knew that this is not just a matter of mixing and baking, the ability to make sure that every single ingredient has been made into how they are supposed to be, the ability to cooperate with other groupmates to do everything with a steady but faster pace. Also, our teacher is the humorous kind; our favorite. Seldom had a time when there is no laughter in the cooking classroom. Here are some of the pictures from the previous two lessons:
-Tart baking sessions-

Cathy filling up tiny tarts.

Et Voilà!

-Cupcakes session-

Allison and Sabrina concentrating on filling the little cups with our coffee-flavored dough.

William, they have chocolate-flavored ones.

As for Candy's group, they have matcha-flavored.

Look at THESE delicate beauties

We would love to participate in the lesson this week, but on Friday we won't be at school for the whole day, which means we would have to miss out on the amazing classes, for we had to participate in the voice over contest... Too bad.
I guess the most affection-drawing part of this course is that when you actually really did something awesome and delicious, you get a sense of great achievement. And besides, they are DESSERTS! They are destined to relieve our STRESSED high school life! (Yup, I still remember the joke I made some months ago.)

Questions Answering- Part Two

6. Both Calaveras and Catrinas are skulls. More specifically, Catrinas are a kind of Calavera, which is dressed up like a woman from the early 20th century. They were painted on people's faces on Dia de Los Muertos, resembling being joined with the ancestors. 

7. Both Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos have candy involved in their festivities, and also it was celebrating the returning of the souls and the dead, which is why they look similar in certain perspectives.

Sidenote: When you talked about Dia de Los Muertos, the first thing that came to my mind was the animated movie I saw two years ago. It was "The Book of Life", an adventure of friendship and sacrifice with a large theme of this festival.

Movie poster here:

The dead actually joined the livings in the end. It was really sweet.

8. Saturday would be the day of both the games of 1) Iowa-Minnesota game that involved the pig-shaped trophy "Floyd of Rosedale" and 2) the regular season game between Penn State and Ohio State. If I had to pick on of the games to watch, I would choose the Iowa-Minnesota one because I actually searched for the name of the trophy one/two weeks ago.

9. As what Mr. Maher had said, fatal adversity is possible if he had watched all the games on Saturday, either getting brain dead after such a long period of being in a stationary state or getting shot by his wife, for not doing anything else but watching games.

10. To avoid any of the fatalities from the above answer 9, it makes sense just to watch half of both the games and walk around or do some grocery shopping.

End.

Wow, I really am late! 

Sorry, but it was just we had so many things coming up this week, including tomorrow, in which we would have the finals of the voiceover contest. I think I still have something to talk about, but it's late now and I have to go,

Best wishes,

Hugo