Last Monday was Halloween. This American celebration has become increasingly popular around the world; it has a following here in Cambodia, too. For the whole afternoon, the boys and girls at Little Hearts worked hard to create their own Halloween-style costumes, ranging from fairy tale characters to the ghouls, zombies and monsters they have seen in scary kids’ movies. The next morning all 35 kids performed a creepy fashion show in front of Tony and the rest of the Little Hearts staff to display their funky outfits.
Besides modelling their costume, each participant had to act out the character they represented, eliciting much laughter and applause from the audience. The spectators awarded each runway performer a score based on how well they had portrayed their character and how skilfully designed their costume was, including makeup.
At the end of the fashion parade, the six performers with the highest scores were awarded prizes. The winners were Ben (as Frankenstein), Sarem (as Chainsaw Man), Olivia (as a panda), Dina (as a fairy), Lisa (as Maleficent) and Micky (as a skeleton).
And then everyone devoured the homemade chocolate cookies. These treats had been baked the evening before by Roxanne and some of the girls, who put in a lot of effort to prepare them in copious quantities and with delicious results. And they put our new oven, which we recently received as a gift from the Belgian Embassy, to very good use!
On the following day, November 2nd, there was more fun to be had. (Remember that the kids are currently on vacation from school. As a special holiday treat, their afternoon English classes have also been called off for two weeks.) Inspired by ‘capture the flag’ games – in which two teams must try to conquer their opponent’s base – the kids set up a battle zone on our football field, with both obstacles and shelters where the combatants could hide. For weapons, they used water-filled balloons.
Needless to say, the war games were extremely entertaining for participants as well as spectators, so much so that they continued throughout the day, with only short breaks for everyone to catch their breath and replenish their arsenal of water bombs. A great start to the holiday season!
