Happy Halloween!

On Friday, October 31st we celebrated our annual Halloween fiesta at the Family Support Center. It was a huge success! During the week leading up to the party, Pop Wuj staff and students were consumed with costume design. Everyone worked tremendously hard to put together the 40 different costumes for the kids. The office was filled with lace, black fabric, cardboard boxes, and more to make costumes for vampires, witches, princesses, pumpkins, and even an Optimus Prime!

It fits!

Costume creation

Johanne demonstrates how not to start a fire while sealing cape seams

Once all of the costumes were ready and packed up, students and staff, also clad in costume, headed out to the Family Support Center in Llanos del Pinal. We arrived to a festively decorated Center just as the children were finishing a traditional fiambre lunch. Fiambre is a  traditional Guatemalan dish that is prepared and eaten yearly to celebrate the Day of the Dead and the All Saints Day. It is a salad, served chilled, and can be made up of over 50 ingredients!

Waiting in line for fiambre, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Putting on costumes was a blast! All of a sudden there were witches, pumpkins, superheroes, and cats in place of children. Johanne helped to add the finishing touches by applying face paint!

Spidermen, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Optimus Prime, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Las calabazas! photo by Jeff Leventhal

Ted and Fred/Shaggy, photo by Jeff Leventhal

A hippy and a peace-loving cat, photo by Jeff Leventhal

A pirate and a Waldo, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Grinning magicians, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Vampires, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Princesses, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Batman, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Vampires, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Adorable sisters--a cat and our only zombie this year, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Princesses with attitude, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Witch sisters, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Next we lit candles in the Jack-O-Lanterns that the older kids carved earlier that day and settled down in the dark to share scary stories and real ghost experiences. We heard several old ghost tales as well as a few personal experiences that our own have had with the supernatural. Spooky!

Photo by Jeff Leventhal

Photo by Jeff Leventhal

Snack consisted of a homemade apple crumble that the older kids made that very morning! It was delicious!

Two of the six apple crumbles that we made with the older kids, photo by Jeff Leventhal

Overall, the party was so much fun for both the Pop Wuj staff and students as well as the participants of the Family Support Center! It is a tradition that will continue for many years to come!

Transforming is exhausting work, photo by Jeff Leventhal