Stu's blog about the Halloween party season, and the annual challenge of coming up with a good costume, got me thinking about my last serious Halloween party. I took last year off (I was in Vatican City at the time, and it didn't seem to be "the done thing") and this year looks like a quiet one as well - a sensible potluck with my married, mortgaged, RRSP-contributing colleagues. But the party I threw two years ago, less than a month after arriving in England to do a masters degree in a small north eastern town, had to be one of my favourites of all time.

I know living abroad is supposed to be about immersing yourself in another culture, but a fun flip-side to that is the opportunity to share your culture with others, too. Say, for example, by convincing the Graduate Students Society to let you throw a party in the graduate student residence on their tab. Our house had 25 residents from 11 countries (12 if you counted the Welsh... which you only did if they were in the room to insist upon it) and most, besides myself and the three American guys in the place, had never really celebrated Halloween, or at least not properly. Several had never even seen a pumpkin being carved, or eaten toasted pumpkin seeds. It was fun getting into that stuff with them - and of course they all knew how to dress up and drink, so that part pretty much took care of itself....

I've put up a few pics from my multilingual, multinational British-based Halloween party. And also, to prove that I can get beyond the standard no-effort slutty costumes (do you think at a certain point I can claim that I am being ironic with these...?) I put up a couple of favourites from years past, too.