Pumpkin Day

Here we are... 31st of October 2009. I don't know what it is about Halloween but this is one 0f the few holidays that truly inspire me.

Actually, it was the first American holiday I experienced on the other side of Atlantic. It was 11 years ago when on one particularly cold and windy day I was crossing Chippewa river to get to the other side of the University of Wisconsin lower campus and was totally mesmerised but an array of pumpkin faces looking at me from the colorful porches of typical Middle America houses.

That same day I was invited by one of my friends for a family dinner followed by a traditional trick or treat. Everything was about pumpkins that evening. For dinner we had some kind of soup baked in the whole pumpkin, followed by a homemade pumpkin pie and pumpkin candies for desert! After we were no longer able to consume anything that remotely reminded mentioned above vegetable we decided to go for a walk and watch kids in costumes and street decorations. And it was remarkable! Imagine everyone dressed in bright spooky costumes, thousands of candles burning all over the neighborhood, hundreds of deliberately carved pumpkins around the houses and overwhelmingly irresistible feeling of joy everywhere you looked... Speaking about a holiday spirit!

Joy of Halloween stayed with me over the years. When I came back to the United States to live in Washington I was very much looking forward to October 31st to see how different it was on the East Coast. It was all I expected and more.

My cosmopolitan Dupont Circle neighborhood celebrated in its own way. Festivities usually started with the High Heel Race on the Tuesday before Halloween. It is a pretty funny event with dozens of drag queens racing down 17th street and fighting to win. If you combine competition and drag queens together you get the picture how it actually is.:)

Costume parade on M street is certainly a culmination point of Halloween celebration in Washington. Hundreds and hundreds of people in exquisite costumes march around Georgetown. If you like to be in the center of attention and you don't have a lack of imagination then that is the place to be.

Description of Halloween in Washington would be incomplete without mentioning an International Student House (ISH) party. ISH is a special place for me that deserves a separate post on this blog. Let me just say that there was nothing better than spending an enchanting night with your best friends making fools of ourselves and having a time of our lives!

Regardless of where you are and whether they grow pumpkins there or not I wish you a very colorful and happy Halloween to remember!