The day before the Halloween party Yang and I took the kids to Watson's to buy baskets to stash the large quantities of Halloween candy they would be collecting on our behalf. Aidan and Lydia decided this would be the ideal time to try out their new costumes -- Aidan as Spiderman and Lydia as Cinderella. On the way across the street to Watson's, Aidan and Lydia were quite excited. Aidan occasionally breaking out into spontaneous spidy moves. Once at Watson's they gathered a fair amount of attention and stares. Aidan didn't like it and began crying. Not the cry when he is angry or tired but the cry when he is really hurt with big, solid tears running down his cheeks. People nearby thought he had bumped his leg on something, but Yang new better. He immediately asked to go home. hua jia (回家) in Chinese over and over again. I held him and carried him home. Lydia was oblivious to the whole thing or at leased seems so.

The next day, Saturday, we took the kids to a Halloween party on the eastern edge of town, between the forth and fifth ring roads. The road to get there is dusty, under heavy construction, and lacks anything of interest to see. I consider it the second worst road in Beijing. The party itself was held in an indoor playground in a new shopping mall that had a lego store and a nike factory store. It was like an oasis. An oasis without water. The indoor playground was packed, it seemed every foreign baby was present in various forms of costumes. The kids attacked the indoor playground with a vengeance. It was quite a site to see. There goes Superman down a slide -- watch out a witch is in his way -- no it's casper the ghost climbing above. Here, in this context, Aidan and Lydia were comfortable. With their kind, so to speak. Playing, showing off for us, showing off for the other kids. We adults ran into other adults we knew with kids but it was too loud to talk. The kids played for a couple of hours and then we left. I wasn't all that disappointed to leave.

That night, Yang and I went to an adult Halloween party in the 798 art district of Beijing. During the day I had settled on dressing up as my mother in law, Yihang, but instead I somehow ended up as a Geisha girl. Well, not one with the white face makeup and very beautiful. More like a big girl with a day's growth beard, as you can see.

Anyway, we got to the party around 11pm. There weren't many people there yet and no one else was in costume except for the three of us. Let me repeat: No one was in costume and I was in a dress. The photographer came by and took my photo a few times, i suspect I made some party magazine entry as the one with the most foolish outfit. After about an hour, we dashed to the car -- oh by the way did I mention it was poring rain -- and changed clothes. I reentered the party in now wearing my comfortable jeans with some smeared makup.

The rest of the night went well. The beat was some type of techno, multiple DJs played, and while we can't dance much it was nice to move with the music a little. And then, around 1am, the costumes started showing up.

No, I did not run back to the car and put the dress back on.