La Aventura de mis Sueños: Halloween or Samaín

I know I am a bit late, but I wanted to share a little bit about our Halloween celebration. As some of you may have followed on my Lessons tab, I have been doing some Halloween art projects with my students to get ready for our big Halloween celebration. We celebrated last Wednesday on the actual day of Halloween.

While I originally thought that no one would celebrate or be very into Halloween, apparently in recent years Halloween has grown fairly popular. The students at my school carved pumpkins at home and brought them to school to be put on display Wednesday morning. They also made sweet treats for our Halloween party.

Some of you may not know this but I live in the region of Spain called Galicia. That is why I talk about how school is also taught in a language called Gallego (the regional language of Galicia) and that this area in Spain has strong celtic roots. Because of these roots, Galicians also celebrate the holiday called Samain. Essentially it is the day after Halloween, November 1st, and from the explanations that I have gathered from co-workers and friends it is the same type of tradition as Halloween, pertaining to dressing up as scary creatures and such.

Because of these Celtic traditions we had a joint Halloween/Samain party at school. The kids brought in their pumpkins and treats, we listened to a scary story, and did some fun Halloween related activities in the afternoon (face painting, shirt designing, and bat making). I was also lucky to be able to bring my two friends along to our Halloween/Samain celebration at school who were visiting me from Ireland, Bri and Hanna! These lovely ladies were awesome, and all of my co-workers were overjoyed to meet some of my friends.