Coloring Pumpkins at the Mall was Fun!

It was our first time celebrating Halloween the old fashioned way: at the shopping mall in Udine. Our good friend Stefano set us up with a special area just for us, right in front of the Carrefour grocery store for maximum traffic. (The thing that kills me in Italy is that their shopping malls are "anchored" by grocery stores rather than department stores as they would be in the States. Those, and places where they sell plasma tvs). This was day two of our Halloween pumpkin decorating for kids extravaganza. My friend Denise, her awesome daughter, Anastasia, and I, along with 18 (!!) student volunteers from Istituto Nordio (high school) spent Friday afternoon on the floor drawing on pumpkins at the mall in Trieste. That went well, especially since the students were so great with the kids. They worked in one-hour shifts drawing, complimenting, giving candy, picking up wrappers, and capping pens.

On Saturday, we had less help, and decided to split up. Denise and Elizabeth went to the mall in Trieste again, while our super responsible good friend and ex-volonteer at the Association, Anna, came with me and Sweetie to Udine. For those of you who don't know, Udine is a little over an hour from Trieste. We decided to do Halloween there because we are a regional association, and it's important to have a presence all over the place if we can.

That being said, in Trieste people have at least a vague idea that the Italian-American Association exists, so having us at the mall luring children into our space with candy and asking them to color scarey Halloween pictures and draw on pumpkins is sort of normal at the end of October. The kids there often come in costume, even though it's not really an Italian holiday (every year it gets more and more popular, though, especially with little kids and the going out crowd). Parents take advantage of the free distraction to get their grocery shopping done in peace.

In Udine, however, people looked at us funny and/or tried to avoid our gaze for about the first 15 minutes of our 3-hour stint. But then the kids started noticing the candy, and then they came, and we offered it to the parents, too, and they seemed to like that. Kids attract kids, so more of them came and colored. Besides candy, we gave the parents hand-outs explaining how to carve a pumpkin and how to bake the seeds.

I carved a pumpkin so they could see what a real Jack-o-Lantern looked like. The big surprise was that Sweetie, who has been with me for years, had never seen one up close. He was so excited about the process that we had to repeat it at home yesterday, and he got to do the drawing and carving. He then declared that he would be doing it much earlier next year, to take advantage of the Halloween season.

Here are some other things I noticed while hanging out at the mall on Halloween.

1. Italians love getting recipes for things.

2. Kids with glasses draw pumpkins with glasses.

3. The goop inside the pumpkin still feels like brains, even as an adult.

4. Kids love hanging up their artwork when they're done

5. Almost all of the girls dressed up as witches for Halloween (Anastasia was a native American).

My favorite quote from Saturday was from a man who was passing with his family. He seemed pretty intrigued by the whole pumpkin thing and said to me:

"We do not believe in these things, they are not our religion. We are from Marocco."

 Well, we don't really believe in it either... but it's fun to color on pumpkins!  And his kids did, so that worked out.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who came to visit us and to those who helped out! MWAH!

Ok. Halloween's over. Phyoo! Another holiday down!