Echoes of Halloweens Past

Saturday, November 01, 2008 

Last night was the annual Halloween party. It is a fun event that nearly all of the elementary students participate in. Mickey, Goofy, and Minnie all made appearances. There was also a haunted house set up by high school students. 

Afterward, some folks came over to our place for a small gathering. It was reminiscent of earlier times, though not quite the same. The coolest part was that some of the local hire folks showed up. This is atypical. For the most part, the ex-pats do their thing and the Venezolanos do theirs. Although we have invited all comers on several occasions, it is usually only the foreign hires that show up. 

It makes it really challenging to get to know the local hires if they never come out to events. I understand that they have a life outside of school. They have family and friends here because this is where they have lived their whole lives. Unfortunately, all we have is school. 

We rely on it for too much. It’s not just our job, it is our way of life. Almost everything we do is governed by where we work and the people we work with. When we do things socially, we do them with the folks from school. They are, after all, the only people we know here. You could count in the parents of students, but they are still tied to the school. The families we went to the café with a few weeks back are great people, but they are parents of kids at school. It makes it really hard when everyone you know and everything you do somehow all gets tied back to one place; your job. 

In one way, I can parallel it to our time on the river. That was a group of folks that we knew intimately. It was easy to get back in with them every summer. During that time, they were much of our social contact. Even in the Fall when we had our Halloween party, they were many of the guests. Still, there was a time to get away. There were others that we knew from somewhere else, whether we worked with them at our real jobs, or they were old friends, or just some random stranger we met on the street. 

Here there is only us and the school. It makes it a little easier to understand how we can get burned out. We are surrounded by the same people every day for 185 days a year. There is no escape. That seems hard to imagine, I know. It’s not completely crappy, though. I mean the people we work with are pretty nice people. One of the bonuses is that we all know we are here for a short time so we tend to dive right in. I have learned to meet new faces more quickly. I have also, perhaps become quick to judge when deciding who is worth my time and who is not. 

Anyway, I seem to have gotten off track. The point is that the party was fun. It was attended by lots of good people and we enjoyed their company. I hope we can make an event like that happen again soon. 

MJR