Intl. students celebrate American Halloween

By AMY HAN For The News-Letter

Pumpkin-based dishes, candy corn, haunted houses, and students scrambling to find a costume at the last minute all signify the fast-approaching American holiday, Halloween.

While most students at Hopkins may have grown accustomed to trick-or-treating, dressing in costumes and pumpkin carving at this time of the year, many international students are going to experience Halloween for the first time this Saturday.

For Elysia Chou, a freshman from Suriname, Halloween had always been a secondhand experience.

“I’ve seen people celebrate Halloween in movies before. Also, my family in the States would always send me pictures of my cousins’ Halloween costumes,” Chou said. “I remember this one YouTube video from Jimmy Kimmel where the parents prank their kids by saying that they ate their children’s candy. As for myself, I’ve never celebrated Halloween before.”

Chou notes a similar holiday in Suriname and associates Halloween with younger children.

“We celebrate Carnival in Suriname, when they let elementary school kids dress up and parade through the neighborhood,” Chou said. “For the American Halloween, I think of kids dressing up and trick-or-treating. But I’m not a little kid anymore. So rather than excited to experience it, I’m curious to see how Halloween’s like here.”

Chou is looking forward to attending the undergraduate Halloween party at the George Peabody Library on Saturday night.

Other students who are experiencing Halloween for the first time are excited too for the festivities. Freshman Diva Parekh, who never celebrated Halloween in India, is looking forward to participating in as many holiday traditions as possible.

“I’m very excited. I’m going to go all out,” she said. “I think I’m going to try to do everything, which is like go trick-or-treating in Hampden, then go to Peabody because Peabody is awesome and then maybe go to Fells Point because I heard that’s awesome.”

Parekh plans to dress up as Tonks from the Harry Potter series and wants to actively partake in festive Halloween activities because she was never able to celebrate the holiday with her friends as a child.

“I’m kind of sad that I missed out on having Halloween as a child because that seems like a lot of fun. I’m just most excited about seeing everyone dressed ridiculously and nobody actually caring,” Parekh said. “Because it’s my first, I felt obligated to buy a costume. All my friends never had Halloween before either, and we’re all really excited about it. We’re trying really hard and even though we’re all in different places we kind of have a common theme going around.”

Parekh also expressed in interest in learning about the origins of Halloween due to her interest in the holiday.

“I actually would really like to know the whole religious thing behind Halloween and I don’t, but I’m going to look it up because at this point it just seems like a fun holiday. I don’t know its religious implications and that could be interesting,” Parekh said.

Unlike those who have never experienced Halloween, some international students have celebrated the holiday with classmates before.

“I first experienced Halloween when I lived in France from age three to age six. Trick-or-treating was not that popular, but dressing up was,” Eric Seki, a freshman from Japan, said.

“When I returned to Japan, I went to an international school, so the school already had that American culture and many of my friends came from places like the States,” he said. “There was a costume walk on Halloween day in elementary school, where afternoon classes were canceled and the students dressed up and asked for candy from teachers. The neighborhood around the school had many people from the states, so there was a trick-or-treating culture there as well, along with inside the American compound.

Nonetheless, Seki is looking forward to her first Halloween in America.

“There’s trick-or-treating, candy, costumes, houses decorated with cobwebs and stuff, of course I’m excited. I’m most exited about the candy and dressing up, it’s fun,” said Seki. “I’m planning on going to the Peabody event.”

Freshman Poppy Wang, an international student from China, has also experienced Halloween prior to coming to the U.S. but didn’t participate in many Halloween festivities.

“I was in an international program in my high school so we had Halloween parties. People carved pumpkins and wore Halloween costumes. They made us carry huge pumpkins all the way up to the classroom and I broke my leg, so I had Halloween-phobia and did not go to any of the events,” Wang said.

“Another reason I refused to go to Halloween parties in my high school was that some girls’ choice of costumes made the parties explicitly sexual. I’m almost positive there will be a bunch of sexy skeletons and sexy wild cats around unless there is a dress code.”

Despite her distaste for the Halloween events of her old school, Wang is thinking about wearing a costume and getting together with her friends to celebrate this year.

“I might get a warm polar bear costume depending on how efficient Amazon is,” she said. “I’m just going to wear it in my dorm and watch a movie with friends.”