That’s what Anja got from the hour+ she went door-to-door trick or treating.

A great example of why I do not like living here is Halloween. The morning of Halloween, we had to attend a safety briefing in our base theater for DUIs. One topic that came up was the reminder, the constant reminder that we as Americans are ambassadors here. That when the ships pull in, they stay at home because the Americans will be out. Nevermind the Americans that come back to the base with their faces bashed in, or all of the good things we do here, they have to stay home because we Americans are so bad. Every time I leave the base I get the distinct feeling we’re not liked. It’s one reason we tend not to leave the base very often.

And yet - when we have something they like, they are all over it. Take, for example, Halloween.

Because of problems in past years, they have a special trick or treating event for the kids in 3rd grade and younger. It’s in a part of the base where no one is living. They open all of the patios in the plaza, about 12 of them, and the kids go from patio to patio to trick or treat. Because THAT was abused by the Spanish, they implemented an ID card check to ensure that it was being used by the Americans. However, when we went, we followed the crowd entering, there was no ID card check, and we quickly realized that the crowd we were following was all Spanish. And it just got worse. We had neighbors and friends that didn’t bring along their 4th graders because they were too old, but the place was overflowing with kids who were in their teens.

But at least they got some candy, because it just went from bad to worse.

We went home and made a pizza and went back out for door-to-door. It was still light when we left, so we were still a bit early. Our street was pretty dead because of our location, but when we got to the main street in housing, it was an entirely different story.

There were hundreds of kids, and I’d say about 80% of them weren’t American. There were so many kids that were in their teens, not wearing any costumes, didn’t speak a lick of English to include “thank you”, and by the time MY kids got to the houses, they were all out of candy.

Over an hour of trick or treating door to door and Anja got about 12 pieces of candy. Isak was better off - at least the bottom of his bag was covered.

At least the kids looked adorable (even if we lost Anja’s chef costume since we had to hide it from her so it didn’t get ruined before Halloween). Enjoy the pictures. There are a few more on Flickr.