(Turkey on Rice)^-1: Halloween

Ahh... Halloween. It really is one of those magical times of the year. Here in Istanbul it falls around the same time as Republic Day. As such, we had a half day of classes on Friday. Not wanting a perfectly good half day go to waste with productive classes and learning we had THE HAUNTED HALF-DAY, oooooooooEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The kids were split up into all day activities consisting of movie making, dancing, and some art projects and others went to rotating workshops. Not surprisingly, I got roped into doing a mad scientist's lab. We had a few demos for the kids -- puking pumpkins, beating hearts, burning money-- and we also let them make some slime. And let me tell you. Carving pumpkins can be a pain. Most people who read this are probably familiar with pumpkins as being the orange, smooth-ish round things. Well, those ones are fine for decoration and all but when you eat a pumpkin it probably comes from this lumpy, green monstrosity with flesh a few inches thick. We bought a few of these for the labs and proceeded to carve them the night before. I spent a good hour doing mine. Not because it was intricate and detailed, but because it was so thick that cutting out simple triangles takes a very long time. The end result was good though and they did their jobs amicably.

After the half-day a few of us went out to hang with the Brits and play a Halloween themed quiz game. My team, Jaws 13 in 3D, came in third place. Not too shabby but no real bragging rights either.

The next evening we went to hang with the Americans at the Marine House. Everyone showed up from Mexican wrestlers to Canadian mounties to Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice. Yours truly attended as Dr McNinja. What?! Who's that, you ask? Well, he's Irish, he's a doctor and he's a ninja. What else do you really need to know? Fine. Here's the link.

I'll let the pictures do the rest.

Lurch and I getting ready for the fresh meat, I mean children.

I've been drawing zombies, vampires and werewolves all month for my kids. They love it and so do I.

This guy stayed in character as a zombie too well. He only groaned and kept his face perfectly expressionless.

Me with two of my helpers, Igor and Captain Underpants, getting ready for some hijinks.

One of our demos.

The same demo again from another class. Note the scary music in the background.

Making slime is so gross!

In case you were wanting to make your own slime (it comes out like that Nickelodeon Gak of yesteryear) all you have to do is mix a bottle of glue (make sure it says PVA or polyvinyl acetate on it) with a little less than equal parts warm water. In another container saturate about the same amount of warm water with some borax found in your local laundry aisle. When no more will dissolve start adding it to the glue mixture and you should immediately see the polymer (the slime) start to form. Mix it well and when you get a big glob pick it up and start kneading it with your hands. It should come together with some squishing. You can play with its consistency and stickiness by changing the ratio of glue to borax. Add food colouring to the glue before the borax to colour the slime. You can also use glue gels (again make sure it's PVA) to get clear slime that looks a lot like snot. It's perfectly safe to handle but, like all things you can make in the lab, do not ingest your slime. The slime bounces but don't throw it hard. It will shatter and tiny pieces will go EVERYWHERE and get stuck to EVERYTHING.