Halloween (Dia das Bruxas) was a couple days ago – our first American holiday away from the good ol’ US of A. There were quite a few Halloween parties happening at some of the bars and discotecas on Sal, but Holly and I decided we would have a little Halloween festa of our own. We invited some of our neighbors, our landlords and their kids over for some chili (which we told them was American cachupa), caramel apples (which were actually apple slices just soaked in hot sugar water, but tasted delicious) and, drum roll please, S’MORES (Cape Verde style)!!! One of my friends from SOS Tartarugas had gone back home to Ireland for a week and brought me back some marshmallows (bless her). Then using graham cracker-like graham crackers and nutella-like chocolate spread we made S’mores. It tasted like home.
I think that the Cape Verdeans liked the food, or at least they said they did. Holly and I were a little aggressive in our pressuring them to eat more – I think we felt like it was payback for all the times during homestay we were told that we kume poku (eat so little) and need to kume mas (eat more). Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and definitely ate s’mores like the months I’ve been away from s’mores and America was lost time that needed to be made up for. After some good conversation, our kriolu vocabulary was eventually exhausted and we played Uno. For two hours. Afterwards our neighbor asked if we wanted to borrow a scary movie to watch, we said sure and he ran over to his house to look through his DVD collection. He came back with Mr. Brooks (starring Kevin Costner as a serial killer, as well as Demi Moore and Dane Cooke – don’t know what that casting director was thinking). We decided to pass on that one and ended up watching an episode of Glee instead. Don’t judge.
Oh, and Holly and I had our faces painted like cats the whole time. Nobody else dressed up L
