A Perfect and Perfectly Unusual Halloween

Time has been flying by so quickly. I was shocked a few days ago when I realized that it was nearly Halloween. The end of October has come and I have been here for almost two months.

By U.S. standards, I just had a pretty unusual Halloween, though I thoroughly enjoyed it. My costume? Or perhaps lack thereof... I've decided that I dressed up as a ballerina. (I even wore pointe shoes and a skirt and everything!) For years I have been saying that someday, someday, I'm going to be a ballerina for Halloween, and I guess I have finally done that.

This evening, instead of going trick-or-treating, I saw a ballet at the Mariinsky Theater. It was La Sylphide, the perfect ballet for Halloween because of the large number of spirits and witches involved in the story. 

I went to the ballet with two other trainees, Federico and Eleonora, both from Italy. Neither one had been to see a show at Mariinsky Theater yet, so that made this show even more special. Federico arrived in Saint Petersburg less than a week ago, so he had not even had a chance to see the theater from the outside and was extremely happy when we stepped off the bus and he got to see it for the first time.

Here we are just before entering the theater.

Despite being very happy with my different way of celebrating Halloween, couldn't let it pass by without honoring a specific two of the holiday's traditions- giving out candy and eating more sweets than was really necessary. 

I had a break in the middle of the day today and I used that time to make a quick trip to the nearest grocery store. I was on a mission to find some fun-sized candy like what I would put out for trick-or-treaters if I were at home, so I was relieved when I saw some bags of Milky Way and Snickers candy bars placed on a shelf next to the many, many, many varieties of Russian candies. I would usually have chosen to buy some of the Russian candy rather than candy that I can buy at home, but I decided that I needed to stick to traditional Halloween candy, so into my shopping basket went two bags of Snickers and two bags of Milky Ways (they were small bags, not the jumbo bags one buys when preparing for masses of people to come knocking on one's door on Halloween night).

I passed out the candy to all of my classmates before out duet class. Only one other is from the United States, and, though all know what Halloween is, most did not realize that it was today. They appreciated the candy, and I was more than happy to bring them a little bit of the holiday's best tradition.