Halloween is a holiday, mostly celebrated in the United States, but is now becoming more and more popular around countries all over the world! This is my second year celebrating Halloween overseas, and this year’s celebrations were by far one of my favorites! (:

Last year, Tim and I, decided to spend our Halloween traveling up to Madrid and celebrating with other auxiliars and Erasmus students. It ended up being a total shit show, mainly because we didn’t have a place to stay, bought the earliest train at 8:30am (the next day) to return back home, and the lines were ridiculous to enter into ANYWHERE. Lessons learned that horrible night:

1. Planning to go out for a major “drinking” holiday and not having a place to sleep or come home to, is probably not the best idea.
2. Planning to stay up until 8:30am drinking and partying (so, who needs that hostel room, anyways!) is also not the best idea.
3. Going out in Madrid during Halloween is just ridiculous. The lines are much too long, everyone’s cold, there’s a cover fee to enter and then you still have to pay for drinks, and even if you do get in, the bar is overcrowded and it’s quite impossible to order a drink. Now, don’t even get me started on the bathroom lines/lack of toilet paper/throw up in some areas… (*insert crying, sick, agony emoji face here*)
4. Having too big of a group to go anywhere is such a chore. No one can make up their minds, everyone wants to please everyone, and what happened with Tim and I, was that we became frustrated and angry with ourselves that we were so stupid to not book a hostel. Also, to think that we could stay out all night drinking/partying! Sorry mom, poor life decisions!! 

So, this year, WE HAD A GAME PLAN TO CREATE A BETTER HALLOWEEN!! And that, we did! Muhaha! Since the boyfriend and I live together, we decided to host our own Halloween party. It worked out because Tim is only a 45 minute bus ride away, we created a close group of friends in Lucena, and it was a good mix of English speakers and Spanish speakers. Not to mention, the people who only spoke English or Spanish definitely made an effort to try and communicate with each other (*ahem, liquid courage?*)

Things we learned from hosting our own Halloween party:

1. The Beer bong is a crowd favorite, especially in Spain where they don’t have it!
2. Beer bongs will quickly turn into “cubata bongs“, which is basically pouring your entire mixed drink (ice and all!) and chugging as fast as you can
3. Lucena is a small town filled with a lot of retired grandparents, who aren’t used to rowdy parties of people in Halloween costumes shouting “chug, chug, bebe, bebe!” until 3am
4. Surprisingly our neighbors in our apartment building didn’t complain. The people that DID complain, however, lived across the street in a completely different building…. (hehehehe, oops?)
5. Teaching typical drinking games (ie: flip cup) in Spanish, and slightly drunk, to other drunk Spaniards is much harder to do than you would think. Let alone, actually playing the game and making sure everyone understands!

Here are a few pictures and a vlog from the night! Sorry for the bad video quality, I’m recording from my Kodak Mini Video Camera, and am still trying to figure out how to edit video footage. So, for now, here’s raw footage that is completely unedited hehe