Spooky

I’m not sure why, but I thought of something today that I hadn’t thought about in a long time.
When we Lived in Manila, in the Philippines, it was almost like living in the United States. There  was the old part of Manila, that was more like you’d expect, but around the old section, it had become a very modern, clean, efficient Asian city. There were shopping centers with chrome and glass department stores and unlike a lot of our overseas posts, just about anything and everything was available. 

And — it was one of those places where Americans were genuinely liked.The Filipinos celebrated just about every American holiday and followed lots of “American” customs. The stores were always decorated for Christmas, they had Thanksgiving dinners, etc. 

Anyhow, the first year we were there, my boss had a six year old daughter and she wanted to go trick or treating on Halloween. My boss was out of town and he’d asked me to take his daughter trick or treating. They lived out in one of the “villages” in a suburb of Manila. So I went out after work and his daughter was dressed up like some kind of a creature — I don’t remember what — but it was probably from some movie or something and she had a couple of her friends with her, also dressed for trick or treating. We started down her street and knocked on the first door and no one answered. The next house had the porch light on — a good sign. So she knocked on the door. The door was opened by what looked to be a pretty old woman. She took one look, screamed, and slammed the door. We were all a little surprised and were just about to turn away and leave when the door opened again. The woman threw a large bucket of water on us — and, continued to scream. 
Just a word of warning — apparently Halloween isn’t celebrated in the Philippines. At least it wasn’t back then….
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