A Harry Potter Halloween

Every 90s kid probably remembers badly wanting to transfer from Muggle school into Hogwarts. You can imagine how pumped I was when our campus gym hosted a series of Harry Potter fitness events on Halloween. That entailed me getting up at 6 AM to attend a spinning (stationary bike) class that turned out to be full before it started! My friends and I did our cardio + squat/bench routine anyway and even had time to spare for a nice breakfast before class. One participant was kind enough to give me her magical chocolate frog box, which contained a massive hunk of milk chocolate and a holographic wizard card of Salazar Slytherin! To my surprise, when it finally split open with a knife, I discovered it was solid milk chocolate (don't know why I expected rice crispy material). At least when I'm surrounded by dementors I won't be in short supply ;)

After going into research lab and analyzing data for a few hours, I returned for Zumba, which started out with a hilarious Harry Potter theme + dubstep remix and continued in an hour-long, sweat-drenched session of dancing, jump squatting, salsa, hip hop cardio. The souvenir for this activity was a massive wand with a hole at the end for my phoenix feather placement, I suppose. We dabbled in trivia, sipped butterbeer (cream soda + root beer + vanilla ice cream), and I even grabbed a tiny pumpkin that I named "Pumpkin 9 and 3/4" after the famous platform. Trick or treating this year would have been a fun last hoorah but Ohio weather decided to dump rain all over Halloween ... classic. Instead of being soaked to the bone and miserable, I opted for a cozier approach to the evening: blogging, watching Ghostbusters, and drinking a chai soymilk latte while studying the thyroid. Happy Halloween!

Readers - how did you celebrate Halloween this year?

Ash-Lee Ketchum

HALLOWEEN ON NOVEMBER 1ST. After 12 weeks of brain-hurt, my first medical school block is over and successfully passed! Since our final exam was the day after Halloween, spooky fun festivities were postponed and makeshift costumes hastily thrown together. I was impressed with the creative DIY characters my classmates came up with - everything from a whole squadron of Beanie Babies to what looked like Miley Cyrus's dad to internet memes. I went as Ash Ketchum (well, Ash-lee since I made no effort to boy-ify my hair) from Pokemon because surprisingly I already had everything in my closet: thrifted Goodwill denim vest, studded biker gloves from a Chictopia reward, the iconic League hat that I stole from my brother a long time ago. I even contoured my nose with eyeshadow and drew the anime cheek squigglies. The only things missing were my giant stuffed animal Pikachu still at home in Cali and state-of-the-art tech: Pokeballs and Pokedex. Hope your Halloweens were just as fun! Photo cred: Marie

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