Fall Holidays

Leeds is well known for good shopping and a huge party scene. The city has a wide array of clubs and bars for anyone and everyone. "Fancy dress" (known as "costumes" to Americans) doesn't require an excuse in Leeds. Birthdays, Otley Runs (One thing that "everyone should do" before leaving the city is an Otley Run- a crawl of some 20 pubs in the area. To do this, one must first gather a large group and choose a theme, then dress up ridiculously.), fun night outs, sports team outings, and general evenings on the town are all valid excuses to dress up as a bumble bee or flower with 15 of your closest friends. I still manage to restrict my costumes to designated days, though.
Kim and I, wearing stapled fabric and a sheet for Halloween. We spent the evening in the basement of an apartment. The party hosts had been paid by the University to open their doors to international students.

The following week we had Bonfire Night. I asked a wide variety of British students from all areas of the country what exactly this was. The best answer I got was something like "I don't know, Guy Fawkes was an evil guy who tried to blow up parliament, so we burn him every November 5th." Harsh. Despite the the near-complete dissociation of the actual history of the Gunpowder Plot (a group of Roman Catholics trying to fight religious intolerance) with the evening and the fact that Guy Fawkes actually had a very minor role in the goings on, the holiday made for a fun evening.
The bonfire was located in a large field completely blocked off to everyone. Most impressive fire I've ever seen, certainly.
It was also the most impressive crowd I've ever seen. We went early enough to get a spot near to the front, but the mob there was endless. Every direction looked just like this, the whole way around the fire. The group was very mixed, from bunches of university students, to parents with 5 year-olds perched on their shoulders, to teens and twenties climbing trees with liter bottles of Strongbow (the UK's most popular hard cider) while smoking marijuana (actually quite impressive... what hands were they climbing with?).
The night ended with a fireworks display, and then the masses headed to a carnival set up in a field close to the bonfire. My camera battery died, but imagine a small-ish fair with typical rides and games and food booths completely packed with happy people. It took about a half hour to move 20 feet. We spent hours at it. :-)