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There's nothing quite like wandering home covered in glow-in-the-dark stars, bedecked in wig and beauty-queen sash, or toting eight plastic baby dolls* -- and knowing that 99.9 percent of the people you pass on the street have absolutely no idea what that crazy foreigner is up to now.

Like McDonalds and Starbucks, though, Halloween is (yavaş, yavaş) beginning to franchise itself around the world. We have a friendly neighborhood kostumcu (costume seller) on İstiklal Caddesi, and the vendors in the Balık Pazarı scatter some scary masks among their evil-eye beads this time of year. Employees of a Turkish firm even showed up at this year's party in elaborate outfits -- apparently as a colleague bonding exercise -- and the local zombies doing the synchronized "Thriller" dance were second to none.

As a Turkish friend recently said, "Why do foreigners get to have all the fun holidays like egg painting and Christmas tree decorating... and we get to slaughter sheep?"

Still, celebrating American holidays abroad never fails to remind you that you are indeed far from home, as the things needed to celebrate properly are generally hard to find and/or expensive. But we make do.

The forward-thinking pick up costume accessories on visits to Amerikastan, while the crafty among the group invite the rest of us over to paper-mache mummy and Frankenstein heads and cut bats out of poster board. And who really liked all that candy corn anyway?

* Yes, a friend dressed up this year as the Octomom. Turks didn't get that joke.