Feliz Año Nuevo...Muy MUY Feliz

Participating in a country´s holidays is truly a special experience. You learn about it´s traditions, it´s history, it´s culture and you also gain a twinkling sense of pride for that country, even though it is not your own. This brings you and your visiting country, along with it´s people, closer and any uncomfortableness you may have felt being a foreigner goes out the window. The people don´t care where you are from because here you are now, at an important time, joining them in celebration. But when you are celebrating something everyone in the world celebrates, this feeling is elevated to an extreme level. Celebrating the new year means celebrating the end of the bad and the hope for the good, starting over, a sense of accomplishing what you have been dreaming of-this year it can happen, this year I can do it...All things that are so similar and so relatable language and culture do not apply. I got to celebrate the New Year in Ecuador this year, and I learned a thing or two about how it´s done.

Firecrackers begin to go off the morning of December 31st, but unfortunately with no respect to what time it is. The day is spent with family and friends, just like in many other places, but there is one tradition I have never heard of and it looks a little something like this:

These are men. Specifically my host sister´s friends who have dressed up in womens clothes and halloween masks. The point of this: to make money of course! In Ecuador, there is a tradition of making 3-dimensional dummies out of cardboard, dressing them up usually to look like a member of the family, and burning them at midnight. These are called "años viejos" (old years) and they represent all the bad of the previous year. Everyone and their mother (because, here, you would never be without her on new years eve) has one or more of these años viejos, including the two men in the picture above. They are dressed as women because they are widowers of the años viejos and now have to beg for money to survive, which usually involves a rather hilarious set of dance moves. The story is interesting by itself, but what is even more interesting is that nearly every single car that passed by these boys stopped, laughed, and gave them money. I couldn´t believe it-all I could think about was how annoyed people would get if this were done in much of the United States. Imagine having, I forgot this detail, two boys holding a rope across the middle of the street (a busy one, no less) making you slow down while two other boys, dressed in stupid looking clothes and masks shake their butts at you and ask, no BEG for money. To say the least, I would be very annoyed. But not here! It didn´t take long for us to make $16 (which, even though the US dollar is used here, is equivalent to about triple that) and in our excitement seven of us went out and shared 2 very large pizzas.

But the party did not end there! I was lucky enough to join my mama and hermana to a member of the family´s house to bring in the new year. To be short and sweet, this included, but was not limited to, burning the años viejos on the street corner along with papers where we each wrote down something that took place in the past year that we hope won´t happen in 2011, eating 12 grapes representing 12 personal wishes we have for the coming year, setting off fireworks, throwing lilies on the ground, running around the block with backpacks on in hopes for a vacation ("Europa! Europa!" was shouted down the street), and other things that I must have missed in all the excitement. Then my sister took me out to celebrate with a younger crowd until roughly 7 the next morning.

What struck me most about all this tradition was how utterly ridiculous it is to wait around all night for a giant ball to fall down an even bigger pole. This is something I suddenly do not understand.

It could at least explode.