New Year´s Eve

I was fortunate to be invited to a New Year´s Eve party with the family that Anne stayed with when she was studying in Ecuador. It was super to learn how a local family celebrates the holiday. Very cool.....

The fireworks begin the night before and continue throughout New Year´s Eve. Not steady but whenever someone gets in the mood. Naturally there are no laws against fireworks here. Then around the middle of the day on New Year´s Eve they begin closing streets to traffic and building stages on almost every block. On the stages they build a scene using what looks like paper mache objects. These are quite elaborate. One scene had a podium with a George Bush figure behind and a reporter throwing a shoe. And there were lots of signs posted with writing, presumably with jokes about the scene. Other scenes were about local political issues. And next to the stage would be a band playing (again with the wonderful music). The bands and stages got in full force around 9pm.

We walked about 20 blocks to the party (admiring the stages along the way) and were warmly greeted by Anne´s family. Naturally I had celebrity status as the mother of Anne. The MaMa is most gracious and we talked using my broken Spanish for quite a while. Nubia and Jobita the sisters are great cooks and the food kept coming about every half hour. Muy Bueno! Chips and avacado dip, grilled meats, vegies, and of course lots of wine. After midnight the pastries were served.

The big event of the celebration is the buring of the muñeca´s. There are what look like scarecrow people. They are not made of staw however, but the idea is that they represent people and are anywhere from 3 to 6 feet tall. They are tied to cars or posted on the side walk and paraded for days and ours was posted in the patio for the party. They are given masks and each family identifies who the muñeca is supposed to represent. In our party, the muñeca represented Clever the brother. The muñeca is to be burned, signifying the passing of the old year and perhaps the passing of bad luck. Around 11:30 pm Clever began to read his will, which took about 30 minutes. He left each member of the party something, which was supposed to be quite humorous. His reading was quite dramatic and everyone laughed a lot. Then at midnight, the muñeca was taken into the street and burned. While it was burning each member of the family jumped over the fire for good luck. As we looked down the street, we could see several fires burning and people even added cardboard to their fires to make them bigger. Can you imagine hundreds of fires burning the streets of Salisbury? We left shortly after and as we went through the town to our hostel, the streets were filled with smoke and fires. It looked like something out of an armegedon movie set. The next morning the streets were clean with not a sign of the festivities.

How we celebrate the New Year seems quite boring compared to this tradition. But it only worked because it is warm enough at night to be outside. Our days are about 70 degrees but the nights get down into the 30´s. (Yeh! I¨m finally figuring out this keyboard and how to make a question mark and apostrophe) Our students experienced similar parties with their families, some saying that they attended two parties, one on Tuesday night and one on Wednesday night. One with friends and another with family and each time burning muñecas. Lots of fun.