Saturday, January 14, 2012

Happy (Belated) New Year!

Panamanians are good at throwing a party. Just today someone asked me when the month of the US independence celebration. I told him we celebrate a day, not a month, and it’s July 4th. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent about the past 10 New Year’s in my aunt’s basement playing trivial pursuit, gorging on cookies, and throwing M&Ms, but I’ve always thought of New Year’s as a pretty laid back holiday.

We started out the morning with 2 hours of church which included the yearly baptisms. This was followed by a procession of saints to a few points in town and then chicken rice and potato salad back at the church. I took a nap so I could stay up past my normal bedtime of 8pm.

The first party started at sunset which seems reasonable seeing as it’s New Year’s and the main event is at midnight. We ate chicken rice and potato salad, the traditional party foods, and then I headed down the hill to party number two. This is where it got a little unreasonable. It would be at least a 30 minute hike up a rocky hill to my house whenever I got to leaving.

I had all intentions of heading home well before midnight and ringing in the New Year from the comfort of my bed, but you get roped into dancing a couple 15 minute long tipico songs and it’s midnight before you know it! And you can’t pass up more party food!

As a representation of the old year, a life size doll of a man is made, el muneco viejo, with a gourd for a head and stuffed with dried grass and fire crackers. He’s set on fire at midnight to represent moving on to the New Year. Did I mention he has fire crackers in his belly?!?!

I don’t know if you were counting, but that’s three meals of chicken rice and potato salad (plus a breakfast and early dinner). It’s probably a good thing there was a hike involved!

The hike back up was actually really neat; even though I was tired. Since we were hiking in a valley, the music from our party accompanied us all the way up the hill. We stopped a few times to just look out at the fireworks over the city down below and in neighboring communities on other ridges. There were faint flashes of light from behind the hills that were the telltale sign of more celebrations. It was like we were sharing in the celebration of the New Year with thousands of our closest neighbors – maybe that’s what it’s like at Times Square… but without the cages!

Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous New Year!

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