That's right, TWENTY SIXTEEN

New Years. This time of year means something different for everyone. For some, it is time to forget the year past and focus on the future; for others it is a way to celebrate and look forward to what the new year has in store. For me, New Years has never been that important- I would watch the ball drop on TV and then start the next day doing the same things I had done the day before. It wasn't until I had the opportunity to spend New Years with Ronald's family in Ecuador did I really start thinking about what January and the new year means to me.


In Ecuador, New Years is even bigger than Christmas. People party all day and all night, have a huge dinner and most importantly when the clock strikes midnight, they ALL participate in burning the Año Viejo. Now, what on earth is an Año Viejo you might be wondering? Think of a paper mache type pinata or a strange looking stuffed doll with hay. They come in all different sizes and types including cartoon characters, famous political people or athlete that range from small to bigger than life size. Strange right? Now imagine every family in your city out in the street burning these things at exactly midnight. At first glance this is SUCH a strange tradition- why on earth are all these people burning a Ninja Turtle the size of the toddler exactly at midnight? It wasn't until I really learned more about this tradition that I really started to get excited to celebrate this at midnight.


Each person has their own reason for burning the Año Viejo but most of the time it is to signify that one can let go of the year past on focus on the year ahead. It is a gracious way to give the middle finger to the past year and get rid of all the bad things possibly experienced. Now what about the people who had a good year? Well that is the interesting thing about fire; fire is also used to celebrate new life and love among other things. So while others are cursing the year past, others will be jumping and rejoicing in their prosperous year.


It wasn't until we were driving home that night that the burning ritual had such a profound effect on me. We left the party we were at a few minutes after midnight and while I was riding in the tuck bed I saw hundreds of flames and ashes in the streets from the burning of the Año Viejos. I had an overwhelming feeling at that moment about how immense this one tradition was for each person. I didn't know each person's year past and I will never know but every person that night was burning something different and was cleansing a part of their soul for the new year ahead of them. I was then jealous that I had never done something like this before; what a symbolic and freeing feeling to be able to begin the new year with.


All of this thinking really made me stop and look back at all of my New Years to see if I had ever really experienced something like that. This is when I realized that the month of January has actually (as of the past 5 years) always been a month of change and excitement for me. Every January since I have been in college, I have had a life changing event happen in this strange month 1 of 12. I realized that in the Januarys past, I have visited and lived in new countries, I decided to get married and picked up and moved to new states. I have always been very lucky during this month and now understand why I always seem to be restless during this time of year.


The energy I am already getting from 2016 makes me think Ronald and I will be in for some life shaking, adventurous times- so I say, LET'S DO IT!

Also- This is my first blog in a while.. take it easy on yo girl. (please forgive any mistakes)

[Part 2.] A MUSTard READ.

OK… yes, I know it was a little more than a day for this last post, BUT in my defense, I had it all ready to go, I just didn’t have my computer for a week…  You will have to stay tuned to hear all about that adventure filled week. *

As for the first couple of weeks in December they were quite filled with parties and traveling. The first whole week in January is what is called the Quito Festivals. It is a time where everyone in the city has huge parties to celebrate the Independence Day on the 6^th of December. (Except the parties are all week) They have a certain card game that is also played at this time called Cuarenta (or 40). I will now say that I am an EXPERT Cuarenta player and actually beat my teacher in a game when we played…

So after that fun filled week, I went finally started traveling and headed down to a town called Cuenca. Cuenca is a beautiful city with a Historic Center that blows a lot of other towns out of the water. There are a ton of Churches, and many different shops/restaurants/vendors everywhere selling things.  I had a wonderful time there and actually was angry I didn’t plan to spend MORE time there. I thought I was going by myself but while having lunch with two of my classmates, I dropped the idea to them and they seemed up for the challenge. I had the luxury of taking a flight to Cuenca, so I got there a day before the boys and had time to explore and walk around the city by myself.

 While I was eating supper alone, I saw another man (who looked as if he spoke English, and was also traveling) eating as well, so after I finished most of my meal, I got up the courage** and went up to this complete stranger in hopes of making a new friend. It totally worked. It was nice to have someone to drink a beer and have a conversation with. And as it turned out, he wanted to go to the same city I did the next day, so we made plans to meet up when my other two boys got here to go to Chordoleg.
 

Chordeleg is known for their silver jewelry and market. So the four of us met up in the morning and took the hour bus ride to this great little city in hopes of having a great day. Now, I had a wonderful day.. looking through all the jewelry shops and trying my best to converse with the people in the shops… the boys on the other hand, well let’s just say it is a little ironic I went to a town known for their jewelry with 3 boys. They didn’t even go in one store because that just isn’t what most boys are interested in. However, they allowed me to shop and never rushed me to hurry up and pick something out. When I finally did pick something out, I even bartered with the man and got him to sell a ring to me for 25 dollars!

The next day we decided to go to The Cajas National Park.  The Cajas is a wonderful little national park with tons and tons of lakes scattered through the mountains. Getting there was a bit of a bust because the bus driver didn’t let us out at the correct point, so we had to wait on the side of the road for another bus to drive by to bring us 8 km back up the mountain so we could get going on our hike. (So on a side note make sure the guy who takes your money is on the bus or atleast know where you are going… OTHERWISE they just blow right past your stop.) It was a cold day but we figured that once we started to hike we would be just fine and honestly we were. Come to find out however, this whole entire park is basically one big wetland so needless to say our shoes and socks were soaked by the end of our trek. We even managed to get lost for a little while and had to do some major mountain climbing in order to get to the road instead of turning around and hiking back for 3 hours. Thank gosh there was another girl with me, otherwise I would have felt very VERY miserable complaining to the boys about how much it sucked getting lost.

The trail that we took was one that didn’t bring us directly back to where we started and so again we were in the middle of nowhere waiting for a bus to drive by in order to bring us back to Cuenca. So while waiting, we did what any group of 20 somethings do best… started walking with our thumbs out. A ton of cars passed us, but finally a very nice man decided to pull over and give us a ride home. He had a huge van and he was the only one in it! *** We had a great conversation on the ride back, and he dropped us off right close to our hostel. So now I can officially cross off Hitch Hiking off of the bucket list I don’t actually have.

Again, you will have to wait a couple days to hear about my most recent travels and holiday festivities… but until then, I hope that everyone had a Happy Christmas and made a cake to help Jesus celebrate his birthday.  

 

*I would say tomorrow but you know how that went last time… whoops.

**Maybe it was the wine…. Liquid courage is still courage in my book

*** No, the van wasn’t White… Yes, the van had windows… No there were no blood stains or faint screams coming from anywhere.