Moving along to the evening phase, and the Ecuadorean traditional New Year’s Eve.
Tradition 1: buy an effigy to burn. These are in varying sizes, mostly cartoon characters and made of papier mache. What you do is write down all the bad things that happened to you last year (one to a page). Then you cut a slit in the effigy and drop them all in. At midnight, bonfires spring up in the streets and you throw your effigy on to burn away all the bad stuff!
This is our effigy, Garfield in a Spider Man suit! These are some random photos from the street party.
This was taken at 5 am, and you can see how many people are still in the street. As I write this, it is 10.10 am and they are still at it!
I think pretty much everything we saw last night would have been illegal in Canada — including the young kids holding firecrackers in their hands. But it was great fun and I’m glad I saw it all.
Tradition 2: wear yellow underwear for good fortune all year! We all bought some and wore them — even Michael! I’ll let you guess which ones are which!
I’ll sign off by wishing everyone reading this a Happy New Year, and all the best for an excellent 2016 to you and yours.
Happy New Year, Helen!!
This is all wonderful–glad you’re having such a great time!! I’m envious!!
Looking forward to all your news as time passes.
Keep on living life to the full and I can experience it vicariously!!
Love, Marie
Yellow Underwear – who knew.
Amazing the difference in how every country celebrates NYE in their own distinctive way.
You were still up at 5am!?!
Hope you’ve arrived safely in your 3 month adventure in BA!
Patti
How smart to use the effigy to let go of all that’s not needed moving forward. I love that. I did a similar thing but just with a regular fireplace. Different experience, same effect! You go girl … I can see you’re partying like the locals staying up until the wee hours.