Happy Village New Year

Before the clock struck 12 on New Year's Eve, fireworks were already being used. So before it was even the New Year, the neighborhood was plenty noisy already. This year we chose, or rather just didn't bother, buying fireworks. As fireworks that are of the highest quality are expensive, most are, just recently, illegal. So it seemed pointless on buying fireworks, when everybody else had theirs and we could watch for free.

At this time, my aunt, my cousin and I were outside of our house. Our direct neighbors weren't home, so the street our house was on was free of people, not including us. My aunt suggested that we get inside before 12 o'clock. She also mentioned a far away neighbor firing live guns during New Year. She explained that it was somehow better to be inside -- my aunt spoke too soon.

Saying that we were actually inside our house, we weren't technically behind closed walls. We were in our garage only separated from the outside by a metal gate which had a design that can allow cats leave and enter the garage as they pleased.

Staying in the garage, I sat on a bench that was made of cement(?), my cousin behind me, my aunt looking outside, and my grandmother sitting on her rocking chair. In that moment, what caught my eye was a kwitis (a firecracker, attached to a stick, that supposedly propels itself upward and then blows up) heading towards my car(it really isn't), which was parked right outside the garage. Lucky enough, the kwitis had dodged the car. Unlucky enough, it went straight towards my cousin and I. Now, if a person holding a gun points it at a little girl but has me blocking the way, chances are I'd be the one who'd get it -- no shit, Einstein. But this was not the case. The kwitis' stick was too heavy and had gone down after it propelled itself upward. It went straight towards us, and had managed to miss me and hit my cousin instead. The few moments later was a loud BANG!  and then the cries of my little cousin. She had suffered only slight burns and is fine now. But I can pretty much say, she's not going to be hanging in the garage next New Year's Eve. After all the drama, my twelve year old cousin had gotten over the incident and had managed to eat during the Media Noche ("midnight meal").

Earlier that night, my friend invited me and some others to go to his house at around 1 o'clock to have a few drinks to celebrate our yearly tradition of staying up until 7 o'clock in the morning. And 2 puking friends  and 5-1L Red Horse Bottles later, we walked around the village and did just that. It was nice spending New Year's at the village. After the sun blinded us with its presence, we all went home one by one.

Happy New Year, Everybody.

PS. This would have made a good first blog to write about, but I wanted to start blogging because I thought of the actual first blog I made.