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| Ina and I in our foam "2015" flapper hats |
Happy New Year from Cochabamba!
In many ways, the celebrations were very similar to the ones in the US - parties, midnight toasts, "2015" hats/glasses, things like that - but of course, everything had a Bolivian twist. Here's a little about what New Year's Eve was like...
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With the rice replaced with the usual amounts of meat, I
think this would be Dad's dream food. |
New Year's Eve dinner was definitely the best one of the year at the orphanage (not a high bar, but, still). We had a dish called pique macho, which is usually French fries topped with heaps of different kinds of meat and a few tomatoes and hot pepper slices. At Madre de Dios, we had the budget version - only one kind of meat, supplemented by a side of rice - but it was still good. We even got pepper slices and ketchup, making it the most flavorful dish we've had there.
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| Fricase |
As I've mentioned before, Bolivians love to eat, and New Year's is no exception. I went to a party with some of my friends and was surprised that - right after the clock struck midnight and everyone toasted and hugged each other - everyone sat down for a meal. Apparently, there is no better way to start off the new year than by eating, especially eating pork. We had fricase, a soup made up of a not-very-spicy chili broth, big pieces of pork, and huge corn kernals.
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| Posing safely from the girls' side of the room |
There was a lot of dancing on New Year's. The girls' home that I work in threw a party, where they invited the boys from another home within the Amanecer organization. We cleared the cafeteria of tables, set up chairs along the walls, and turned on music and flashing lights. It was a lot like middle school dances in the US: girls sitting on one side, boys on the other, lots of kids trying to get their friends to ask the friends of their crush to dance with them, very little actually dancing with people of the opposite gender. The kids did dance with their friends a good amount, though, and some of them had pretty good moves!
The party that my friends and I went to later also had a lot of dancing to different kinds of music: cumbia, salsa, bachata, merengue, pop music. I loved the variety of music here, and having the chance to dance to things like salsa and bachata!
Apparently, as soon as all of the panettone vendors get rid of their stock of cake from Christmas, they switch to selling good luck charms. All over Cochabamba, the streets were lined with people selling things to bring prosperity to the new year.
It is widely known here that you need to wear new yellow underwear on New Year's if you want money and new red underwear if you want love, so there were carts and carts of ladies selling nothing but red and yellow panties. There were also people selling stacks of fake money that apparently you can burn to summon real money in your life in the year to come, as well as little replicas of bigger things people might want: houses, visas, cars, llamas.
When I took some of the girls to the market a few days before New Year's Eve, they insisted on buying little stones with different colors, meant to bring prosperity in different areas of your life: work, family, love, money, school, health, and prosperity (in general, I suppose, although I was a little confused about it). Even though I said I didn't believe in it, they wouldn't let us leave until I bought a few, too, so now I have a tiny packet of pebbles I have to carry around in my purse until 2016, lest everything start to go terribly in those areas. I'll let you know if it ends up being an exceptionally lucky year.
And, readers, I hope you all have wonderful and luck-filled years, even if you didn't wear the right underwear or buy your mini llamas in time!
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