Well, it's official! The year is at it's end! Whereas I was previously accustomed for 17 years to waking on this day by the sound of distant booms and bombels (fireworks), and strings of popping crackers in the streets of Suriname, here I instead woke to the sound of... Samson loudly chewing on his bowl of Whiskas, and more distantly the sound of eery Asian music blaring from the temple up the road.
In fact, I believe I haven't heard a single bombel yet on this fine New Year's Eve day. What a shame! Traditionally, in Suriname, at noon on today (which, as of the time of this writing, today is actually yesterday over there, but whatever), most of the businesses in town would hang a pagara (a long string of firecrackers) through the streets of the downtown business districts, and there would be full on street parties, music, drinking, etc. Crowds of people would flock to watch the firecrackers crackle and pop their way through the streets to wave goodbye to the old year. I remember most distinctly the feeling of pushing through the crowds to avoid the nasty smoke that resulted, while trying to keep up with my Dad, who devotedly filmed every single pagara in town. When the smoke died down and the crowds thinned out and there was nothing left for Dad to film, we would go around the piles of red paper and burned out pagaras on the sidewalks and look for firecrackers that survived (hadn't exploded yet) and collected them for our own fireworks collection to display later that evening.
Then on New Year's Eve, the sky would be full of colorful fireworks displays in all shapes and sizes, while we piddled around in our driveway with whatever our own small collection of fireworks happened to be for the year. It was always a most looked forward to event, and one I haven't participated in for several years. I always remember the feeling of anticipation leading up to New Year's Eve as a child, and I haven't felt that in a long time!
Here in Taiwan, businesses will usually do some small fireworks displays shortly leading up to midnight, with bigger ones right at midnight. The last couple of years, we had parties at our house and then we all went up to the roof of our building (13 stories up) to watch at midnight. This year, we're going to TGI Fridays for dinner, then driving our scooters out to a local mountain with a view to overlook the city and wait for the fireworks. Law generally prohibits the locals from doing their own fireworks, although small ones are sold at local stores and rarely shot off in front of houses. It's strange to me, that, since most of the fireworks in Suriname were imported from China and sold by Chinese businessemen. Prior to moving to Taiwan, I thought the New Year's Eve fireworks craze would be rather similar to Suriname, given the Chinese fascination with the bombs. I guess I was wrong.
Well, Christmas has come and gone, and it was a very nice one here for us. We had a small gathering of close friends on Chrismas Eve and exchanged gifts for each other after a nice dinner and a reading of the Christmas Story by candlelight followed by prayers of thanks. My wonderful and very observant boyfriend gave me a Kindle 3G touch, which I'd been mentioned here and there for months I wanted, and happened to be the gift on top of my high pile of gifts for the night, therefore the first one I opened and set a very great tone for the gift giving! It was completely unexpected and a very happy surprise. I was actually going to order one for myself with several Amazon gift cards I had received, which can now be used for books! Most of the gifts I gave were homemade pieces of art, since I took the semester off and am waiting to go back to school, I had lots of free time and I do enjoy arts and crafts and the like. But I think everything was well received. I'm actually rather proud of a few of them that I think were particularly well done.
On Christmas Day, our church small group had a breakfast/caroling/gift exchange in the morning, and in the evening we hosted a larger dinner for our more extended missionary friends and family. I also got to Skype with mom and dad for the first time, and even though they could see me and I couldn't see them, it was still great to call home for Christmas. Yay for technology!
So then, there goes another year! Why do they seem to go so fast? This year started off not great for me, but I learned a few very important lessons, then things picked up when I unexpectedly got to visit my family and be at David's wedding in July.
And for next year? So far my plan is to return to Chinese study in March, full time for one more semester, then part time as I hope to re-sign a contract for more hours with Jackson for the following school year. Aaron and I plan to visit his mother on Cape Cod in July during our break. And that's as far as I've got planned at this point! I've always thought 2012 would be a great year, simply because my birthday will fall on 12/12/12 and that's just awesome. So we'll see if I was right.
Um.... ok. I can't think of anything more that would be of interest to blog about. I've been flying through books since I got my Kindle, and this afternoon presents a fine opportunity to finish another book.
So, happy 2012! And I hope you all get to see some fireworks this evening. :D
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