Felíz Año!

This was without a doubt the best New year´s celebration of my life! It was crazy, pandimonium, out of control, wild, good old fashioned fun. Kim and Emily and I got together before hand at my house for some black eyed peas. I wanted a little of my American tradition to be involved. For those of you back home who don´t know this one, black eyed peas on New Year´s ensures good luck. We had some champagne and Emily painted Kim´s face and we were ready to go. A tradition here is to dress in costume on New Year´s Eve when you go out. So, here we are at about 11:00 Sunday night...I was a "Super Pear" with Iñaki and Irene who were a Super Tomatoe and another Super Pear. It has to do with some joke I´ve been told a couple of times, but still don´t understand. But, the pear part works in english as a joke for me, as Mom and Kev pointed out, because I´m a Super Au Pair, hardy har. Anyhow, we headed over to Iñaki´s to work on my costume and partake in some Spanish traditions.

New Year´s here is more of a family affair and Iñaki, Irene, their mom Dori and their abuela were finishing up a dinner together when we got there. We attempted to chat for a bit, until midnight when twelve gongs could be heard on the TV, similar to something that might happen on Dick Clark´s Rockin´Eve, and we ate one grape with each gong. We had to go fast, but got more good luck for the year by chowing down. Red underwear also helps I´m told.

Irene, Iñaki and I all worked on our costumes and got them ready to go. The result at about 2:30 A.M. was this fabulous fruit basket...

From there, Dori dropped us all off downtown and we were off. It was crazy! Everyone´s your best friend. Here are a bunch of folks we met...

These next two guys were two of whom I seem to always meet on nights out in some form or other. They hear me speaking english and somehow are drawn to me and want to test their lingual skills. I wasn´t so into it... However, these guys were much nicer than one I´d met earlier. A big group of men were dressed as nuns and they´d put balloons up the fronts of their skin-tight habits to look like huge boobs. I decided it´d be a great idea to cop a feel. To my shock and awe, the man I felt up turned around and grabbed my boob too! I was so surprised I didn´t know what to do. It was hilarious. Serves me right for being a pervert. He confessed (pardon the pun) later that he thought I was a man. Pear shaped costumes don´t exactly show off my figure I guess. Anyhow, a hilarious memory.

Just Look at how packed it was in Lo Viejo... wall to wall people all decked out.This is the last bar we attended at 8 A.M. As you can see, the party was still jumping and when we walked outside it was dawning.From there we just roamed around for a little while until we met up with Irene again, trying to find a place to grab breakfast. But, everything was closed. A buddy Irene had brought along had a golden volleyball and we decided it would be a great idea to start playing a game in the street. A few guys in bird costumes walked by and they joined in. Good times.

We were sick of that by about 9 A.M. and mosied down a few blocks to the little snack area. With the booze still wearing off, we decided to dance to the music of the popcorn machine... I have a video of this but it´s taking forever to finalize on YouTube. By 9:30 we were back on the road to Iñaki´s. We were probably 15 minutes away from his house, but it took us like an hour to get there. We danced, we sang, Irene and Iñaki attempted to teach me songs in Spanish... it was great. Here´s the final picture of the last partiers standing on the walk home...

I love this picture because it´s so joyful. We´re all dead tired, have been on our feet all night, it´s freezing cold outside, but we´re still dancing and celebrating.

When we got back to the Mayo abode, Iñaki whipped up some brunch and then we all took naps. Dori invited me to stay for lunch at 3, but there was no way. I thanked her kindly and headed home. I didn´t sleep for the rest of the day because I didn´t want my sleep pattern to be off. I slept from midnight on New Year´s day to 2 on the 2nd. It was marvelous. If I were you, I´d seriously consider coming to Pamplona for New Year´s next year.

If you want to see more pictures, hit up Iñaki´s blog here: http://elqa.livejournal.com/42644.html

I hope you all had happy New Year´s too! I´ve got a scrimmage game thing tonight, but it´s with the good team and we get to wear uniforms. The sad part is I tweaked my ankle yesterday so I´m hoping they have some tape at the game I can do a make shift wrap with. I´ll never forget the many figure eights and stirrups that Karen Hostetter lovingly bestowed upon my ankles. Dar-dar, where are you when I need you my small small friend!?!