Today I woke up late and finally got to recover from last
night without sleep. I basically did nothing all morning and just cleaned my
room and packed up for Vina, where we were going to spend New Year’s. After
lunch, I had a quick Skype conversation with Emily, which was the first time in
over a month that I’ve talked to any of my friends. It was actually really sad,
and I feel horrible for letting us get so out of touch that talking is a little
bit awkward. I really love my friends and I still think of them like nothing
has changed in these 5 months I’ve been gone but I know it has and I know I need to do a lot
better job of staying in contact. It’s just a lot harder when we have so much
less in common now. We packed up the car and left the house around 2. We were
expecting about 5 hours of traffic because everyone wants to go to Vina for New
Years because the firework spectacular is one of the most famous in the world.
Along the way there was a fire blocking the main route into Vina, and I was
scared for a few minutes there that we weren’t going to be able to get there,
but it ended up just being a very long wait in very slow traffic. We actually
got out go the car at one point in the middle of the highway because the cars
had been stopped for so long. When we finally got to Valparaiso around 8, I
realized that the wait in traffic had been well worth it. The apartment was on
the 12th floor looking directly over the port with a perfect view of
the whole bay, where fireworks would shoot up from a bunch of different points.
It was right on the water and there were already people setting up tents and
cars to watch the fireworks on the street in front of the apartment. We started
cooking dinner, which Nancy and I had decided to make out of only a bunch of
finger food hors devours. We sat out on the balcony and ate and talked for a
while, and then we put on the cheesy New Years hats we had bought and took a
bunch of pictures. By that time it was almost midnight, so we watched a little
TV about celebrations going on in other countries, and then we went out to the
balcony to watch the fireworks and ring in 2014. When the clock strikes
midnight, it is a tradition in Chile to hug everyone around you, so first we
all hugged and wished each other a happy new year, and then the fireworks
started. It was absolutely breathtaking. There was a huge display right in
front of the hotel where the port was, and then other displays scattered around
the arc of the bay. They were all in perfect time with each other, and the show
didn’t stop for a full 25 minutes. It was the best firework spectacle I’ve ever
seen. Chileans have a lot of superstitious traditions for New Years. We all
walked around with American dollar bills in our shoes for wealth in 2014, we
had to hug someone of the opposite sex for the first hug of the New Year for
luck in romance, and then we all had to stand on top of a chair holding a
suitcase to be able to travel in 2014. Apparently there are a lot of other
traditions too that we didn’t get to do. After the fireworks, we put on our
sweatshirts and went to walk around the town. We walked all the way to the main
plaza where there was a huge party.
It reminded me a lot of New Years in New
Orleans where I was last year. It was body to body people as far as the eye
could see everyone drunk and everyone still drinking. There was foam coming out
of one of the clubs and people were playing in it, so naturally I went over and
started dancing with them. I absolutely thrive on that atmosphere of pure fun
and happiness and craziness, but the rest of my family was more reserved and
horrified by the level of drunken people, so we had to leave after about an
hour.
It was a really cool sight though and I was happy that they even stayed that
long because I know they only stayed because I was happy. When we got home it
was about 3 am, and I was pretty tired, so we all went to sleep. It was a great
start to the New Year, which I know will be the best year I have ever lived.
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