Happy New Year!

After I posted last night we walked down to the church for the New Year's Eve party. It was louder than Susan and I liked, and Ben had a headache, so the three of us came home about 10:30. Samuel got home about an hour later, and we watched fireworks.

I did not take any pictures, although I did record a video clip, more to record the sounds than for the video itself. By 11:30, rockets and explosions were all around us, and the intervals of relative silence became quite small. Of course, even those intervals were relative, because we could still hear the fireworks from a little farther away. At midnight there was a sort of crescendo, but fireworks continued hot and heavy for at least the next 40 minutes, and it was only around 1:00 a.m. that they finally began to taper off. Some of them were sufficiently loud and close to set off car alarms, some of which did not time out for an hour or more.

We enjoyed the fireworks, but we were discussing the best approach to silencing a very loud and persistent alarm, and decided that a sledgehammer would be effective, but that with all the fireworks, either a stick of dynamite or an anti-tank rocket would be the way to go. Despite the car alarms, it was a magnificent experience, and our apartment was a beautiful place to watch from.

Today was rather laid back. Samuel and I went for a walk this afternoon, and bought ice cream cones. There were quite a few stores open, but they were all the little family stores, where the family lives right on the premises. Then this evening I watched the Rose Bowl in Spanish. I picked up a little vocabulary ["flag" is "pañuelo" which is what they call a scarf here in Ecuador]. On the other hand, you really don't need to understand what is said to keep up with a football game on TV.

Anyhow, we are doing great, and hope you are all doing the same.