(Belated) Happy New Year!

Hey guys!  Happy New Year to everyone or, as they say around here, Yai Yai Yai Yai Yaioooooo!  Last year I did Christmas in the village and New Years in the city – this year I switched it up.  And this was definitely the superior way to do it, let me tell you!

Christmas in the city was great.  Some former Peace Corps Volunteers-turned-new-embassy-foreign-service types (really awesome people, and still closer in age and outlook to Volunteers than foreign service professionals) threw a semi pot luck party to start it off.  Dude.  You have no idea how good the food was.

I mean, Thanksgiving at the Ambassador’s maaaybe beats it.  Maybe.  And one of the Peace Corps bosses (also a former Volunteer – and in Suriname, actually) threw a burrito party once.  But I mean.  This was pretty close.  Maybe for the win.  Hard to say.  There was a full turkey, salad, Mexican something, a variety of vegetable platters and whatnot.  And for dessert – THERE WERE BUCKEYES.  Yes.  I know.  Buckeyes are not the ultimate dessert; that is and always will be cheesecake.  But that’s at least partially because Buckeyes can qualify as a sweet snack, appropriate for tea parties and…shoot.  I just learned something about myself.  I can’t spell…that French word that means little finger food thingies.  Dang.   Anyway, Buckeyes are the best in the candy/cookie category hands down.  And if cheesecake knew how to lose, that’s where my money would be.

So that was a fun Christmas party.  Hanging out with a gang of expats and Peace Corps folks, eating good food, and…well we may have watched some Monty Python clips on youtube.  Not sure why, but always appropriate.

On actual Christmas, a different member of Peace Corps staff and a good friend of mine threw another party.  This one featured Tur-duck-en.  If you don’t know what it is, look it up.  It’s ridiculous.  I respectfully request that someone attempt Tur-ba-duck-en soon.  If they haven’t already.

Anyway, the Christmas week in the city was meant to be pure relaxation, but pretty quickly it became work.  Because I got free stuff!!!  Yay!  Free stuff!  That is to say that the money for my river landing project finally made it into Suriname!  The cement donation also came through. 

So I sorta took a break from the break and worked feverishly for a few days.  More on that in a separate post, however.  I thought about coming back to site with the stuff, but there wasn’t really room in the truck for me and they weren’t likely to start work right away anyway….so then I went back to taking a break!  And I’m glad I did, because that’s when all the above food stuff happened.

On New Years Eve Eve, or so, I came back to my village.  I am so glad I did.  It was AWESOME in the village.  Just a constant ongoing party with fireworks, food, drinks, dancing – everything.  It was a super fun couple of days.  There was also a boatload (literally – they were on a 45 meter sailing ship for 3 months) of Dutch high school students and their teachers, and they turned out to be super cool.  So just all sorts of fun social adventures.

On actual New Year’s Eve, I baked cakes and prepped drinks and then went wandering with my main posse of dudes.  We went from house to house, including mine, and basically just ate and drank and danced our way through about half the village.  Then we jumped on a boat and did the same thing in two other villages.  It was super fun.  Really just super fun.  There was significant silliness.  Yes, silliness.  So much so, in fact, that I took a nap after that.

And then it was time for fireworks!  There is no other way to describe it except as an orgy of fireworks.  More than three people, no socks, and fireworks everywhere.  Just lucky no one lost a finger or something!  So much fun though.  Most of the village gathered at the ball field and set off as many firecrackers as possible to welcome in the New Year.  At some point there was a concert, but I was tired and couldn’t really hear.

But an absolutely awesome couple of days!