Los Anos Viejos y El Ano Nuevo

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I have never been in a big city for New Year’s Eve, and let me tell you, this day was quite the experience. It all started right after Christmas, when people started selling thousands of masks on the streets of Quito. My Ecuadorian friend explained to me that New Year’s Eve is kind of like Halloween, in that you can dress up however you want. A ton of people wear masks all day, and a lot of men dress up like women and dance in front of cars and ask for money.

People on the streets also started selling big cloth dolls for the Años Viejos (the old year). Everyone here either buys these things to burn and/or they make a display to burn. It’s a tradition to burn something from the old year to clean yourself of it so you can start fresh in the New Year.

Like a good Ecuadorian on New Year’s Eve, I put on my yellow underwear (for money) and tied a red string around it (for love), and picked out some things I wanted to burn for the Año Viejo (some pictures and some people and things written on the back of them) so I could start my year out fresh. (Thank goodness I already had a pair of yellow underwear, or I would have felt obligated to buy a pair off the streets from one of the many people selling yellow underwear, boxers, and bras.) Then, I went with a two other volunteers and their visitors to meet our Ecuadorian friend, who took us to a free heavy metal concert in an outdoor concert area. It was definitely one of the most interesting scenes I have ever seen - so many Ecuadorians, young and old, babies with their parents, dressed in black, heavy metal type clothing, all enjoying this intense heavy metal music. It was not the kind of music I would normally choose to listen to, but it was a great experience, as well as interesting to see a very different side to Ecuador.

Then our friend took us to the main street downtown where there were a ton of displays for the Año Viejo - displays kind of like floats for the Macy’s Day Parade. There were displays with scenes from cartoon characters to political leaders. Multiple times throughout the day (downtown Quito and in a smaller town), I saw displays of people with a ton of shoes getting ready to throw at Bush. There was also a display of that said “Get out gringos” from a certain town in Ecuador. My friend told me that it’s in reference to the oil companies. The street was PACKED - apparently Quito is one of the best places to be in all of Ecuador for New Year’s, and there were a ton of people from all over Ecuador and other Latin American countries downtown.

We went to a bar and sat around and talked, and then we went back to our friend’s house. New Year’s Eve is more of a family celebration, which I loved. She invited us to eat dinner with her family, and then we went to the downtown of their smaller town and there was a live band a people everywhere playing loud music, sitting with their años viejos, ready to burn them when the time came.

At midnight, we ate 12 grapes (with the seeds in it!!) in a minute - and I have to say that I ate them the fastest and beat all the Ecuadorians. (You’re supposed to make one wish for each of the 12 grapes, but I ate them too fast to make a wish.) Then a bunch of people made a huge pile of cloth dolls to burn, and we added our stuff to burn in that pile. As we watched it burn, the music started, and everyone from 2 year olds to abuelitos (grandparents) started dancing to bring in the New Year. I danced for a while with the grandfather of the family I was with, which was hilarious. He looked so old but had so much energy, and he also had a bottle of some hard alcohol in his hand and a cup in another. He kept offering me shots of whatever this was, and I kept refusing, so he kept drinking them, sometimes offering them to his son-in-law. Hilarious! I bet he finished the bottle, as he and his wife and his daughter and her husband stayed out until 2 dancing, while we, the kids, turned in at 1.

I felt so privileged to be able to share in this traditional celebration of New Year’s Eve in an Ecuadorian town. We were the only ‘outsiders’ there, but the family was so happy to have us and I was so happy to be there celebrating with them. I really liked these traditions, especially the burning of the stuff - because it was a conscious effort of putting thought into what you wanted to forget or change or whatever from the old year and burning the stuff was a concrete action of making yourself commit to changing your life, rather than just saying a new year’s resolution or something.

As I begin this new year here in Ecuador at el Centro del Muchacho Trabajador, I am nothing but grateful to be here and for all of these experiences, for all of the challenges and the blessings, for the pure joy I have been given in my life here… for everything.

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