Feliz Ano Novo

Happy New Year!
I celebrated New Years in Mindelo with my sister and a couple other volunteers. It was definatly a very different new years than I have had in a very long time but it was pretty good.
We decided to go to a hotel in Mindelo, which was rediculously expensive but ended up being good. Although the ticket said the party started at 11, we werenºt even allowed in until 1230... 11pm Cape Verdean time. (We thought we were going late by showing up at 1145, clearly not). So we headed over to the bay where they were going to have fireworks. I really didnºt quite realize how close the fireworks would be to us. You know how in the states fireworks are usually put off in the water or at least the crowd has to be like REALLY far away? Well that was not the case. You could get within about 20 feet from the fireworks... dangerous to say the least! We smartly decided to stand a good 100 feet (maybe, something close to that) and once the fireworks started going off I was really glad that I was that far away. I have never been so close to firework in my life... except in Austria when small children were allowed to put off firework in the street... but that wasnºt as dangeous I donºt think.
Well anyway. So there was a big crowd hanging out around the water and at midnight instead of a countdown a band marches in and starts playing and than the fireworks go off. So there was no midnight kiss and thank god, because that is always my least favorite part of new years... never a fun moment to be single. The fireworks went off for a good while... there were definatly a couple of moments when I thought one might fall on me. They were also setting off flares which seems like a terrible idea, espeically since even on the water they donºt burn out... hence they are hot as hell. The last firework that went off sounded like a machine gun and scared the crap out of all of us and than we walked over to the batuk band and kind of danced for a bit before heading into the hotel.
Of course we were still one of the first ones that got into the hotel, but we had paid good money and there was food and drinks so we sucked up our pride and hung out with all the tourists who didnºt realize that the party wasnºt actually going to start until 3 am. They had your basic every festa Cape Verdean dishes. Despite my hiatus from beans, rice and fish (since training) I sucked it up and ate and than danced the night away. Danced the night away of course after Lindsay went back to change and took my shoes (so I sat with Brett who tried to hide that I wasnºt wearing shoes until she came back). After I had my flip flops all was good and although I didnºt make it until 930 like the others, I did make it to 6 am which was good enough for me.
Hope everyone else had an eventful new years.