New Year Traditions

Dad talking to a cute lady on the day before New Years.  Everyone likes to dress up! She is selling things for the big New Years celebration.

Here she is again with crazy eyelashes.  She has a little store outside of our grocery store where during the year she sells candy, gum, magazines etc.

The Ecuadorians make these stuffed dummies all different sizes.  At midnight on New Years Eve they burn them in the streets.  They can be effigies of politicians, pop culture figures or whatever they want.  These are called "ano viejo" (old year).  Burning these is symbolic of cleansing the bad from the previous 12 months before the new year commences.  If you want even more good luck you can jump over the flames 12 times for each month although that might be a little dangerous!!!

More effigies!  They even made one from our apartment that was life size and looked like one of our guards.  I didn't get a picture.

On the streets there are lots of masks and wigs to make your stuffed person!

They are all over!

Lots of masks too.  At midnight on New Years Eve  we were woken up and it sounded like World War 3.  There were fireworks going for over an hour and loud explosions.  We could see a lot from our bedroom window since we are up 17 floors overlooking part of the city.   The families get together and eat a big meal at midnight and celebrate most of the night.  We had a nice quiet walk early New Years Day.  Everyone was recuperating from the long night of partying!!!

Another strange tradition is that the young men dress up like women on New Years Eve day and stop traffic to get money.  This picture was taken from our apartment window.  There were 5 or 6 guys dressed up and were they ever making a racket.  We even had a young boy about 10 years old in the lobby of our apartment building who was all dressed up like a girl with a purse begging for money so we gave him 50cents!