She Said: Fireworks

Happy new year everyone! Wow...absurd, I know. It has been way too long since we've written. I don't know what happened exactly, I guess the holidays. We spent a lot of our time over the last several weeks preparing for and enjoying the Christmas season. It was really great. We were able to skype with family so that we could watch each other open gifts and almost felt like we were together for a celebration. It was really fun! Brian and I also hosted a Christmas day dinner in our apartment. I ordered Christmas dishes, got everything ready, prepped the food, etc. and we really enjoyed the day with friends.

I've been thinking about the blog and there are several things that I'd like to share that I haven't had a chance to share with you yet. In an attempt to not overwhelm you with everything in one post, I think I'll try and do several posts over the next couple of weeks to catch up and then once again resolve to post more often.

When I think of fireworks in the states, some very fond memories come to mind from 4th of July and other big celebrations where family and friends would gather to watch well orchestrated fireworks displays set off by organizations or officials. Since we arrived, but particularly since the holiday season started, we have discovered that fireworks in Venezuela are very different. Here, almost anybody can purchase commercial style fireworks to set off at home and they are relatively cheap. They purchase and set them off for children's birthdays, anniversary celebrations, "let's have friends over and show them how much money we have parties", etc. Apologies for the sarcasm, but people definitely do use fireworks to see who can display that they have more money to buy better fireworks here. One thing Venezuelans love to do is party and even birthday parties for 3 year olds here involve chair covers, jumping castles and fireworks.

From about December 15th -January 5th there were fireworks nearly every night. Sometimes they were close, for example on the 23rd there was a fire behind our building caused by 8-11 year old CHILDREN setting off fireworks on the patio, and sometimes they were far away and beautiful. We spent many nights sleeping with our earplugs in as we adjusted to a somewhat barbaric tradition. It was definitely a cultural adjustment. On Christmas eve, Brian and I found ourselves feeling very angry that our neighbors' children were once again on the back patio shooting off fireworks after we had just had a fire in the back yard the day before and it took the fire department 40 minutes to respond with a truck that didn't have a hose long enough to reach the fire. While I'm still not happy about it and would hope that it'll be different next year (or we'll be out of town for Christmas), but by New Year's eve we realized that we are never going to change the Venezuelans. Seeing how fireworks safety is managed here gave us a greater appreciation of some of the protections we do have in the states (what?!?!? 7 year olds shouldn't be responsible for putting on the fireworks show for the adults?!?!?!?!)

The culmination of the fireworks was on New Year's Eve. The tradition here is to set off fireworks at midnight. Here's a short video taken by our friend to give you an idea of what it was like:



It felt a bit like a war zone, but it was pretty amazing to see from way up on the hill. So, that's fireworks in Venezuela. Can't wait to see what they're like for independence day here. Hoping you had a wonderful Christmas and wishing you a happy new year!