On the eve of the new year we had no real plans, we decided to take the kids bowling only to find it closed. Bummer. So into Centro we went and found a cute Italian cafe Pane e Vino.
I may have found my new favorite place to chow.
After dinner while walking home we noticed people setting up scarecrow type things with the hay replaced with paper. We saw 2 figures, one on the corner of the main police headquarters here in Merida and the other on our street corner. At midnight a man set the scarecrow thing a blaze. The figure wasn't just on fire it started popping and crackling, fireworks were shooting out of it in every direction. WTF? It was kind of disturbing to me to see, sort of KKK stuff you know? I figured boys just loved an excuse to blow shit up. Until I learned there is reason behind it all of course...
Its believed that the man represents a person and his life of the recent year and the burning of him is like burning away the miseries of the year past. And I think the added explosives are just for well, added explosives....we took video but its being difficult and I can get it uploaded.
Oh, how funny! We both had "fire" as a part of our New Year celebration. We're laughing about our experience now, but while it was happening, I was really scared. I definetly won't forget New Year's Eve 2010!
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