Last week we found a luchador wrestler pinata and bought it thinking we would have one for the kids on our street at new years. Yesterday, we went next door and got 10 year old Ariel to come fill the pinata. When he was done there was still a half bag of candy left and lots of oranges so we walked down to the market to find a second pinata, locating the pink sister to go with our blue one. That not being quite enough, we wandered further down the street and found a drippy gooey cake with a jelly covered fruit top, (which turned out to be delicious in spite of how it looked,) and a couple of roasted chickens for dinner and headed home.
Ariel and Aron came over for dinner
We set up a stand to hold the rocket fireworks we bought last month and took Ariel all over the neighborhood to invite all the kids he knew for the pinata breaking at 7:30.
As the kids showed up,
John and Aron lit off the fireworks, which were followed by the pinatas – which is all we expected to do until someone started jumping with the pinata rope. This brought on a big round of jumping rope – both kids and adults, everyone chanting songs in Spanish and English. Then there was a kind of two person tug of war across the street – one person on each side, to a count of uno, dos, tres, started pulling the rope tight and trying to pull the other person over.
As if this wasn’t enough,
our friend Ron put the rope flat on the ground, wiggling it screaming víbora! víbora! (snake! snake!) which woke up all the three and four year olds who started shrieking, running and jumping over it trying not to touch it, making everyone laugh.
The double dutch jump roping on the cobblestones
was as far as I could go. What can I say – I think this might have been one of the most unexpected, but surprisingly fun new years eve that we’ve had in a very long time.
Feliz año nuevo!
GO HERE to view the video