2007 is a year I will never forget. My first new year outside India. I usually celebrate new year in India with my family and friends. Typically I would watch new year speacial programmes on TV, talk with family members, go out with friends, hangout at shopping malls like Spencer's and catch a movie at Sathyam...By evening i will be home with family, go out for dinner and come back by night and watch countdown on TV. By 12:00 pm, we call all other relatives and frends and wish each other a "happy new year" of course added with all sorts of adjectives like 'prosperous, wealthy, healthy'...
By 12:30 my mom with the womenfolk of the household go down to put the color kolam (a decoration on the floor at the entrance of the house using colorful salt and other materials)...There would be some 'kolam competitions' when judges would be visiting houses the next morning to see which 'kolam' is the best...
We menfolk would watch tv for sometime and crash. This was until i had the pleasure of owning a motorbike...After i got one I would hangout on new year night with friends. Last new year when I was in India, i went to Kishkinta for the new year party with frends and had an awesome experience. The year before that was the Tsunami year and we were at the Tsunami struck "Marina beach" jus for the heck of adventure. After that we went back to a friend' house, watched movie, drunk (juice and coke - I was a teetotaller then...) and crashed.
BUT
This new year was totally different. Its unique as I experienced it outside India, in the United States and celebrated it the Spanish way with Hector and his folks from Spain. Hector, his GF Laura, his mom and his sister, Elena made awesome Spanish food for us, Zhuo and I bought wine and beer and a big pot of icecream. At 9:30 we had the food, for which his folks had brought ingredients all the way from Spain. We ate the food that consisted of Pajaja, Spainish Omlette and vegetable cake. There were desserts made from Almond which was specially made in his district Alicante in Spain. His mom and sister explained to me some places in Alicante and have invited me to their place and I thanked them and told them - "You always have a home in India" "-)
The we watched the countdown and according to a Spanish custom for the last 12 seconds of the new year we have to eat 12 grapes. I tried to follow the custom but missed a grape and cudnt finish 4. Besides my mouth was full of grapes and I was looking like a monkey (I shd admit the grape was fantastic!!!)
I played the Domino game, a game consisting of wooden block with numbers that needs to be arranged. Each player starts with 7 blocks and has to dispose all the big numbers and the one with the lowest numbers added together wins. Check out the video
We then danced to some spanish and english music...Laura and Elena became fond of the 'It's the time to disco' song from KHNH and even sent the song home for their fols to listen and enjoy...I learned and spoke some Spanish and i shd say it wasn't so difficult to understand the Spanish they spoke with my limited vocabulary...
Dancing to music...
Finally drunk and tired I retired back to my apt and crashed into an instant sleep...
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