Tradiciones

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! Not to be confused with Ano Nuevo. That's an entirely different blog.

My New Year's resolutions are pretty much the same as everyone else's. You know, eat healthier, drink less, beat level 246 of Candy Crush, have Blake Lively's legs, etc. I'll spare you the details.

For a variety of reasons, we decided to stay home on New Year's Eve for the first time since we've been in Mexico. So of course I was surprised when I got home from work that evening to see that Ray was dressed to the nines. Fancy shoes, hair gel and all. I assumed he had changed his mind about going out with our friends but he hadn't. He went on to explain that on New Year's Eve, you need to dress nice for good luck, even if you aren't going out. You're even supposed to wear new clothes, he told me. Which made sense considering he was wearing a shirt I had bought him for his birthday... in November. Hell, I just thought he didn't like it. No, he was saving it for Año Nuevo... Ayyy, mi pinche Gordito.

Another tradition I didn't know about. There are already so many in Mexico and it still seems like I learn about a new one every year. My two favorite New Year's traditions in Mexico involve underwear and fruit and they are really the only 2 I take part in.

The first being that you wear a certain color underwear to reflect what you want in the year to come. I think the two popular choices are red underwear to have more love in your life and green underwear to have a better year financially. I'll let you guess which color we each chose.

The second tradition that I love involves eating 12 grapes. It's quite common here, so much so that you can find grapes at stores that don't normally carry them, such as the gas station on the corner. It's also a personal tradition of mine to forget to buy the grapes at the grocery store that week and end up paying twice the price at the corner store on NYE at the last minute. As you eat each grape, you make a wish or a resolution of what you want to have or do or be in the year to come. I've become rather fond of carefully deciding what 12 things to wish for.

Here I am with my lucky grapes...
I'll spare you the picture of my underwear.

And so we spent the end of the year quietly at home, watching Netflix and listening to our neighbor's fireworks and celebratory gunshots. Eating grapes and wearing our lucky underwear, of course. It was actually quite nice. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday as well.

Happy New Year to you and yours. May 2014 bring you peace, love and laughter.