Saturday, January 4, 2014

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.

15 comments:

  1. Over here its red or yellow underwear....my husband does the dress up thing too, haha....level 245 on Candy Crush for 2 weeks now!!! wish me luck and happy new year to you too!

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    1. My goodness, when I wrote this I was stuck there too. But I am proud to say I finally passed it! I was there for about 3 weeks myself. Isn't that game fucking addicting?!

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    2. OMG...so addicting, I have my husband addicted too, lol....finally beat that damn level last night, that was a tough one:)

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  2. Those are my two fav traditions also!!! We wanted to do the grapes and like good Mexicans waited until the eveing of the 31 to go to walmart and get them. THEY WERE OUT!!!!! My hubby is pretty sure someones getting a pay cut for that one. lol I was just telling my sisters about the undies because my family eats black eyed peas for money. I told her buying a new pair of yellow undies seemed a much better idea. lol

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  3. loved your post. Happy to tell you that your story will be published Sunday morning in the Albuquerque Journal. I've told many people about you and posted the story on my website with a link to this blog. I must be honest, you and your husband left such an impression on me it was hard to stop thinking about you guys. I wish you all the luck and success in everything you do and I hope to run into you guys next time I'm in Juarez. Lauren thought the world of you as well. Feliz Año Nuevo to you and Gordo.

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    1. Thank you Roberto! It was a pleasure to meet you both as well. And I have to tell you how much I love your photography. My father is a fan too and actually fell in love with a picture of a mime you have on one of your websites. He literally talked about it for days. Happy New Years to you and yours!

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  4. Happy New Year to you and yours. The article in the ABJ was very nice - you're still a star!

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  5. I gotta get me some grapes next year! Happy New Year

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  6. I wonder what kind of luck you'd have if you put the grapes IN your underwear?!

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  7. Really enjoyed this one! Traditions are always interesting - whether family, cultural, regional... (-sarah)

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    1. They are, aren't they. Thanks for stopping by Sarah.

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