New
Year's Celebrations
Written
on 1/3/2015
Its
2015! Yay! Aside from spending a lot of time thinking about the next
year on the beach, I also brought in the New Year with some fun!
My
friends and I went up the coast from my site to Mahambo, Madagascar.
Its a quieter beach town that always is full of vacationers. We
arrived without a reservation and spent the first TWO HOURS there
trying to find a place to stay. We ended up fairly far away from the
beach, but at the bungalows of a nice French man.
We
spent the first night chillin with him and the two wonderful Malagasy
women on his staff which was really fun. He gave us a free pizza,
which was AWESOME and a delightful surprise. The women told us that
there had been five American men there a few days ago and they
weren't sure if they left Mahambo yet. It was so much fun joking
around the the Malagasy women about trying to find the men. There
were four of us, and allegedly five American men, so we kept joking
they would have to fight over the fifth.
Unfortunately,
while searching for a surf/body board the next day, we found out the
men had already left Mahambo. BUT, we did find a body board..which
I'm telling myself was much more fun then five men from Tennessee
would've been. It really was fun, at first, it was challenging trying
to catch a wave. When I finally got the timing down, it was a blast
catching a wave into the shore. I think I had a smile on my face the
entire time I was on the board.
For
New Year's Eve, we decided to go to the fanciest resort in town and
get some fancy drinks. We had checked it out the day before, thinking
maybe we could eat there too, but alas, we are volunteers and we
vacation on a budget...and a their new year's eve dinner was a
quarter of our monthly wage.
So
we got all dolled up and walked over for drinks. It was a blast - and
we ended up with the longest check I've had in country. The owner of
the restaurant of the resort said that we could come back for the
New Year's Eve party if we were interested, since we said we had
already ordered food in town for dinner.
Our
dinner was fairly disappointing. My food was good, I had octopus in a
coconut sauce with rice...of course. But my friends were disappointed
in their meals. On the way back to the resort, my friend and I
decided we wanted to sing some Karaoke and stopped at a bar to
astound their patrons with a wonderful rendition of "That Don't
Impress Me Much" by Shania Twain. The owner of the bar told us
we needed to buy a drink to sing but we ended up just singing and
then running out...karaoke on a budget.
Then,
we made our way back to the resort and sat and listened to an actual
performer - a Malagasy artist called Big MJ - who had recently filmed
his latest music video at the resort and wanted to bring in the New
Year there too.
My
favorite part of the night happened just before midnight. The female
vocalist started singing "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gayner.
All of us got up to dance and sing along. We danced and sang in the
new year to "Strong Enough" by Cher. After we sang out
"Happy New Year" we ended up in a line of the French
three-cheek-kiss which was unexpected but fun!
It
was a wonderful way to start my year in Madagascar and I'm so excited
to see what adventures the next 12 months will bring!
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