Les Années Nous Viennent Sans Bruit – Happy New Year 2012!

Les années nous viennent sans bruit – The years pass quietly

Well, hello. It has been awhile. I’m not even sure where to start.

This last holiday was a blast. I went to a bunch of parties, including one next to a yacht, a friend’s Christmas party, a birthday party, a pool party, a Chanté Noel, and two parties held by Spanish speaking people (which are on anova level). I only cried once, got completely déchirée once. I also went on a hike.

Getting the holiday started was a “fancy” Christmas party with the other assistants. Now colour me confused because in England, ‘fancy dress’ or means wearing costumes and ‘wear costumes’ means dressing fancy. Luckily, I did not show up in a gown. Actually I barely showed up at all, because I went to sleep at about 11. I woke up at 4 to some Martinican guy playing Youtube DJ while everyone but the Spanish assistants and a couple other people were sleeping. Seriously.

Next up were some Chanté Noel’s. Now, this is basically a concert where everyone sings Christmas carols in Créole. Some of them have recognizable melodies such as “Jingle Bells”, except they sing things like “Tire le cochon“, which means ‘gut the pig’. Incidentally, they eat a helluva lot of ham. Front page news the week before Christmas? “3,500 pigs slaughtered in preparation for Christmas”. Success. I did manage to be invited to an awesome Martinican Christmas dinner. There was so much food. Maybe 20 people were there, but somehow there were 2 tables of food before the traditional meal of peas, yams, and ham came out. Oh no, not finger food either. I’m talking, 6lbs of salmon, grilled octopus, two gratins, crayfish the size of my face… Win.

Then came the assistant Christmas party on the 25th. We ate well, popped champagne on the beach, and danced all night. Good times had by all. I went to a pool party on Tuesday, crushed some people in dominoes–basically, all you have to do is slam the domino really hard on the table and you win. That’s what I learned from all those family BBQ’s.

I’m pretty sure the rest of the week was low key. Watched the fireworks in Fort-de-France from a friend’s in Trois-Ilets. For New Year’s Eve, we went to a party hosted by some Cubans in Diamant. On the way there, this chick demolished her car and was pretty much stuck in it. We stopped, had someone call the police and ambulance. She was fine, considering the windshield was messed up, and the car was smoking. We didn’t get home until 7 in morning or so. Not really by choice and barely in one piece. But despite the frustration of our driver never wanting to leave, we just laughed. The same thing happened to me a couple weeks before, and I cried. Having other people around definitely made the situation more tolerable the second time around. It really is true, if you’re not laughing, you’re crying. And we all know I’m big ass cry baby.

But anyways…