Happy New Year from Honolulu

Ahhh, smell that? It’s the smell of new resolutions on the air… or is that fire cracker residue? I’ll go with choice B. Yes, it’s new years eve, or day by now, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think it was the 4th of July. The big thing to do here on New Year’s Eve is to light fireworks. The Japanese are the big ones for fireworks. They believe to rid their late ancestors of evil spirits they light fireworks in their honor, but these aren’t normal fireworks. You know those small packs of Black Cats you used to light all 20 or so and think it was great to hear them all go off at once? Well, the Japanese light those too, but they come in bricks of 30,000, yeah, they go off for a while. The fireworks started in full force around 7 or 8, picked up around 9, and it’s 1:00 a.m. now and we still here the occasional stragglers.

In addition we have had a few groups of… well…. New Years Eve partiers outside the window. The first group were doing nice college-style cheers and what sounded like drinking games, however, the second group was talking in Japanese so we decided not to go join them, as we had no idea what they were saying.

We sat outside and listened to the fireworks, popped the cork on some Champaign, and recorded the whole ordeal to hopefully give you an idea of New Years Eve island style. Hopefully we’ll have a link up to that as soon as we get it all edited. Oh yes, and before I forget, I turned on the TV about 11:30 and all I got were some reruns and the late shows… darn East coasters stealing all the thunder.

Well, I guess it’s time to sign off for now, but I hope 2007 brought all you hoped for, and I wish you all the best in 2008. Good luck keeping those resolutions, and remember, you have a whole year to get out here to the islands. Start planning early!

Aloha!