A Happy New Year

Strike sparks everywhere aka an attempt at light-painting.

So, I ended up hosting a New Year's Eve party. Thanks to everyone who came, it was a blast.

Melody thinks so!

And so does Dijit and Ma'am Luzzette!

Everyone, really!

As in the Gregorian Christmas Day, the January 1 New Year is a non-event in Ethiopia as they celebrated their new year in September. (even that, to me, was a so-so event) So when habesha colleagues, Amen and Hamdi, offered (during a casual get-together at their house last Saturday; there's been an intersection in our circle of friends/colleagues ever since the first party I hosted and the succeeding parties/get together) to host the New Year's Eve party, we agreed, sure, why not?

But days after, it got me thinking that it's not really right to have them host a party for an event that they don't practice. A ferenji has to host a ferenji New Year's party, I thought. So when, the architect colleagues at our department also proposed that the department have a get-together, that offered an opening for me to host that get-together and fuse it with the original New Year's party we've planned, if they didn't mind that. They didn't. And Amen and Hamdi didn't mind that, either.

So as originally planned, the party was potluck dinner. We started late, as we will be welcoming the new year at the strike of 12 midnight.

Mahlet prepared salad, as it was a Wednesday, fasting day for pious Ethiopian Orthodox practitioners.

Ma'am Luzzette prepared her crowd-pleaser steak. Claude brought candies. So Claude.

Dijit and Krishna brought their extra hot and spicy mutton curry. Kim brought wine. Their two dude friends made this Ethiopian cocktail of beer, gin, and oranges, called awash.

Andy made and brought his Irish chicken curry (his mum's recipe). Konjit, of course, brought her infamous chips.

I supplied the fun and the sparklers! LOL No, just the sparklers and some beer.

Lovely, gorgeous people! My architect colleagues at the university, the hope of Ethiopian architecture. For reals. 

There was dancing, of course.

And more dancing.

What a way to end 2014 (good riddance!) and start 2015 (hello, there!)

But we didn't have an all-nighter. Here in Ethiopia, New Year's Day is, after all, still a working day.