Saturday, December 31, 2005

Happy New Years

We spent New Years with some really wonderful strangers at their apartment and we learned a Spanish tradition:
When the clock strikes midnight, the Spanish eat 12 grapes, one with every toll, to bring good luck for the 12 months ahead.

Apparently there are a lot of Spainards in Beijing, because our host informed us that not only could he not find any grapes left in any of the grocery stores (he told us that he ran into another Spanish ex-pat who gleefully displayed the last bunch of grapes the store had in her hands as she headed off to the register to buy them), neither could his other Spanish guest who lives in a different area of the city. In the end, they did find some grapes, but not enough for everybody, so we ended up with 'designated grape-eaters.' This also meant that over the course of the evening, it was not unusual to hear, 'Were you a grape-eater?'

This whole endeavor was just made more amusing by the fact that we weren't watching the count down on TV or listening to it on the radio so the final countdown consisted of the hostess looking at her wristwatch and saying, '12, 11, 10, are you guys listening? I'm counting. Where were we? 11, 10, 9. Come on, come on! Eat quickly! 10, 9, 8, ' and so on.

3 comments:

KirbyFur said...

ah, but did you get to yell 'happy new years' at the stangers? that's the best part. or feliz ano nuevo as it were...
happy new year darlin'

Anonymous said...

Cara -

Apparently this is a well established Spanish tradition. RJ's spanish III class brought grapes in today for their own belated celebration.

Debra

Anonymous said...

I remember doing that with you! Now either we were all really slow grape eaters or the clock struck fast because I remember having a very full mouth by the time the last bell went off! maybe we were just young and had small mouths :)