Out with the old and in with the new...............

We are more than  halfway thu the 1st month of the New Year.
I'm sure that any day now things will slow down............. or not!

We pretty much covered the "out with the old" when we sold our home and belongings in Canada and the "in with the new" when we moved to Cuenca, Ecuador.
The past 9 months have been a whirl wind. Settling in to a new life in a new country has been an awesome adventure. We are beginning to realise that "normal life" will never be the same "normal" as we lived before..........and, that's a good thing! Every day life is an adventure.

There is a New Years tradition here of burning an effigy, or monigote on New Years Eve. This is to get rid of bad luck and bring good luck for the New Year. We have had such a good year (knock on wood!) that we did not feel the need to burn off any bad luck.
We did know of someone who had a pretty harsh year, so we thought we would see if we could help her out. We roamed the streets until we found the perfect monigote..............

We bought Miz Kitty home to live with us for a week before the big send off................

 

At midnight Miz joined our neighbours for a send off into the spirit world......................................................

This is definitely one of the strangest customs we have witnessed. All over the city the streets were filled with burning monigotes and the skies were filled with Fireworks. At times it looked like what I can only imagine a city under attack would look like. The first thing the next morning the city workers were out in force and by that afternoon only the burnt marks on the streets were left as testimony. A few afternoon rainstorms washed most of that away.