New Year's weather
Welcome to 2005 - a whole new year for the taking. The last one has certainly been eventful. For me, I started 2004 in Fort Collins with a party of old friends. Then off to a meeting, back to Australia, a bit of research, then back to the US for a grand tour, then to Sweden, and finally to Israel. It also saw some amazing elections - Afganistan, Australia, US, Ukraine - some incredible natural disasters - 3 hurricanes in a month in Florida, the recent tsunami in southern Asia. Quite a year.
This year started with a good Israeli-style party. We had a DJ, baloons, lots of sparklers, and several hours of pop music from at least 4 continents. The ebb and flow of different dance styles was interesting. There is a sizeable eastern European contingent here, and there was a fair bit of their dance style for a while. That was followed by a round of Indian pop, which got the Indian contingent dancing (of course the eastern Europeans didn't stop, they just moved to the side a bit). Then the S. American music started, and merengue-like dancing ruled the floor (surrounded by Indian and eastern European dancing). At the end, it was a mix of western European and US pop, and general pop bouncing-dancing mayhem.
At midnight, the room - the Blaustein Center's seminar room - exploded. Not quite literally, but there were a lot of sparklers, and some sort of sparkler-torch-flame thrower-things. Anyway, the room filled with smoke and suddenly there was a lot of liquid on the floor. I'm not entirely sure whether it was champagne or that we set off the sprinklers - could have been either. There was the usual New Year's countdown (in several languages at once), big cheers, good-luck kissing, back-slapping, and some genuine tears (probably from the smoke). Turns out it was also the birthday of one woman from Turkey, so we followed the New Years mayhem with a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday (in somewhat garbled english, with a few other languages sprinkled in for texture). All in all a good time.
New Year's day was gloriously sunny (much to the chagrin of some of the revellers, I'm sure) and unusually warm. I decided to take the day off, so sat on my porch in the sun and read a book (thanks, Jane - Mrs. Pollifax is a good read!). That's about all I accomplished on Saturday. Oh, and I waxed my hat. In the evening, we had a showing of "Los diarios motorcycletas", the story about Che Guevara and his motorcycle tour of South America in the early 1950's. Interesting movie. I quickly learned that the spanish that I've been picking up is totally useless for an Argentinian accent (and slang). Oh well. I could understand the Chileanos and the Peruvians, though, so that's a start.
Today we had another change in the weather. It was windy and cloudy today, and late in the afternoon, we got a lot of rain. It was enough to make a much-anticipated flood in the wadi below town. The flash floods here are pretty amazing. Lots of water rushes through the streambeds, and then is gone. I almost missed it. Unfortunately, it happened after dark, so it was hard to see. I walked down the hill and at the bottom, there was a lot of very muddy water, moving very quickly. And a crowd of people watching it. The water was pretty amazing - because of the soils around here (mostly loess), the water had the consistency of a good cup of tea, with milk. it was uniformly brown, but the particles are so fine that you don't really notice them in the water. Very interesting. I walked around a bit in the mud, and then headed back. In the 30 minutes or so that I was there, the water had dropped significantly, and I'd guess that it would have dropped to a tiny trickle in another 30-40 minutes.
This year started with a good Israeli-style party. We had a DJ, baloons, lots of sparklers, and several hours of pop music from at least 4 continents. The ebb and flow of different dance styles was interesting. There is a sizeable eastern European contingent here, and there was a fair bit of their dance style for a while. That was followed by a round of Indian pop, which got the Indian contingent dancing (of course the eastern Europeans didn't stop, they just moved to the side a bit). Then the S. American music started, and merengue-like dancing ruled the floor (surrounded by Indian and eastern European dancing). At the end, it was a mix of western European and US pop, and general pop bouncing-dancing mayhem.
At midnight, the room - the Blaustein Center's seminar room - exploded. Not quite literally, but there were a lot of sparklers, and some sort of sparkler-torch-flame thrower-things. Anyway, the room filled with smoke and suddenly there was a lot of liquid on the floor. I'm not entirely sure whether it was champagne or that we set off the sprinklers - could have been either. There was the usual New Year's countdown (in several languages at once), big cheers, good-luck kissing, back-slapping, and some genuine tears (probably from the smoke). Turns out it was also the birthday of one woman from Turkey, so we followed the New Years mayhem with a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday (in somewhat garbled english, with a few other languages sprinkled in for texture). All in all a good time.
New Year's day was gloriously sunny (much to the chagrin of some of the revellers, I'm sure) and unusually warm. I decided to take the day off, so sat on my porch in the sun and read a book (thanks, Jane - Mrs. Pollifax is a good read!). That's about all I accomplished on Saturday. Oh, and I waxed my hat. In the evening, we had a showing of "Los diarios motorcycletas", the story about Che Guevara and his motorcycle tour of South America in the early 1950's. Interesting movie. I quickly learned that the spanish that I've been picking up is totally useless for an Argentinian accent (and slang). Oh well. I could understand the Chileanos and the Peruvians, though, so that's a start.
Today we had another change in the weather. It was windy and cloudy today, and late in the afternoon, we got a lot of rain. It was enough to make a much-anticipated flood in the wadi below town. The flash floods here are pretty amazing. Lots of water rushes through the streambeds, and then is gone. I almost missed it. Unfortunately, it happened after dark, so it was hard to see. I walked down the hill and at the bottom, there was a lot of very muddy water, moving very quickly. And a crowd of people watching it. The water was pretty amazing - because of the soils around here (mostly loess), the water had the consistency of a good cup of tea, with milk. it was uniformly brown, but the particles are so fine that you don't really notice them in the water. Very interesting. I walked around a bit in the mud, and then headed back. In the 30 minutes or so that I was there, the water had dropped significantly, and I'd guess that it would have dropped to a tiny trickle in another 30-40 minutes.
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