Friends Make the Chiggers Worthwhile

Each year I celebrate the new year doing something new, and those new things always include my favorite people. Whether it is pizza and beer in a tiny rural Nebraska town, road tripping to another city, smashing myself into a basement (the halfway) with about 100 other people, watching space jam, eating a steak dinner with my family, or playing monopoly until dawn, I am not necessarily celebrating in the most glamorous way, but it is always new, different, and a total blast. The key to a great NYE celebration? It is not the dress, the music, the alcohol, the name of the club, or the cost of the destination. It is absolutely...wait for it, cuz I am about to get cheesy...the people you spend it with.

This year I was at home, in the jungle. We were building both the 31 & 1, so running off to a beach wasn't so much an option. My friends Siobhan, Danielle, and Ben came in to celebrate with me. We had stewed chicken and fry bread for dinner at a neighbors house, then came back to my hut for the real party: chips and salsa, oreos, and even some cold champagne! Siobhan brought in the bottle and Ben brought in the ice. We sat in hammocks and on buckets, trying to keep the candles lit so we could make out the general shapes of things. We fought like crazy to keep each other awake until midnight and while we did win that battle (barely), we all desperately lost the battle to stop scratching our multitude of itchy morongoi and chigger bites. We shouted our countdown together in English and tried to eat 12 grapes at once for luck, but that was a hot mess because all the grapes here have seeds.

We hung up the mosquito nets and laid down on mats as soon as we could and got a meager 4 hours of sleep in before sunrise and a new day of construction. But as cramped, overflowing, and on top of each other as we were trying to share my tiny hut, I am incredible grateful my friends chose to come spend their new years with me. They could have gone to Meteti and had running water, mattresses, and maybe even a TV, but they chose to brave the jungle with me and the bugs. It was a new year's I will never forget.