Ken's Home Movies - Part One: "Things that explode..."

When Bolivians celebrate Christmas, they do so a little more...enthusiastically?  That’s probably the best word.  There are, of course, similarities to our North American celebrations...Christmas Eve church services, a big Christmas dinner, visiting family, opening gifts...

Of course, one difference would be that their Christmas dinner is served at midnight on Christmas Eve and after that (around 2 AM or so) it’s off to visit family and friends for the rest of the night.  They also roast a big pig, rather than a turkey for the big meal.

Oh, and there’s one other difference.  They also fire off an insane amount of fireworks and fire crackers.  I remember driving home one night after Christmas dinner (at around 3 AM) and thinking it was like being in a war zone.  Explosions all around me and people firing Roman Candles at my truck as I drove by.  It was pretty entertaining.

That first Christmas in my house in El Torno (the little town in the country where I lived when I first came to Bolivia), I shared the experience with David and Rudy...the two guys who were staying with me.  Well...it was mostly David and I.  Rudy got up for about four minutes and then went back to bed.  David and I entertained ourselves for the better part of an hour.

What was funny, was that it was the first time firing off Bolivian style fireworks and firecrackers for both of us.  First time for me ‘cause...well, I’m Canadian and we’re (sadly) all about the safety.  First time for David because he grew up on the streets and didn’t exactly have the funds to go out and buy them.  He knew some of the pyrotechnics we used that night, but most of them were new to him too.

I came across some video the other day, that I’d saved on my computer.  It made me laugh.  So I put it together and it’s the first of my series of “Ken’s Home Movies...”.  The second installment will be...well, whenever I feel like making another one.  Could be tomorrow...could be in a couple of years. =)

I broke the video up into four parts to make it a little easier to upload to Youtube.  All together it’s about nine minutes long. It’s all mostly entertaining (to me anyhow...), but if you don’t feel like watching all of it...at least watch the last two.  They're the funniest...

Anyhow...here we go...

In Part Two I demostrate that I'm not always the best missionary ever.  I think I
was kind of bitter towards my neighbours that night...

I still laugh at my sound effects I used (and, ahem...still occasionally use...) when I didn't know the Spanish word.  If you listen, at the beginning of the video you hear me say, "Phishrt".  This is the universally accepted descriptive noise for the word "throw"...which is an important word to know when playing with things that explode.

Also...this is where we started blowing up bigger firecrackers and for some reason
I started saying "Holy cow" a lot.  I guess I felt the need to express myself...





Part Four makes me sound like a bit of an idiot. But it's also the funniest. For some reason my voice got really high and squeaky when I got excited. I'm sure it was the first and only time that happened...

That was a very fun night. In subsequent years, I learnt that if $12 buys you some pretty fun fireworks?  $30 takes it to a whole different level...

I love this country.