New Year

My goodness they are crazy with the fireworks here. The city barely has any official fireworks, they leave it to the citizens to entertain themselves. I can’t even begin to describe the danger and hazards in this approach. People were lighting fireworks everywhere in the town. The favorite of most people seemed to be firecrackers, but not the little harmless type, the big M16 and M80 style stuff. Tal and her Israeli friend described it like being in Tel Aviv while under attack. Although that would seem a bit extreme, it was pretty crazy. Early in the evening some of the losers in our neighborhood threw two M80s right at our group across the street from them. Later downtown someone threw one towards our group. It was kicked back at them, and then back at us. It went off about 4 feet from me and I lost hearing in my left ear for over half an hour. I would not want to celebrate the new year there again.