año viejo
On New Year's Eve in Ecuador we burn the old year. You make a monigote, a life-size doll of paper and old clothes, sometimes with a mask of a politician or a cartoon, and at midnight you set it on fire in the street.
This year I made the Mitad del Mundo monument out of cardboard, with the line painted in the wrong place.
Carmen said, "Y ahora qué?" And now what, after you burn it? I said now we find the real one. She laughed at me, but she lit the match.
It's almost midnight. Feliz año, Mateo.