New Years in Manila

On New Years Eve we had a big surprise . . . the fireworks of Manila. It gets dark about 5:00 or 5:30 and that's when the fireworks started. All sorts of bangs and booms, nearby, far away, all over town. And it went on and on, never a quiet moment.

About 9:00 we finally went out on our backyard balcony and watched. We could only see one slice of the pie, but we could hear them from all over the whole city. Honestly, you have never seen so many fireworks at one time for so long in your entire life. None of you has.

About 11:30 it got even more intense. This is when we got out the camera and started taking a few pictures. What you see here is but a miniscule portion of what we actually happening. It never stopped.

These shots are taken from the balcony, looking into our back yard. Beyond the fence is a hill that slopes down rather steeply to the street below. The tree block much of the view, but there were so many bursts that you couldn't see them all at once anyway. And what you see is just one small segment of the whole city.

Fireworks were going off in front of us, behind us beyond the temple, across the city in Antipolo, and everywhere. Nothing to compare.

There is a Catholic church just behind the building on the left, but it was blocked from our view. They were setting off rocket after rocket there. This is not one of those, but what they fired was much like this one.

Burst after burst across the entire panorama. It wouldn't quit. It went on and on. We went to bed about 12:30, but the fireworks went on until 3:00 or so.

These pictures do not capture the granduer of the scene. As soon as you took one photo, several others burst open and you wanted to take those, but couldn't get to them in time.

They do celebrate the New Year in the Philippines. One bishop said, tongue in cheek, that he expected on Sunday for people to be lined up asking for fast offering help because they has spent all their money on fireworks.