Reflections on a Unique New Year: Balancing Challenges, Celebrations, and Friendship

Every year in my family, we celebrate the new year by visiting my grandmother at her place, but ever since she died, she does the celebration at home, but this year felt a lot more dry than the past years. Apart from being dry, personally, I was under a lot of pressure at the moment.

Before the new year, I had a little surgery on my head, which was later stitched. I had to do crossover with plaster on my head, which was something I did not really like, but I had no choice. The pressure I was under from school. I had just a little time to complete my project report and presentation slides, as well as my IT report and slides.

With this load of work on my table, I could barely have time for any celebration. In fact, it is as if my family did not plan to celebrate anything in the first place. The reason I am saying so is that when I got home for Christmas, I thought I would see live chickens being killed, but I did not see anything. I thought maybe we were waiting for the new year, buta yet no live chicken.

But thankfully, a very close friend of mine at church bought a live chicken and gave it to me for free. I was really happy, but unfortunately, the live chicken that my friend gave me was killed on the day I was leaving for school. This thing pained me, as freshly killed chicken tastes much more delicious than frozen chicken.

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HANGOUT WITH MY FRIEND BEFORE NEW YEAR'S DAY

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I could remember vividly that the cross-over night was on a Sunday, and New Year's Day was on a Monday. Before the cross-over night, a friend of mine and I decided to check out a restaurant not far from our church. We knew that after that day, the next time we would see each other would be a very long time, so we used the opportunity to enjoy ourselves a little. In fact, my friend said he wanted to spoil me and paid for all I bought.

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HOW MY PRESENTATION WENT DURING NEW YEAR

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My presentation was held on January 4, New Year's week. I was totally off discord and didn't have time to communicate with people elsewhere. All my mind was was getting ready for the presentation and having a complete slide and report presented.

I presented with a group, and these pictures were taken when I was answering a question or explaining a term. What really pained me was that after the presentation, I did not take any pictures; I was so tired, and I also misplaced my glasses. Forgetting the glasses alone was very painful.

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SPENT THE REMAINS OF THE NEW YEAR WITH OLUJAY

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In the picture above, Olujay, his mom, aunt, and I were singing together after church service. We were enjoying ourselves while praising God. In the video, most of the time, I went flat as I don't know how to sing, even though I might know how to play the guitar. I just haven't trained my voice yet.

I went to Olujay's place on Saturday to spend the weekend and left on Monday. During my stay, I enjoyed every moment with them: the morning prayers, the jokes and talks with Olujay's mom, the heart-to-heart talk about our lives, Hive, and the future with Olujay, and most especially the food. Olujay wanted to kill me with food by giving me big portions of food, as he knows I am a foodie and I eat a lot 😅.

Before leaving on Monday, Olujay and I took some selfies together, as we didn't have the time during the weekend to take pictures. Call it more like a goodbye picture to remember each other till we meet some months later.