Goodbye 2024: Our Year-End Party

Welcome 2025!🥳✨ Happy new year, everyone!!🎇🎉  Hello, Hivers! It's @lizhavesomefun again, and the last time I was around (well, that would be last week, or should I say last year? 😏), I asked you if you already had your holiday splash to bid farewell for 2024. Well, guess what? My friends and I also did—on the 28th of December, to be exact! And I’m beyond excited to share the events that transpired that day, leaving us all giddy and happy beyond compare. We have this little tradition of hosting a year-end party with our section. Though things were a bit bleak this year, it was held at Green Lagoon Park at Compostela, Cebu. Seriously, it was pretty unclear if we would have a party since most of my classmates weren’t responding to our messages in our group chat. Totally understandable, though—we all had busy schedules and were dealing with different circumstances. Still, a few of us are adamant and couldn’t let the year-end tradition fizzle out like that! So, I asked some friends, “If we are having a party, would you guys be up for a dive?” I even sent a funny invitation card to sweeten the deal. And their response? A resounding yes! All they needed was a little push, that is all. I voluntarily took the lead to ensure our plan would not end up as just another “drawing” (one of those plans that only gets discussed but never executed) for the sake of our year-end tradition. After all, some traditions are worth fighting for. To make this party extra fun and unique, we decided to have an exchanging gift and added a quirky twist with the theme “Something Funny under 20-30 pesos,” and oh boy, are we excited about that. Some of our classmates were also assigned to lead and prepare the materials for the games, which, to be honest, were kind of the highlight of our party. When D-day came, we knew we were in for another memorable day. @roseandshine , @fevyulous , and I at Danao City's terminal and then went to Green Lagoon Park—we're always travel buddies.  _{Can you tell who's who here? 😙} When we got there, @milesinverse was already there and @brandonwrites , @shassays , and @marieyanlab arrived shortly after. We then decorated our cottage with a DIY tarpapel (a printed tarp made from regular bond papers) and displayed our foods. Oh, I forgot to mention, but we also decided to bring foods that started with the letter of our names. And since I’m DL, I brought Dynamite Lumpia (genius, right? hahaha.) This was a fun and creative way to bring food to the table, and we enjoyed it.  What makes the resort fun is that they have a playground to keep us occupied while waiting for the others to come. What makes the resort fun is that they have a playground to keep us occupied while waiting for the others to come. For example, Miles and Zab had fun playing with the swing.  After dipping in and out of the pool and the sea, the fun kicked into high gear as we played games—many of them. First up was 3,6,9, which was hosted by yours truly. The game ended earlier than I thought since my classmates are often confused with the numbers—yeah, I remember we’re not math people, hahaha. Next, we played the flour game, where you had to pass the flour as fast as possible by only using a card in your mouth. This was the only time we felt that laughing was terrible since it would blow out all the flour to our faces. Pro Tip: Don’t laugh unless you want a flour facial. Still, that was quite fun.   Then we played Bato-Bato Pick or Rock-Paper-Scissors but with a twist. We made it into a group game and decided it would be best of 5, so each team had to strategize what element they should portray. It has the same rules as the regular one—paper defeats stone, scissors cut paper, and stone breaks scissors. I liked this game pretty much because, well, I am on the winning side, hahaha. We really did outsmart them in this one, heh. What are the consequences for the losers? We made them crawl between our legs, like literally, hahaha—I mean, this is how children do it in our place when we’re betting on a game, and we’re certainly still children.    We didn’t stop there, though. We also played a lot of games afterward, like “In and Out” and “March Left and Right” – okay, I don’t really know the names, and I might be making them up, but that’s precisely what the game was about—and of course, the traditional “Hep Hep Hooray” that will always be present at every occasion, a staple game at any Filipino gathering, and it's new competitor, the Love, Joy, Hope game hahaha.    When the clock struck a quarter to four in the afternoon, we decided it was time for the much-anticipated gift exchange. We put numbers on our gifts and used a wheel of names to decide what number would be ours, and we went alphabetically. I mentioned that it must be something funny, hahaha; it was exciting as we took turns unboxing our gifts and looking forward to what our classmates wrapped. The gifts? Well, the gang all understood the assignment! Hahaha, some received diapers and dried fish, some were spices and condiments, others received sanitary pads and even a children’s toy horse. One of our friends was so petty as she funnily wrapped a dynamite lumpia as her gift—which had us all rolling with laughter as we saw the receiver’s face. We were all cool with our gifts; it was fun and cost-efficient. After this, some of us decided to play more at the pool, but a few of us also started packing up since it was also starting to get dark. But before we did that, we couldn’t let the moment pass without a photo of us to capture the memories, as we always do. And just like that, our 2024 year-end party was a wrap. It was pure fun from start to finish—hopefully, we can still do it this year (2025). Cheers to more laughter and fun! 🥂✨