Day 364! Wow, we’ve made it to NYE which means New Year’s Day will be marking a full year of traveling! Today, I won’t necessarily get to celebrate ringing in the new year, but I’ll be able to help facilitate other people having fun by bartending. It ended up being a very late night…

3 more days until I find out if I can stop wearing my moon boot! Also, at the end of this post I’ll briefly explain some changes happening to the blog!

I woke up this morning with lots of excitement for the day to come! It’s the start to NYE and it’s been a week of hectic nights at the hotel… and this was going to be no exception. We were having a ticketed event at the hotel and, allegedly, we sold over 600!

My shift didn’t start til 4pm, so I got ready for my day, had breakfast, and then kicked my feet up to relax before my big shift. I watched a little TV, played some guitar, but mainly read a lot this morning! I’ve gotten to a very thrilling part of this book, which I had to tear myself away from for my tuna wrap lunch and when work finally came around.

I was hoping I’d cap off 2024 with finishing this book, but I guess I’ll just start off 2025 with a book already read.

Work finally rolled around and it was time to brave the hill and get ready for a long, busy night. My shift was scheduled till 1am, but as most shifts, that wasn’t the case.

When I showed up to the bar, it was already busy! We had music starting at 6pm and I guess people wanted to ring in the new year as early as possible.

A lot of the regulars and people I know from around town were there on the early side. But as the night moved on, it was more and more tourists… until it was practically all tourists! I guess the locals didn’t want to pay for a ticket to a bar they usually get into for free. The night felt busier than Boxing Day too. There was a constant wall of people at the bar and plenty of people waiting a long time for drinks.

It’s an interesting way to spend the festivities… hang out with your friends or spend it waiting and waiting for drinks for you and your friends. I would’ve chose the first option, but that’s just me!

There were still lots of fun and nice people chatting at the bar. A number of tourists were curious where I was from and my plans. There were also a few people that gave me a couple nice tips which was nice too! And of course, a lot of people thanking us and telling us that they don’t envy our job. To which I responded that I was having a blast, which was true!

Especially when the DJ came on, the night became even more fun! Dancing to upbeat music and pouring drinks nonstop, it was a fun way to spend NYE. I was also surrounded by my coworkers who I really enjoy hanging out with! So it was a win win for me.

For dinner, I treated myself to the Thai wagyu salad and enjoyed the AC of the office while I relaxed for 30 minutes.

But then it was right back to the madness!

At midnight, we had a huge fireworks display put on by the owner of the hotel. It’s his way of “giving back” to the community and apparently he pays for the pyrotechnics out of pocket. It’s not cheap in Australia either, fireworks, for the most part, are illegal.

The bar at this time went to the window or out on the hill, so I had the chance to go watch the show from the window for about half of it! I’m always conflicted on fireworks, they’re beautiful, pretty cool feats of engineering, but they are so bad for the environment. Not only in air pollution, but noise pollution too… either way, it was a nice display. Nothing close to a cities firework show, but for small town Yamba, it was perfect.

The fireworks ended… but that didn’t signal the end of the night. The DJ kicked back on and we had another hour to go of bartending. Just past 1am, we closed the bar and the music finally stopped. But, my shift wasn’t done yet. We still had cleaning up to do.

And the bar really needed it today.

This took another hour and we clocked off around 2am. We had a few beers, played some pool, and I didn’t end up going to bed till 4am! I would be spending most of my New Year’s Day sleeping it looks like.

Tomorrow marks 365 days, a full year, of traveling. I’ll save most of the snappiness for that post. But I will do a small tease that the blog format is going to change a little bit. Since life has slowed down a lot and I feel like my days don’t have as much going on, I’ll be switching to weekly blog posts after tomorrow.

I’ve loved having this outlet to write about my days and experiences abroad, but for now, I’ll post every week and talk about the notable things that happened during it! But I’ll talk about this more tomorrow too!

To all my overseas friends and family, have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve and I’m looking forward to you all joining us in 2025!

– Elie