Caimari and Bike Trip

Hey everyone!

I went to this really cool festival in Caimari, one of the pueblos outside of Palma this last week. Caimari is really well-known for its olive oil, and they had the festival to show all of the products they had there. There were booths set up all over the place where you could taste different olives, olive oils, wines, and hierbas (a type of liquor that is typical in Mallorca). It was awesome! My favorite olives were these ones that were pickled in some spicy juices and stuffed with peppers! Wow they were delicious. We also went inside on of the factories where they had an old olive press and we got to see how the oil was made.

We also saw a prize winning sobrasada (Mallorcan blood sausage) that was enormous! I can not even imagine how many pigs it was made of... kinda gross. Although I'm not gonna lie... It doesn't taste all that bad!

But overall the trip was really fun. Helena's mom has a house in Caimari and she let us hang out there and meet some of the other family members. We really appreciated it.

The other day when I was at my gym I saw an advertisement for this bike trip called La Pedalada in which you could go on a tour of some of the older parts of Mallorca. We only had to pay 3 euros to rent a bike and we got a free T-shirt and some other goodies. It was super fun. We stopped with the group to take pictures toward the end, and in one of them we got a pretty good shot of the famous Cathedral here in Palma. It is soooooooo beautiful, and even more amazing inside.

As for the rest of my life right now... Things are great. I cannot believe that two whole months have gone by; the time has just gone too fast since I have gotten here. School is good. One of the student teachers and I are going to have tryouts for a Christmas performance of Grease soon! We are also having auditions to sing some Christmas songs in English in the middle of December. I really like the kids I work with as well as the teachers.

I'm starting to take Salsa lessons here too! Every Sunday there are free lessons at one of the bars along the water, and Sunday was my first time there. It was really fun, although I know I have a long way to go.. heehee.

Other news: I'm going to Berlin this weekend! One of my friends here wanted to go somewhere for her birthday and we found plane tickets for a total of 30 euros! I'm really looking forward to it and I will make sure to put pictures up when I get back!

Hope all is well with you! Love you all and miss you!

Halloween, Deiá, and the Contemporary Art Museum

Hey everyone! Miss all of you!

Since our last encounter....

Halloween was fun here. I wasn't expecting much considering that it isn't really celebrated here like in the States, but it turned out to be a bigger thing than I thought. Encarna had made a ladybug costume for Carnaval the year before and she wasn't planning on dressing up, so she let me borrow it. Some of the others in the program came over to our place before and we dressed them up in costumes. We had to get creative because we didn't want to spend any money on them. So we came up with a mummy, a devil, a woman, and a Christmas present on the spot. It was pretty fun. Then we went out on the town and there were tons of people dressed up in the street.

One weekend some friends and I went to Deiá, another pueblo on the island. It is known for its rocky cliffs and beautiful views of the ocean. It was incredible. We went on this little hike down through the mountains to get to this little inlet of water where the waves came crashing in. We climbed some of the rocks and sat there for a while and looked out at the water... it was beautiful! After we sat for a while we made the hike back up and took the bus back to Palma. There really are LOTs of things to see here.. I'm looking forward to visiting some of the other pueblos too.

I got to go on another field trip with my students! We took a trip to the Contemporary Art Museum in Palma called Es Baluard. It was only a short walk from Eugenio López, so we were able to spend a decent amount of time there. We learned about how the building was actually one of the old fortresses originally used in Palma to stop the pirates from invading. Some of the original walls were still up, along with a couple of the look-out towers they used back then. Inside there were lots of interesting works by Spanish artists as well as others from different countries. My favorite was a large paintbrush that had little windows carved in it. Although I didn't get the meaning behind it, I still got a kick out of it.

This last weekend I finally made it out to the Castle and the Cathedral here. I had been waiting for my residency card so that I could get in for free, and finally I got it. They were beautiful! I will have to go back to the cathedral during the day because I couldn't really get any good pictures during the day, but nonetheless it was still worth it. We lucked out because they were actually throwing an free choir concert when we got there, and the sound was amazing in such a large space. It was really quite breath-taking.

As for the castle...it was gorgeous. It was a beautiful day and we had to hike up quite a few flights of stairs to get to the top. The castle is situated in one of the highest points of Palma, and from the top you get an amazing view of the entire city. It would be the perfect place to take a little picnic some afternoon. Inside the castle there was a square-shaped well (a little unusual) in the middle of an open round courtyard.

Well, that's all for now... I'm sure I will have more to tell you soon! Hope all is well...