Encarna invited a lot of her friends from work over for dinner at our place and at about 10 we ate. We had "cochinillo asado", which is a roasted suckling pig. We ordered it from a really well-known carnicería here and warmed it up in our oven again before eating it. It was quite the endeavor trying to re-heat this entire butterflied pig because our oven really wasn't big enough for it. We had to bend the snout of the pig towards the top of the oven in order to make it fit, and then the nose started to catch fire a little bit! I don't think our oven is equipped to cook a pig for 10 people :) In the end, we situated the pig enough so that it wouldn't set the house on fire and it all worked out. Along with the pig there were these delicious roasted peppers and potatoes... Boy were they amazing! We also had a bunch of different "pinchos" (or appetizers), like olives, tuna paté, crackers called Quelitas, pa amb oli (typical Mallorcan bread rubbed with tomatoes from the area, salt, and olive oil and then topped with Mallorcan cheese or meats), prawns, stuffed dates and some other things. It was delicious.
After dinner we turned on the TV to see the countdown like we do in the States. However, in Spain they have a different tradition for the countdown. They don't kiss when the clock strikes 12... Instead, they eat a grape for the 12 seconds leading up to 12, one for every month of the previous year. It was a lot easier this year than when I was in Granada because we had all the grapes prepped (with the seeds taken out and the peel removed)... I hear that New Year's Eve is one of the busiest days of the year for the Emergency Rooms here; I guess a lot of people choke on the grapes! It's really not that easy to do... a grape every second may seem easy but trust me it isn't.
After the countdown we hung out at our place for a while and danced to music and took pictures. Wow the time flew by... We didn't go out until about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning! Then we went out to a club to dance a little more, and at about 8:30 we headed to the Croissanterie Mallorca, a restaurant chain here well-known for their breakfasts. It was really cool because there was a photographer there taking pictures of the "after-party" and we ended up in the paper the next day!! We had a large picture in color too! It was pretty awesome, and I made sure to grab a copy of "Última Hora" in the morning for a souvenir :)
I'm back to school now. We started back up on a Friday (only for one day) and now it's the weekend again. But I'm looking forward to getting back to work and hanging out with the kids. There's so much vacation time here because they also celebrate "Los Reyes Magos" (the three wise men). They actually give gifts on this day more than on Christmas. There was a big parade on the 5th of January with floats of each king that was really fun to see too. But now it's time for everyone to get back to the grind; you can tell that all the kids are still in "vacation mode", but after this next week I'm sure that will all change. Hope all of you had a great Christmas break, and I'll make sure to keep you all updated about any upcoming adventures here in Palma. ¡Hasta luego!
