Lechon

The pig (lechon baboy) you can see on the picture is a very typical dish for birthdays or other celebrations. It is grilled as a whole and also served like that. The thick skin supposed to be the best part! Additionally, there's a bowl with  only that skin on the table. But other typical dishes get also served like papait (the inwards of the pig which sometimes gets mixed with blood), (sweet) spaghetti (they add banana ketchup; long noodles represent long life), pansit (asian noodles with some veggie, seafood and meat - also very typical!), several kinds of fish (soup), goat meat, chicken bbq  and for dessert sweet noodle salad (with fruits), fresh local fruits and many more... of course, no meal is complete without rice!

Iris (on the right) was the birthday girl and May An is another classmate from High School. I was sitting at the end of the table. Iris cuts some meat off for me and across were sitting nuns, a priest was also around. Representatives of the church are very welcome and common guests for these occasions but they usually leave after dinner. If you take a closer look you can also see (one half of) the last supper hanging on the wall, you can find it in every catholic house! This little wooden square over May An's head adheres to some tiny forks and spoons (you usually use fork and spoon instead of fork and knife), the cutlery hanging on the wall can also be huge! After dinner karaoke was on the menu. It was nice meeting my old classmates again and other people from Bansalan, also getting into "community life" because the party was quite big - we even had two lechons!