End of the year party that never ended

I wanted to blog on Friday but was held captive in a veritable hostage situation.

Here's what went down: The Mister and I were invited to an end-of-the-year celebration lunch at a fellow teacher's house.  There was to be paella and a nice dose of fresh air, since the guy's house is in the countryside a little outside of Málaga.  Sounds like a nice thing to do on a Friday afternoon, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Here are some pictures of the party, all excellent quality courtesy of the iPhone (*ahem*).

Then the night started to go dark, in more ways than one.

When it's 10 pm. and you have to be up at the crack of dawn and the party is showing no signs of ending and people are lighting alcoholic drinks on fire and you are dependent on a ride that is showing no inkling to leave (or to stop drinking)...well then, ladies and gentlemen, the fun meter starts to crater downwards pretty fast.

When the 55-year-old math teacher abuela starts getting friendly with a pole, to a Justin Timberlake soundtrack, the party has officially jumped the shark.

But still, we couldn't leave. An hour outside of Málaga and no way home.

We finally got home at midnight, after someone luckily remembered that they had children at home. Only in Spain, I think.  When we got home, we had to scramble to do all sorts of last minute things before I went to Madrid the next morning to attend an event for the camp we're teaching at next month.  Bed at 1:30, alarm went off at 6.

I was not happy.

At least the paella was good.