The 15th of September...is finally over!!!

This was the first goal scored of the game. Our host dad is the shortest guy in the picture. They fought valiantly, but the ended up losing 2-1.



The view from our roof of the festivities, and yes, it all happens right in front of us. Here is Liz sitting with everyone at the soccer final. Can you spot her? During the game the ref made two players move a drunk guy who fell asleep on the corner flag...classic. The entire field was surrounded this thick with people, and for once the women attended.


Here is Marta on her float as Miss Peace. These little girls are cousins of the family we live with and were hamming it up for us. Kids here are really small, they are like 14 and 15...or something like that, I don't understand numbers in Spanish. Another favorite activity during the parade is to see how many people can stand on top of each other without falling and dying in the street. This was the most successful. Just watching them made me really nervous.

Mckenna has a Guatemalan sister! We loved how red neck this float seemed. Liz is posing with our new friend, one of the other 7 siblings and our neighbor Dubilia. I am pretty sure we are the only ones who aren't related in our community.

The elementary school across from our house put on a hula hoop routine and our new friend Miriam led the group. She's the one to the right of the teacher with her tongue sticking out. She is the sister to Little Miss Peace, to the right of her is another sister, Andy. Lines of marchers were a hit this year, very militant and serious, which will come in handy if they ever have to throw down against an invading marching army. Here are some of the girls in traditional dress that we found beautiful.


The 15th started with a parade down main street with these guys at the front. We also saw a ninja in training and we loved this little girl's hair and her traditional dress.


Another view of the stage. You can see Liz up in our seats of honor. We still don't know what this kid in the red outfit was supposed to represent, but he sat down behind the girls and really gave them hell. Maybe he represents satan? Who knows? We did have a nice sunset before all the festivities...the silence before the storm.


This is the house we were hoping to rent. We talked for weeks with the Grandpa who is overseeing the construction of the house. When we talked to him last he said that they changed their minds and were going to live there instead of rent it to us. This was a very big disappointment indeed. The next pic is of my students at their celebration playing DJ and a picture of the town hall they decked out. For a week of what was supposed to be school they made decorations and planned the evening. It was nice.



This is Melissa who we live with. She was Miss Sports last year and had to pass off her crown. She had really long pretty hair and chopped it off for the pageant. The day before she and Liz made banana bread. Here is Liz on her walk to school. She has one of the prettiest walks to school.

(Here Liz is being observed while making a phone call. This is pretty common as kids will stop doing anything to watch the gringos do nothing significant whatsoever. The next is of the town leaders at the house of the young girl in the next photo with her grandma. She was Little Miss Peace for the celebrations and for winning this her family got to feed all the town leaders and give a bunch of speeches thanking the town leaders for eating their food. The little girl is Marta, we met her a few days before this ceremony and she and her 6 7 siblings invited us to come. Now we are good friends and hang out with her and her siblings a couple times a week.)

It has been a very busy last few weeks with the celebrations for the 15th of September, Guatemalan Independence Day. School was cancelled on numerous occasions and since we live across the street from the town hall we could hear celebrations going on every night beginning the first week of September. Its interesting because there seems to be only two volume levels here, loud and painfully loud with most people pushing past the painfully loud threshold. We went to more beauty pageants than I care to mention here, saw a million different dances to songs by Daddy Yankee and lost a lot of sleep due to the house shaking because of the overly loud music. The highlight was the dance on the 15th that we attended. The music was live and one song blurred into the next and by the end of the night we had successfully (though inadvertently) made it onto the local cable channel that is basically a public access channel. We didn't realize this until we went home and our host family said that they saw us on the t.v. The next morning I went to the bodega nearby to buy some bread and the shopkeeper said that I was wearing the same shirt but different pants than I was on the t.v. the night before. She also said that Liz looked like she knew how to dance very well and then she asked if it was my first time. I went back home with my pride hurt and immediately started practicing my dance moves in the mirror for the next time.