Day of the Dead Kites!!

Every year on November 1st Guatemalans celebrate the Day of the Dead by flying kites. In most places the kites are normal sized, but in a few towns they make ENORMOUS ones! The past two years I've gone to the kite festival in the town of Sumpango. All day long people fly kites up to 15 feet tall and display kites that are over three stories tall!!

Here you can see a 10 foot kite flying! I find these a bit terrifying because they have a habit of dive-bombing the crowd. Those kites are deceptively heavy and dangerous!

I went with one of the teaching couples at the school with their twin boys. They boys bought mini kites that they flew for a while in the cemetery. Guatemalan families celebrate by having picnics on the graves of their loved ones so the cemetery was a pretty happy, hopping place and offered some good people watching. 

  

The path to the hill where the really BIG kites were was teeny, tiny and super crowded so we decided to take an alternate route that ended up involving scrabbling through a hedge, squeezing in between barbed wire and galloping down a steep dirt hill, but we made it!

My other favorite thing about the kite festival is the abundance of street food!!

Halloween!!

Halloween is my favorite favorite holiday and so this year I held a Halloween party in my apartment! My friends and I did a Peter Pan theme! Danielle and I were mermaids. (Remember the mermaids? They were kind of bitchy..)

I made the skirts and they were soooo sparkly and swishy, though they did have an irritating tendency to shed sequins.

Later in the night we went out on the town. I found a pile of balloons that I NEEDED to be in the middle of. Some bartenders were very willing to help me out!

Cousin's Wedding in NC

The cousins (most of us, anyway)

In October my cousin got married in the states. We basically grew up together and had always been really close, so my grandmother graciously bought me a round trip ticket to North Carolina, so I could attend!!

Autumn, Steph, and I

 The Cutchin family was out in full force and there were the typical hi-jinks. 

 Fano hijinks also ensued. 

Sisters!

Puerto San Jose and Nautilus

The next weekend, we all drove about an hour and a half to the beach at Puerto San Jose. We settled into a cabana at Nautilus, a beach restaurant. We ate ceviche and drank fruity drinks and laid in the sun. It was a good day!

They have a really cool old boat up on the beach. We climbed up on top of it and sunbathed at the top. Then we jumped off the front!

 Crazy Samantha fell asleep hugging her pinata from the previous weekend.