Drag Completes Me

It was a relatively quiet week after the all the Independence day celebrations and the travel to Lago Atitlan last weekend. Until last night. It was a chill Friday night, but when we saw the flyer for the Miss Gay National pageant at the gay bar in Xela, our Saturday night plans were set. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t really a national event, since most gay life in Guatemala is in the capital 200 miles away. There were only three girls competing in front of a crowd of maybe 40 people, and our group was 12 of those. I’ve seen a lot of drag in my life and I can be pretty cynical about it, so my expectations were low. But I have to say, those girls brought it. Their outfits were crazy fun, their dancing was fab, and they had great props.
 
Sorry for the poor quality, but here’s one of the queens being brought into the bar on a motorcycle. They each performed to a couple of different songs and finally last year’s winner crowned the new one. Afterwards, around 1:30 am, the police came knocking on the door because bars are supposed to close at one here. Everyone in the bar had to be quiet for about 10 minutes and apparently the police went away. The party resumed and we were assured that this was normal. Hopefully that’s as close to getting arrested that I’ll encounter in Guatemala.

Some more pictures:
 
The light reading I’m doing here. It’s challenging vocabulary, so I keep the dictionary close by at all times, but I’m pretty happy with my reading comprehension in general.
My maestra Lily and me sitting on the roof of the school with Santa Maria in the background. She’s awesome and a really great teacher. When you spend four hours a day with someone, you really get to know them. We share a very similar world view and she’s taught me a lot about the culture here too. Of the locals, I’ll miss her the most.
This is the longest set of firecrackers I’ve ever seen and it took about five minutes to finish, filling the entire street with smoke. Fiestas never really end here, so there was yet another celebration at Parque Central that we checked out. Some religious day that again brought out a parade of bands, and of course, firecrackers. This country is obsessed with firecrackers. It’s not unusual for them to go off outside of my bedroom window at six in the morning. Apparently, before that would be rude.
I’m drinking some $.50 freshly-squeezed orange juice. There’s a woman that cleans the school and her kids help out too. Her son Miguel, who is 15 and very sweet, spends most of his day in front of the school making orange juice, so I buy some from him almost every day. He works there in the morning, then takes classes in the afternoon.

I have two weeks left of classes and I’m pretty ready to go home. The rain has started back up and it’s relentless. Still, I can already tell that I’ll treasure this experience, so I’m going to soak up (sorry, bad pun) as much I can for these last two weeks.