Weather: Sunny, humid, and 85

Today was the second day of the reina festival here in San Cristobal. It is basically a beauty pageant, and they crown a new queen of San Cristobal. I didn't attend last night's festivals since it was just the beginning of them and I think it was the crowning of only the queen from Progresso (which is basically a neighborhood off of where I live).

Tonight was the crowning of the queen for all of San Cristobal and my host sister Anahi was dancing in it, so I really wanted to go and show support. I'll backtrack to this morning...I was walking to school for 9am and there were some kids on the side of the road holding water balloons. They said something to me in Spanish that I didn't comprehend so I just stared, smiled, and kept on going. All of a sudden I feel a thud in my side and I look down and a water balloon smashes open at my feet. At first I was pissed because I thought these kids were throwing balloons at me since I am a gringa. However, I soon realized it's carnaval here which involves a lot of water related activities and water balloons could be one of those things. After that I laughed at myself for being pretty uncultured and headed to class. The rest of the day was pretty relaxed, I got lunch with some friends and just hung out.

On Friday and Saturday, us students are responsible for dinner and we're responsible for lunch everyday. I ended up reheating the veggie burger I got for lunch for dinner, and then met up with friends afterwards. We headed over to the concha which is where my host sister danced, it's an outside stage where most of the locals on the island gathered. There was a group of people that had noise makers which were so loud and completely obnoxious. Us Americans just tried to embrace it but the noise would go on for minutes at a time so it was a lot.

As far as timeframes there's no schedule as to who is performing when, so you just kinda have to wait it out however, this festival started at 6:30pm and went until 2am. My host sister didn't start dancing til about 10:45pm. My friends and I were waiting since 9:30ish. We had been there before but my host family hadn't arrived yet so we left and came back. Anahi did awesome and seeing all the dance routines made me miss my dancing days. Shortly after her performance, my friends and I walked to the one club on the island. Most people in our program were there and it was nice to see everyone and hang out. I ended up dancing the night away and then out of nowhere a wall of tiredness hit me so I headed back to my house which is a couple streets over from the discoteque (club). Everyone here calls it the disco which is just funny cause it reminds me of Motown for some reason.

After heading home, I could still here the pageant from my house and a 17 year old named Melaney ended up winning the pageant as far as I heard...Also, Tania's cousin arrived today with his little girl and I guess they're staying here for a week as far as I know. It was quite awkward at first cause it was just us three at one point and he only said "hola" to me. It wasn't until Tania got home that we got introduced to each other. Anahi is now sleeping on the couch and the two little ones sleep in Tania and Paco's room. It's a packed house to the say the least. It was a good day and I got to see a lot of my friends so you can't ask for much more than that.