Weekend Retreats: An Expensive Dinner with Americans
January 24th, 2010

Mérida -- With a wonderful palette of rosy, pale, and red faces seared ever-so-slightly, this weekend retreat to an expensive hotel restaurant with a large group of American students proved a panorama of colors, like white, and a must-attend escape from the doldrums of cultural expansion and learning a new language.

There’s nothing like three hours of conversations in English to return you to a magical world of all conversations being had in English. And there’s nothing like those conversations transpiring between college Juniors to bring back waves of blurry, disaffected memories that you can cherish as you drink heavily.

The wonderful scenery will conjure images of why you first undertook this adventure. Through a broad, locked glass door you will see quaint food carts and groups of men smoking in the dark. Children will knock at the door to sell roses, and drug addicts mints, and you will take the opportunity to look away from them.

A menu written in an illegible cursive will be your gateway to a selection of choice foods. Local steaks arranged preciously, and things that your dinner companions had no idea they were getting.

The Weekend Retreater entreats you; take that long weekend, go somewhere you’ve never been. Then watch as the world surrounds you, without you having to so much as lift a finger, with people from places you’ve been many times. Savor it. Feel the comfort, and be sure to take a moment to breathe in and feel at your most superior.