The Mexican "Lunch"

Yesterday I met up with everyone at the school to leave together for a end-of-the-year "lunch." We hopped in each other's cars around 3 p.m. and headed down to the San Ángel neighborhood in the south. By chance, we went to the only restaurant I've ever been to in San Ángel, so it was not quite the Mexican mystery I'd been hoping for.

Around 15 of us sat down at a long wood table, a huge wok of paella sitting in the middle and filled with sausage, pigs' feets and all sorts of goodies I can't eat. We started with a couple beers and packets of Saltines (Mexico's equivalent to giving a basket of bread), followed by squares of delicious 'tortilla patata.' I was encouraged by the other teachers to eat all of them (I did) as I wouldn't get to enjoy in the fruits of paella. Next came some raw meat & tuna spread for the Saltines, which I stared at judgingly. Finally the paella wok was returned to our table after being whisked away for cooking on the grill. I selected a few tough, chewy prawns off the top, popped off their heads and peeled away their little feet and smothered them in Valentina salsa, and I added a little bit of the yellow rice and peas on the side, probably smothered in sinful meat juice.

Everything we ate and drank was part of a prepaid package, so once we collectively consumed 20 beers, we were left with the the two bottles of rum and two bottles of tequila on the table. With the food gone, we sat at the table nibbling the typical bar food of wheat puffs covered in chile as we talked about the kids (mostly their cooky parents) and other girly gossipy things and while I humored the 20-year-old door guy who apparently has a case of puppy love.

Around 11 p.m., the four bottles polished off and surrounded by empties of Squirt, Coke and mineral water, we left the banquet room and moved into the cantina part, where drunken karaoke and dancing took place, but fortunately the Jose Cuervo hadn't hit me enough to encourage me to join. I was pulled up to the dance floor by a couple of my teachers, but after showing them what I mean when I say "gringos don't dance," they let me sit back down. The principal ordered another two bottles of tequila, and with an incredible performace by my liver, I continued drinking until 1 a.m. without much more than a buzz. Good work, OU.

Eventually we all went back to our homes (or some of us to other parties, ahem), me hitching a ride with my infant teacher and her sober husband. As a side note, drunk driving in Mexico does not carry the appropriate stigma that it does in the U.S.

And that, my friends, is a Mexican lunch.