September 26, 2005

Mérida Musings:  Culture Clash

Greetings from sunny Mexico! Our brave and transcultural group of seventeen Centre students, along with director
Dr. Phyllis Bellver and assistant director Miguel Flores, has been here in Mérida for two weeks now. This fortnight has been primarily an orientation: a chance for us to become acclimated to the language, the bus routes, our families,
and if we’re lucky, the intense heat.

We have already experienced so much of the Yucatán Peninsula— in our first week, we visited four Maya ruins (Dzibilchaltún, Chichen-Itza, Ek’Balam, and Tulum), a small Maya village called Sisbicchén, and several locations near Cancún. Even more fascinating (for me, anyway) was observing what happens when you place a bunch of gringos in relatively unfamiliar surroundings— i.e., the phenomenon known as culture clash.