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NEW YEAR, NEW READING GOALS!
We welcome 2025 with lots of plans in the works! MEL joins the International Women's Club, the English Rotary Club and the Mérida Men’s Club to host the 2025 Chili Cook-Off to benefit Children’s Charities on Sunday, January 12 between 1:00 and 5:00 PM, at beautiful Casa de la Amistad in Itzimná.
Our library continues operating Monday - Saturday along with the regular programs you all love! We are starting a new program - a monthly Climate Solutions Study Group. January is our first month so please get the word out.
Remember you can always call the library at 999-924-8401 or send an email to info@meridaenglishlibrary.com for information. Visit our library website, Facebook page or Instagram profile for all of the weekly, monthly and upcoming events and never forget that libraries do change lives by offering communities a place to learn, create and belong.
The Mérida Chili Cookoff is rapidly approaching! Join us Sunday, January 12 from 1:00 to 5:00 PM at Casa de Amistad in Itzminá, Mérida. There will be live music by Boone Flanigan, food and beverages available for purchase, and a few surprises. Don't miss your opportunity to taste and vote for your favorite chili!
Tickets at $500 each are available at the Mérida English Library during library hours or online in the MEL Shop. Your entry donation includes ten free Food & Drink tickets.
This fundraiser is a CHARITY EVENT which benefits the girls’ home Estancia Nueva Vida and the children’s programs and resources at the Mérida English Library. See you there!
🌟 Happy New Year from MEL’s House & Garden Tours! 🌟
We hope you had a joyful holiday season and are as excited as we are to kick off a brand-new year of exploring Mérida’s stunning homes and gardens! We’re starting 2025 with two special off-site tours on Wednesday, January 8th:
☀ Morning Tour: Meet us at Museo de la Luz in Parque de la Plancha by 9:30 AM for an incredible morning tour.
🌙 Evening Tour: Join us at Remate de Paseo de Montejo by 5:30 PM for our second-ever evening tour. Don’t miss the chance to see these homes in a completely new light!
For the rest of January, we’ll return to our regular morning tours every Wednesday, meeting as usual at MEL.
These are walking tours, showcasing a wide variety of homes and gardens in Mérida’s Centro Histórico. The House & Garden Tour is a “must do” for visitors and residents alike! It’s informative and fun!
The cost is $400 for MEL members and $500 for non-members. Visit our website for more information, include important information, and reserve your spots online in the MEL Shop.
MEL’s first Wine Tasting of the 2025 will take place on Thursday, January 16 from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM in another wonderful home. Please join us as we kick off the new year in style!
Tickets are now on sale to MEL members only online in the MEL Shop. This members-only presale period is an online-only sale, and ticket purchases are limited to two per library Individual or Family membership number. Please look here for details.
Any remaining tickets will go on sale without limit on Monday January 6 at 9:00 AM, either online or in person at MEL. Tickets are $700 for MEL members and $800 for non-members. The location of the event will be revealed to you after you make your ticket purchase.
We look forward to seeing you all!
The Compelling Craft of Memoir: From Love Letters to Storytelling — Margaret Mandell
And Always One More Time is a story of second chances and disarming self-disclosure that takes a wholly universal look at the ways in which we bring our pasts forward to keep becoming our best selves. The themes addressed — grieving and loss, resilience and recovery, trusting love one more time, finding purpose and connection in the final leg of life’s journey, questions about motherhood and fatherhood when children are very young and when they become adults, questions about divorce and widowhood, questions about aging both physical and metaphysical — are topics to which everyone can relate.
Join Margaret in MEL’s classroom on Wednesday January 8 beginning at 11:00 AM as she reads excerpts from her memoir and takes questions.
Increase your wellbeing and enjoyment of the warmer south by experiencing these integrative yoga practices in MEL´s well-ventilated, quiet and welcoming environment.Yoga4Snowbirds© are specially designed sessions that will help you unlock the key to feeling joyful, healthy and energetic- without risky or pretzel-like postures. Each class is different and offers a full-body, safe, mindful, breath-oriented sequence that includes powerfully grounding and strengthening, meditation in motion, breathwork and other complementary somatic explorations. Participants are encouraged to self-reflection and to make a discovery out of the movements and poses.
Alma Duran is a Level 4 certified Yoga Alliance yoga instructor, author, educator, and holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. She has studied and practice in several European, Asian and American countries, and has earned nine internationally recognized certifications. Her teaching style is rooted in Viniyoga and tantra, subtle body energetics, Ayurveda, QiGong and Zen Buddhism. She is passionate about using evidence-informed practices with a heart-centered approach. With more than three decades of experience, her therapeutically oriented teachings emphasize that the practice should be adapted to the person- and not the other way around.
You can register now for 4-consecutive classes for 1,000.00 using your credit card (credit card usage fees might apply), or you can buy single-class passes for 300 pesos. If you prefer to pay cash @ MEL, or by direct deposit, please send first a message to Alma to verify space availability.
Any questions? Please e-mail Alma. Once you book a class it is not possible to reschedule or make refunds, but you are welcome to transfer your spot to a friend.
Join in-person classes at MEL
Mónica's mission is to improve health, wellbeing and awareness through the study, practice and teaching of Tai Chi and Qigong. Those who have participated just loved it!
Mónica offers a special month fee for all 8 classes for $500 mxn. Single classes $100.
Register now
Join fellow amateur writers at MEL for prose and poetry readings. We’ll gather in the MEL classroom on January 28 starting at 6:15 PM to share ten-minute excerpts of our work. This is a once-a-month meeting, and the next event will be on February 25. Visit our website for more information.
All writers living in Mérida's vicinity, regardless of level of experience, are welcome to attend the Writers Group meetings in the classroom at MEL, alternate Wednesdays, including January 15 and January 29, at 11:00 AM. Come join other enthusiasts for an exchange of ideas.
The Fiction & Friends book club will gather to discuss Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor on January 30 — a gripping and enlightening novel that will captivate readers who appreciate dark, intense, and atmospheric storytelling, particularly those drawn to explorations of the complexities of human nature, the devastating effects of violence and poverty, and the intricate web of machismo in a gritty, real-world setting.
Fiction & Friends meets on the last Thursday of each month starting at 10:00 AM. Please visit our website for more information or to join the club,
Our free lecture series continues:
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Wednesday Jan 8: Joanna Ebenstein — Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life. Filled with lessons learned across cultures and with the help of insightful prompts and questions, the listener will come away with greater clarity on what death means to them, how to live alongside it without fear, and what, to them, makes life worth living. As our ancestors knew so well, there’s no better motivation to seize the day than a regular reminder that your days are numbered! Joanna is the founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy and an internationally recognized death expert.
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Wednesday Jan 15: Dra. Zenaid Hecht Mendoza — Pain & Pain Management. Dra. Zenaid will discuss chronic pain and its management, including alternative medicine treatments like ozone therapy. Her Mérida practice includes a specialty in pain management, and she has patients travel from all over the state to seek her advice..
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Tuesday Jan 21: Robert Constable — What is Avant-garde Music? Composer and Mérida resident Robert Constable will talk about composing music in the 21st century, describe some of the philosophies and techniques he has developed for composition, and play examples of his music. He will also talk about the upcoming season of Mérida Clásica Moderna, a series of concerts of avant-garde music that is coming up in February and March at the Centro Cultural Olimpo here in Mérida.
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Wednesday Jan 22: Joanna van der Gracht de Rosado — My Own Camino: Alternate Mobility. Following three major orthopedic surgeries and three serious falls Joanna once again leads an ever-increasingly full and active life.Join Joanna and hear how she learned to embrace her own Camino. She admits it didn't happen overnight. “But I got there,” she says, “and you can too.”
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Wednesday Jan 29: Don Ellison — 1905: Einstein’s Incredible Year. In 1905 Albert Einstein published five scientific papers that forever changed our view of the world. The account of how a 26-year-old patent clerk came to these discoveries is one of the greatest stories in all of science. Don, Physics Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University, will give a brief summary of Einstein’s early life and attempt to explain in simple terms his famous results concerning time and space and the most famous equation in science.
MEL Talks start at 7:00 PM and are free and open to the public. Visit our website for the schedule, and watch past lectures on our YouTube channel.
Conversaciones con Amigos
Our language exchange program Conversaciones con Amigos is returning this new year, starting on Monday, January 13 2025, at our regular schedule 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Then every Monday.
This is an opportunity to practice English and Spanish in a friendly environment. We provide a topic each evening to start the conversation, though you can talk about anything you like, without going through controversial matters.
For adults only, this program is great to meet new people, and practice your conversation skills. Free for members, $20 pesos for non-members. We are looking for hosts. Learn more here
Join us on a walking tour to discover the art in their multiple expressions! The Santa Ana Gallery Tour takes you to visit these great places and you’ll learn about the artists’ inspiration, creativity, and way of work…
Register here and we will meet at 10 am at the park of Santa Ana, on Calle 60 & 47, by the fountain, and after a quick talk about the city and the art scene.
We welcome a new year with a very good edition of MEL Storytime! Join us on Saturday, January 2025, starting at 10 am. This occasion, the author herself Nina Sauri is coming to share her book “The Incredible World of Chakras and the Little Protecting Monsters”. With the guide of these little monsters we will be recreating some Yoga postures as we read the story together.
Wear comfortable clothing and be ready to move!
This book is available for sale at MEL.
It’s pretty obvious that dramatic, often catastrophic, climate changes are occurring around the world. What most of us don’t know is what the solutions really are. We don’t know what can and must be done on all levels—individual, community, region-wide, nationally, and globally—to pass on a livable planet to the next generation. The Climate Solutions Study Group is for people who have no intention of giving up and sacrificing Mother Earth. It’s for people who are less interested in blaming others and more curious about what is really true, what is really most effective. It’s for people who are happy both to take baby steps and to make big leaps.
The group meets on the third Friday of every month starting at 11:00 AM. Please visit our website for more information.
The Mérida English Library is happy to host MEL Bingo Night on Saturday, January 25, from 7 pm to 9 pm.
It will be a fun night of friends of the library playing bingo the traditional way, as a fundraiser for MEL.
This is how we play bingo:
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Sit with us at the patio of MEL and once we close the card sale, we will announce the total collected.
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We start drawing numbered balls from the bingo cage. Listen to the number and mark it if it’s on your card.
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Each round we will play a different way: 5 in line, 4 corners, the letter X, the letter H, full card. Remember to say BINGO! when you win.
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The winner gets 50% of the money collected per round, and the remaining 50% goes to support MEL.
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There may be more than one winner, if so, the money will be split between the number of winners.
Enjoy refreshing drinks and delicious snacks during the evening, available for sale from our cash bar.
Buy your Bingo booklet in advance here
For one extended weekend, the streets of Mérida come alive with creativity as the MEL Artist Studio Tour celebrates its 12th anniversary! This year’s tour — our largest yet — will showcase over 30 studios and feature more than 50 talented local and international artists working across various mediums, including painting, murals, ceramics, weaving, paper making, photography, and fused glass.
Tickets will be available for purchase starting February 1. Attendees will receive a map with their ticket that indicates the locations of all the studios. Most studios are conveniently located in Centro and can be easily accessed on foot. However, due to the number of participating artists, it is advisable to plan your visit in advance. To enhance your experience, consider purchasing your tickets early and visiting our artists page to identify the artists that resonate with you. You may choose to organize your day around a specific neighborhood or art style — it's entirely up to you.
This year’s tour operates on February 14 (5:00 PM - 7:00 PM), February 15 (10:00 AM - 3:00 PM) and February 16 (3:00 PM - 7:00 PM). Each ticket is $500, which can be purchased at the Mérida English Library during library hours or online in the MEL Shop.
Click here to learn more about the Artist Studio Tour, or follow us on Facebook (MEL Artist Studio Tour) or Instagram (melartiststudiotour).
Since 2012, hats and toys made by a group of crafters have been distributed weekly to children in the cancer unit of O’Horán Hospital. Besides a gorro (brimless hat), each child gets a toy and activity book, crayons or colored pencils.
If you can knit, crochet, or sew, please join us in the classroom at MEL on the second and fourth Tuesdays, 9:30 - 12:30, from November through March. We have patterns and some materials to share, but please bring your own equipment and supplies if you have them.
Questions? Please send an email to the group organizers.
This year, the Spanish Lessons continue at the Mérida English Library on Wednesdays and Fridays. Jump in the ongoing lessons and learn Spanish with us. Register here
Are you interested in starting the level from scratch? E-mail teacher Alfonso for more information asesoriasdeidiomasmerida@gmail.com
The Mérida English Library is fortunate to have many talented writers in our midst, and we gather many of them together for our Local Author Book Fair on Monday, March 10 from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM. Are you a Mérida resident who has published work? If so, please send us an email to request inclusion in this year’s event. (We hope to include all authors who apply but priority will be given to MEL members who have new work to present.) We had a wildly successful fair in 2024 in which our fourteen authors collectively sold more than 80 books, and are looking forward to even greater things in the next edition!
Connie and Bob Elkins - Lewie Connor - Leslie Durand - Alvah Hanrahan - Nancy Reilly - Gabrielle Pellegrin - Robert Esparza - Betty Barton - Harrington Mahoud - Olive Gessler - Kitty Flynn & Ricky Berger - Janelle Masden - Carrie Moir - Aliza Mizrahi - Katherin Schneider - Phoebe Sharp - Dale Bechtel - Lori Carrasco.
Download it here
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