When I joined the foreign service, I assumed that I would spend much of my time attending fancy foreign dinners. I had images of downing vodka in Moscow with toast after toast following the signing of an important treaty (note - much of my images of diplomats may come directly from Tom Clancy novels). During my time in Belize, I have been to a grand total of two representational events which were not thrown by our Embassy. I attended the Lebanese Day celebration my first month here and the Brazil Independence Day celebration. Neither of these involved fancy sit-down dinners with multiple forks. Last night I finally got my fancy dinner. It wasn't a celebration of a fancy treaty, a major holiday, or the birthday of an Ambassador. No, it was a murder mystery dinner hosted by Margarita and Emile.
The theme of the night was an island wedding gone awry when the bride is murdered. I played Michael Cavanaugh, an international croquet champion and gigolo who has a preference for rich women in their 70s and 80s with one foot in the grave. Joining us for the evening were the groom, his father, the wedding planner and her ex-husband lounge singer, the bride's hippie half-sister, the groom's secret half-sister and the groom's ex-girlfriend. Despite the incredible hokiness of the game, we had a lot of fun with it.
In addition, the food and the decor were fantastic. We had five or six courses, champagne, wine, and all the fancy forks you can imagine. Margarita went all out with her decorations. She even went so far as to have a "rehearsal dinner" with her kids the night before. I would happily let Margarita organize any party I would ever host or attend.
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| The dinner table. How amazing is this? |
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Check out the wine bucket on the left. It is an ice sculpture with flowers frozen into the ice.
It took her 4 days to make this. |
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| Dean Cash and his awesome lounge singer mustache. |
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| The second course - lobster and fruit salad served in a coconut half. |
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| The wedding cake - she even had a bride/groom wedding topper next to the cake. |
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| Turns out that the ex-girlfriend (and beauty queen) did it! |
Dear Michael, it sounds like you lead an interesting life. Just thought I'd mention that the ice bucket sculpture is awesome. Any chance itactually smelled good because of the flowers in it?...and gotta say lobster and fruit salad in a coconut half sounds awesome right about now.
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