St Patrick's Day

One of the first things I'm sure to tell people after meeting me is that my Mom grew up in Ireland and moved to the US as a teenager. I'm super proud of my Irish heritage so I'm always happy when St Patricks Day rolls around. Usually we do a traditional dinner at Mom's house; corned beef, cabbage, carrots and soda bread. I was really bummed to be missing out on that this year (especially after the amazing Guinness-boiled corned beef she made last year). I decided that I would do my best to recreate the dinner here; it would be a nice way to show the other volunteers what my family's customs are. Sadly I quickly realized that corned beef was non-existant here. I was going to try to improvise, but then someone suggested that we all go to the only Irish pub in Guatemala (which is conveniently located in Antigua!) I figured if anyone was going to be able to find corned beef in Guatemala it would be them, so I gladly went along with the plan. A few of us got to the bar early (4:30) and ordered dinner. Sadly, they weren't offering corned beef but they did have a fish and chip special, Irish stew, bangers and mash and a shepard's pie :) I was a little dubious about ordering Irish food in Guatemala (my previous experiences with Japanese and Chinese foods here have left a lot to be desired) so I ordered the Shepard's Pie (I figured they can't mess up a meal too bad if it had cheddar cheese on it.) I was actually pleasantly surprised! The food was really, really good! The pie was LOADED with meat, way more than I expected. I would definitely want to go and check out the rest of their dishes.

After the dinner we proceeded to get our drink on :) I had green beer for the first time ever and liked it so much that I went on to drink two pitchers of it on my own.

The bar was pretty cool. The were playing some good music though they seemed to only have a playlist of about 15 (kind of surprising considering they have to play Irish music every day). The night started out with a small friendly crowd which turned into an obnoxious group of drunk tourists before long. We ended up leaving by 8:30p and going home but I was totally okay with that :) I still had an awesome time (though I still missed mom's corned beef!)