saint paddy had to wait for lent to end

On account of this year’s rare incidence of lent coinciding with Mr. Saint Patrick’s fest, we thought it best to delay the celebrations until our self-restraining friends were up for the drink again. After all, what’s an Irish holiday without a gallon of green beer going around the table?

So, Easter come and gone, and all vices resumed, we donned our green and dyed our beer and celebrated the good luck of the Irish in Bolivia in early April.

In addition to our six thousand Bolivian and Japanese neighbors here in Okinawa, we’ve got the good pleasure of having three other Americans around. Jeremy, Marie, and Elizabeth are Silesian catholic volunteers, and they teach English in the schools and work with the kids and mothers clubs in the communities around us.

We have a community dinner every Tuesday with them and tend to call each other up for a hand of euchre or game of frisbee or movie night once or twice a week. They’re great company, and they speak English, my favorite language. I’ve been working with the girls lately, going out to the communities to teach sanitation and women’s health to the mom’s clubs, which is a rockin’ good time.