Our first BBQ

At the outing for my friend Claire's birthday, we decided that it would be a good idea to celebrate St. Paddys somehow. Given that this year, it occurred on a Monday night, we decided that a Sunday BBQ would be most appropriate.
We borrowed a BBQ from our friend Melissa, since we haven't gotten around to getting one of our own yet, and as soon as we got back from cultural orientation we went out to stock up on meat. We bought 3 chickens, sausage, steak, a roast to cut into medallions, veggie burgers and all the fixings. Saturday night, as well as Sunday morning, we were busily preparing potatoes for potato salad, other veggies and marinating meat.
Basically, it was a lot of work, but fun also getting excited about hosting our first real party. We invited all of our close friends and had the BBQ going for hours - BBQs here are charcoal and very difficult to light, but once you get them going, they provide beautifully even heat and are great to cook on.
We also made home made lemonade with lemons from our lemon tree! In fact, after we made the lemonade, we realized there were still a lot of ripe lemons in our tree, so we filled a bucket with them - unfortunately, instead of taking lemons home, our guests used them instead for the lemon game, which consisted of throwing them up on the tin roof and trying to catch them when they rolled off....at least the lemons provided much entertainment!
We were able to actually find two six packs of Guinness in Lilongwe, which we thought was very suitable for the occasion, and Melissa brought some whisky, which was a treat enjoyed by all.
I meant to take photos of all the food - the potato salad I made was even decorated with egg slices, like my dad always does his - but in all the excitement and busy hosting duties, I totally forgot.
It was a great success - people came at two and I think the last guests left around midnight, so a great time was had by all, and it was very enjoyable for us to be hosting an event here.