The Palace

Hey All,

I know, I need to work on my update frequency.

Things are going well on the day-to-day level. Work has been busy but not so demanding that I lose touch with other projects. There have been a few points of excitement over the last few weeks outside of work.

For one, I got to attend “A Night of Classical Music” at the King’s Palace. The Minister of Natural Resources is the one who organized the event, and he was taught by Peace Corps Volunteers so he made sure to have the Embassy invite some volunteers to the event. Eight of us were randomly chosen to go, and I was lucky to be one of them. Fortunately I had had my mom bring my suit (senior year prom strikes back) when she visited, so I was dressed in my finest. There were about 7 performers/artists who took stage, 2 of whom were notable in my mind. The first was a 14 year old cello player who rocked it, and the second was a Masotho tenor whose facial expressions to Don Giovanni put Jim Carrey to shame. He was the only performer who got a standing ovation (albeit an adamant one from a single audience member), and the only performer who made women laugh during his performance. It was awesome

Then we had some heavy hors d’oeuvres and wine at the Old Palace. I got to meet the Irish Ambassador, the head delegate to the EU, the Minister of Natural Resources (my project falls under his mandate) and the Deputy Prime Minister. I was close to the King, but he didn’t stay and socialize for too long. It was fun.

Another interesting thing has been being the center of a marketing campaign (I use that very lightly) for MCC/MCA/Peace Corps. I’m in the latest MCC newsletter (CLICK, page 3 ). I was on TV Lesotho last night apparently (I interviewed last week). I think I’ll be in the next Peace Corps Newsletter. And I have upcoming potential interviews with a local radio station and newspaper. It’s been fun, but it’s strange being interviewed for a national TV station. I’ll post the clip when I get a hold of it.

Lastly, I was about 4 days from lecturing in dynamics at a local Polytechnic. It was actually all setup, I had a schedule for the semester and a syllabus, but the class times ended up not working out with my MCA schedule. It’s kind of a bummer because I would have liked to teach that class, if nothing else than to keep my knowledge current, but it would have added 10-15 hours a week to an already busy workload. I’m going to try to tutor there instead. It should be more compatible with my schedule.

One last thing. Another volunteer and I had an idea to create a web-based database tool for Peace Corps Volunteers (Lesotho for now, but maybe expanding later). We created a Google Group and posted a presentation on it. If you’re interested in helping out, or know somebody who has web development skills or database skills, please pass on the link.

CLICK

Cheers,

Phil