{"id":3022,"date":"2014-04-20T08:28:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-20T14:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=3022"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:35:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:35:52","slug":"friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=3022","title":{"rendered":"Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a good week with friends. Barb and Edward are about to head out, so we enjoyed a really nice going away dinner with them, Rick, and Sarah, hosted by Peter and Lizanne – who are fabulous hosts. We had a great dinner and good conversation with lots of toasting going on. We were also celebrating Peter’s great new assignment in Bolivia! <\/p>\n

Friday was going-away lunch for them at the French Club. In addition to the usual suspects (sans Brad, who is on R&R), several of the ELOs from the NIV section joined in – lots of fun. Friday was admin day; the local staff also hosted a section-wide breakfast in Barb’s honor. The afternoon was Community Day, where many of the local staff brought their kids to the Embassy – where John made balloon animals for them. They all had a big time. <\/p>\n

Friday night, John and I made a long-delayed return visit to the Polo Lounge, this time with Scott and Merlin. It was a beautiful night to sit outside and visit with a nice glass of wine. <\/p>\n

I had a school board meeting on Wednesday, which I actually enjoy because the other folks on the board are so nice.<\/p>\n

This afternoon I went to Charlie’s house. He hosted a very interesting gentleman, Richard Garstang<\/a>, who gave a presentation on biodiversity in Pakistan. He’s from South Africa and worked as the conservation director for Kruger National Park at one time, so he also talked some about Africa. A really fascinating man. I didn’t get much of a chance to visit with his wife, but she is a Pakistani mountaineer and interesting in her own right. I was very happy that Charlie included me. Who knew that Pakistan used to have rhinos? Not me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a good week with friends. Barb and Edward are about to head out, so we enjoyed a really nice going away dinner with them, Rick, and Sarah, hosted by Peter and Lizanne – who are fabulous hosts. We had a great dinner and good conversation with lots of toasting going on. We were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3022"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3026,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions\/3026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}