{"id":604,"date":"2015-10-15T04:09:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T04:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/?p=604"},"modified":"2015-10-15T04:09:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T04:09:07","slug":"book-discussion-in-portlandia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/book-discussion-in-portlandia\/","title":{"rendered":"Book discussion in Portlandia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Columbia River Peace Corps Association’s Book Club<\/a>\u00a0in Portland, Oregon, was nice enough to invite me to participate in their discussion of The Mountain School<\/em>\u00a0on September 16. They have an enviable group and routine going on up there.<\/p>\n

I had a great time hearing the thoughts of those who read the book, many of whom had been Peace Corps volunteers in decades past and in countries far from Lesotho (Philippines, Ecuador, Liberia, Venezuela, Ghana, Belize, Niger). I learned that there are some experiences that many Peace Corps volunteers share despite differences in era\u00a0or continent: dangerous rides in buses or taxis, getting robbed or mugged. Not that it’s all trial and tribulation! But those are things that stick with you, and it’s good to commiserate about them, and once it’s long after the fact you can even laugh about them.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Columbia River Peace Corps Association’s Book Club\u00a0in Portland, Oregon, was nice enough to invite me to participate in their discussion of The Mountain School\u00a0on September 16. They have an enviable group and routine going on up there. I had a great time hearing the thoughts of those who read the book, many of whom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8huLi-9K","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":264,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/peace-corps-panel-discussion\/","url_meta":{"origin":604,"position":0},"title":"Peace Corps Panel Discussion","author":"Greg Alder","date":"February 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The end of February is Peace Corps Week, and on Saturday, February 16, I'll be participating in a panel discussion for people interested in becoming volunteers. It's at the College-Rolando Public Library in San Diego. There'll be photos and stories. Come by if you're interested. A link to the official\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Peace Corps\"","block_context":{"text":"Peace Corps","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/tag\/peace-corps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/book-reviews\/","url_meta":{"origin":604,"position":1},"title":"Book Reviews","author":"Greg Alder","date":"August 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I've heard of writers who don't read reviews of their books. I understand the temptation to avoid being criticized, but I see \"The Mountain School\" as a conversation starter, just the first word in a dialogue, and so for me to ignore a review would be like refusing to participate\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/book-reviews\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":654,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/how-to-pronounce-lesotho\/","url_meta":{"origin":604,"position":2},"title":"How to pronounce Lesotho","author":"Greg Alder","date":"March 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I remember getting the news from Peace Corps that they were sending me to a country called Lesotho and having two thoughts: Where's Lesotho? And secondly, how do you pronounce Lesotho? I wouldn't find out until I arrived in the country. No one I knew in the U.S. could tell\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":614,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/lesotho-as-an-enclave\/","url_meta":{"origin":604,"position":3},"title":"Lesotho as an enclave","author":"Greg Alder","date":"March 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There aren't many countries which are entirely surrounded by a single\u00a0other country, as Lesotho is entirely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. There's also San Marino within Italy, and then there's Vatican City within Italy too. That's it. Three in the whole world. Nancy Wright teaches political science at\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/lesotho-as-an-enclave\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":271,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/lesotho-and-the-chinese\/","url_meta":{"origin":604,"position":4},"title":"Lesotho and the Chinese","author":"Greg Alder","date":"February 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In\u00a0The Mountain School\u00a0I told the story of visiting a Chinese-owned shop in a neighboring village called Kolo, where a Mosotho woman got into an argument with the Chinese cashier. Chinese are really the only immigrants in Lesotho and, if I could sum up, I'd say the Basotho grudgingly patronize Chinese\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":610,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}