A weekend full of cherries, festivals, and meeting the King!

Greetings! I had a great and busy weekend. Friday night my Dad and I went to a Diplomatic Dinner hosted by the King. That's right, I got to meet the King! It was black tie and evening gown, so we got to get all dressed up and swanky. This also gave me an excuse to shop with my Dad in Blom S.A last week since all of my dresses were too short!
The dinner was attended by the Prime Minister, all the other Ministers and dignitaries, and Ambassadors in Lesotho and South Africa. It was pretty cool to meet the King. I actually see him working out at the gym quite frequently (with his entourage of guards) but its not like I would just hop in the treadmill next to him and introduce myself!
Since it was a diplomatic crowd, I was certainly the youngest one around. My Dad and I were laughing because people probably thought I was his young trophy wife.

I said "All the women are probably looking at you and thinking 'Bastard!" and all of the men are probably thinking 'lucky Bastard'! Har har har.

We sat at the table with the French Ambassador, Swazi Ambassador, and the Chief Justice. The food was good (salad, chicken, lesotho trout, cheesecake) and red wine of course is always good. We got to listen to a good local jazz group, as well as a Lesotho choir (these people can sing, American Idol has nothing on them!)
During all of the excruciatingly long speeches I killed the time by practicing a breathing technique I learned at my first yoga lesson last week. One cool thing was the the King mentioned the U.S election and how happy everyone was, and how it was a good example of a peaceful transfer of power (see, I wasn't just completely tuned out and into my rhythmic breathing- I did some listening too!)

Me and my Pops

It's like Prom all over again!

Then on Saturday I went to the Ficksburg Cherry festival in S.A. This is basically like a county fair type of thing. For my Wilson clan- it is just like the Clearfield County fair, but in Africa! Except the whole thing is centered around cherries. Ficksburg, which is about 1 1/2 hours away from Maseru, grows a ton a cherries. So this is indeed a reason to celebrate.
I went with my Peace Corps friends Rebecca & Eric. We hitched a ride with some friends, and met up with others once we were there.
The highlights of this trip included: beer garden, free samples of cherry liquor, and FOOD!
We imediatly got tickets for the beer garden (and before you judge me too much, our money went to a charity, so I was drinking for a cause!)
After being in Maseru for a while, Fair food had never looked so good. There were too many options and food to be eaten. Rebecca and I decided on paninis. Only problem was that everything on the menu was in Afrikaans. We stood in line and I attemped my best Afrikaan accent while reading the options. Luckily a nice man from Durban saw us struggling, so he translated for us. However we were pretty smart and figured out on our own that "kaas" means cheese. Crucial word for me to know.
We also had freshly fried potato chips on a stick, sprinkled with kaas. To top it off we found a little shack that was making FRESH doughnuts!! There was this little machine that plopped the dough into a river of boiling oil...the doughnuts would sail down the river and fall on the the plate, ready to be slathered in either chocolate, caramel, white chocolate, cinnamon-sugar, or in my case- all of the above!

Doughnut machine in all of it's glory . Mom, can I have one of these for Christmas?

Now moving on from doughnuts- to free liquor samples!
We went into the "craft" tent expecting to find awesome African crafts. Instead it was basically a giant dollar store full of crap. The tent was hot, crowded and smelly. Luckily it had one redemeening quality- lots of liquor. Now this was special liquor, Mom and Pops type companies made and bottled in SA. Everywhere you turned you could have a free shot. Cherry, marshino, semi sweet, sweet, sour, cherry blossom, brandy, vodka etc etc. There were some awful ones, and lots of yummy ones. I had to support local business, so I bought a few bottles of cherry brandy, lime vodka, and hazelnut liquor. My backpack was pretty heavy after that.

Well blogspot isn't letting me load anymore pictures...hope these ones work! I will edit this post and add more details & pictures if possible!