This was a great week. After a very rainy and dreary June, the weather was wonderful and I was able to go for walks on the beach during my lunch hour. The neighborhood got together on Tuesday afternoon for a 4th of July party, and it was followed by a long fireworks display put on by the City of Portland.

This week also was great because of good developments at the Fulbright Academy. A Nobel Prize winner has tentatively accepted our invitation to speak at our March Conference in Panama, and some of the national Fulbright organizations are confirming their involvement as well. Planning for several forums and workshops is moving forward as well, and we identified another foundation that may be interested in supporting our work.

Among the new members who joined this week, we had a professor emeritus of anthropology and the president of an IT consulting firm who had studied business management in Jordan on his Fulbright experience. Interesting people doing interesting work.

We also had an architect in Vienna and an architect in Guatemala City. Architecture is one of those disciplines that straddles the boundary -- is it art or is it science? Because of the math and the engineering, I think of it as a science.

I love the serendipity in this job - the connections that I am able to make among Fulbrighters around the world. On the same day that the architect in Guatemala faxed his membership form, I also received an email from a member saying that I shouldn't mail anything to her home in Ohio because she had just arrived in Guatemala for a month of work and vacation. I suggested that they should get together.... I wonder if they will?