World Cup, Norway...too much to write!

Lately I've had about 400 things to write here, but no time on the computer to write them.

First I want to wish a Happy Birthday to my Dad!

Second, the Fourth of July arrived last week. It was my first Fourth spent in the US in several years. I had many thoughts on that but it's too lenthy for now.

Sunday was the World Cup final. Marco and I picked up Emily and headed over to Brit's Pub. This is a stylish British pub in downtown Minneapolis and they have a huge rooftop patio where there is normally a huge lawn bowling green. Today they put up a screen and people sat on the green to watch the game. The pub was ABSOLUTELY packed inside and out. It is a large pub and there must have been hundreds of people. There were Italians and French people and all sorts of Americans. Very exciting. Many languages around, lots of anticipation and revelry. Marco and I were naturally rooting for France and Emily was for Italy since she and Lauren have many ties to Italy (they both have ancestry there, and Lauren is an Italian baker / chef). I quite enjoyed the afternoon.

The game started here at 1pm, so by the time it ended we were quite sunburnt. It was a perfect bright hot sunny summer day. Afterwards, once Zidane had done his infamous headbutt and Italy had won, Lauren met up with us and we ate Ethiopian food at the Blue Nile.

Also this week my cousin and her husband invited us over for dinner. They just returned from a trip to Norway with my aunt, uncle, cousin and my cousin's husband. In Norway they visited our Norwegian relatives and went to the villages and homes that my family originally came from.

I learned that my Norwegian ancestors lived on a very picturesque fjord on the middle west coast, in a town called Valdal. Our relatives still live on the family farm. I think that is so cool! This farm has a wooden plaque with the names of all the generations that lived there, at least fifteen names! So we had been there for a very long time. My mother's grandmother, I believe, was born Norway and moved to the US with her husband who was also born near Valdal. The same on my grandfather's side. So my Mom's mom and dad (my grandparents, obviously) were our first American-born relatives. That makes me 3rd generation.

The area is scenic with clear blue waters and emerald trees and meadows. My Norwegian "uncle" named Arne (I think he's actually a 3rd or 4th cousin) is the mayor of the town. We met him and his family once when I was 19 years old, when they came to visit the US. I liked them because they were well traveled and funny. When Arne was young he had traveled all over the world by working on cargo ships. He had spent a lot of time in New Zealand. And at the time when I met them at age 19, he and his family had just lived for three years in Zambia, where he had represented the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture on an agricultural development project.

So my cousin's slideshow on saturday was a suprising experience. Up to now my Norwegian roots have seemed very vague and distant. I never knew much about where we came from. Suddenly it all seems very real and concrete. We saw photos of my cousins and aunt and uncle surrounded by our relatives in the ancestral home back in the Old World. I saw the landscapes and the buildings. That is a fascinating thing to see. For the first time I feel rooted in something older than just my immediate life that I've known. I guess Europeans always feel this way, since they can easily visit their ancestral villages and relatives. But here in America we often live so detached from our pasts.

Other than this, I have been working a lot in my studio. My building will hold another open house for the public this saturday. This time I will have several panels and maybe even a mosaic-topped table to show. I will have pictures of this stuff up soon. I'm pretty happy with the results.