Det er kunst vi vil ha

We spent a long day on Sunday packing David's apartment. We didn't finish. He decided that it would be better to drive all day Tuesday and keep packing on Monday than stress to get it finished on Sunday night.This was fine with me. It was going to be hard to say good-bye and I was happy to put it off for another day.

Monday I also started working at the art gallery (www.raulandkunstforening.no). This is a perfect summer job. I am surrounded by art and people interested in art. We share the building with the local coffee shop. When we're not busy, I get to check the internet for exciting developments. Sometimes I even get to clean the floors, something which has come to give me great joy after a year of washing at the dentist's office. Mostly, the job gives me a purpose for five hours a day; I pendle between feeling incredibly useful and phenomenally ignorant. Fortunately, in those slow times, I get to read art catalogs and artists' websites to help me build a little knowledge.

On Tuesday, David tried to leave. Tried, as in he packed the car and drove off, but his brakes gave out an hour down the road. Working at the art gallery also affords me the luxury of being both conveniently located to the local gas station and the flexibility to run out the door when he called to ask them if they had time to check out his car. In the end he drove to another town, had the brakes checked and then back up here to have them fixed. We got our extra night after all!

On Wednesday he left for real, leaving me to entertain myself by waiting for text messages from the road and washing the enormous pile of dishes we had steadily ignored since returning from Geilo. My apartment seemed lonely and somehow empty without David, in spite of the impressive volume of things we had managed to pack into it. It's a good thing we have found a larger place to live in the fall, even if it's not that much larger.

Since Wednesday I have beat the heat by avoiding it. Mostly by sitting calmly in the art gallery, guiding visitors to the send floor exhibition and film room. Generally hoping that they would be inspired by the calmness in the gallery to purchase something off our walls. I've also spent a fair amount of time lounging on my couch, too hot to do anything but lay there and think about the boy who had driven off. He sends me beautiful messages and I reply haltingly; language barriers are no fun.

Even the weekend was dedicated to the kunstforening. My alternatives were cleaning the house, so it seemed like an obvious choice. On Sunday we got some rain and a little thunder storm. I took a walk up to our new apartment - only five more minutes up the hill! Before I slept, I was struck by the deliciousness of the cold water from the tap here in the mountains. Even in the hot summer months, it is crisp and sweet, like I remember the water in Seattle tasting when I was a child.

Update, continued.

After the fire drill on Wednesday, we had an evening concert with Nobody's Jig. Their performance was overshadowed by the best night I've had dancing here in Rauland. I danced and danced and danced and didn't play my fiddle at all! This week, we have a rotation for who is playing for dancing, so no one gets stuck playing all night and everyone gets a chance to dance.

Over the weekend I worked and worked and worked, and then I partied. Let's start with the working. Friday night the hotel had a 9 person Irish band from Stavanger (I think). Every room in the hotel was booked. The entire town was at the party. They drank us almost dry. The hotel had purchased several pony kegs of Guinness - they were gone before the evening was over. The guests also drank almost all of the regular beer we had. It was the party of the season!

Saturday was much, much calmer in the bar and the restaurant. There wasn't any live music. Just some very drunk Lithuanian carpenters, a handful of hotel guests, and a few locals. On the way home that evening, we found one of the locals attempting to walk home. I would guess that it's about 15km from the hotel to where we dropped him off. His buddies had disappeared and he was determined to make his way home. For a drunk hitch-hiker, he was a pretty entertaining guy.

And then there was Sunday. I started the day (around noon) by working at the dentist office. Around five we met up and headed back to the hotel for the staff party. Free drinks and food, games, a scavenger hunt, one short speech, and dancing. It was a great party. I spent most of my evening talking with a nice Swedish guy, who is a friend of one of the cooks. That is the time I wasn't dancing, chasing around in the snow and the dark looking for the clues we were supposed to find, or dancing some more.

Anja and I had planned to head back to town (either get a ride or take a taxi), but with a little incentive in the form of free lodging in the hotel and friendly conversation, we managed to spend the night. Naturally, we made it to school on time; before the instructor in fact!

We spent Monday learning tunes from Leiv Solberg. Today we worked on our concert program. Wish us luck tomorrow! We've got a big day and night ahead of us.