On the Move

May 26

Today was a day on the move. The morning didn’t start off that well for me because we spent the last two nights sleeping in the common room/practice room. They wanted to get started practicing before I was ready, so I started out a bit out of sorts, but once the practice began I got involved and all was fine. Practice was productive. After lunch we packed up and headed out on the bus. I was sorry to leave Alix behind, as I liked her so much.

We had a brief detour to get the key for the bus’ bathroom, and then headed to Hokksund to our place of lodging for the night – a boarding school. The area we are in is full of places with turf-roofed buildings like we saw in the museum yesterday.










After dropping our stuff off there, we headed to a friend of Beth’s for a party. This was great fun, with salmon and moose burgers for dinner, chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert, and good music and conversation.



While a lot of the harpers played indoors, I wanted to stay outdoors, so I got to listen to Kit Stowell sing and play guitar and Wayne play concertina. We were entertained with a traditional dance by some of the locals.










Near the end of the party Wayne was talking to someone who we learned had a set of bagpipes that didn’t work, so we ended up going over to try to solve the problem. We didn’t quite get them fixed (the bag needs seasoning, at least) and made good friends. It was a pleasant day.