Aquatennial Fireworks 2014

While we didn't go anywhere to see fireworks on the 4th of July, in Minneapolis they have a summer festival later in July that always ends with a big show.  Uncle Paul recommended the old Northern Pacific railroad bridge at the north end of the University of Minnesota campus (near Dinkytown) and so that's where we ended up tonight.  Excellent location, we will do this again!

Art-a-Whirl 2014

Living inside the city allows us to participate in so many more activities - one of our new favorites happens each spring in Northeast Minneapolis - only a few blocks from Yinghua - Art-a-Whirl is the kickoff summertime festival & lasts 3 days. Hundreds of galleries in NE Mpls participate; there are several stages with live bands, pub crawls, food trucks - it gets really crowded despite taking place over several square miles!

There are several large buildings in NE Mpls that have been converted into studio space - the Northrup King Building is from the seed company of course - 4 stories tall and fully occupied. Awesome place to explore...

Using her language skills at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Kind of a bleh day outside, and we had a bad case of cabin fever, so we went out to lunch at United Noodles and stopped by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (also in South Minneapolis).  The MIA has the largest collections of Chinese and Japanese art outside those countries of any museum in the world - so we always have something new to discover. Traditional clothing from various ethnic groups in China, above.

Ceramic figurines of a wedding party, as gifts to that wedding party, over a thousand years old.

 Outside of how amazing the artworks are in their own regard, we particularly appreciate the MIA for helping us present and talk about Wynn's birth culture in a wonderful way. If we lived anywhere else in the U.S. we simply couldn't do this.

As an unexpected bonus, today the museum had activity stations in various places where people could handle items from the collections (or reproductions) and talk with curators and academic specialists. In the Chinese exhibit we got to hold 3,000-year-old artifacts, learn more about ink and brushes, and Wynn talked for about 5 minutes IN MANDARIN with this curator!  She did very, very well!