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!

Hawaiian Luau day

United Noodles in South Minneapolis is our first-choice Asian market here in the Twin Cities (there are about three others nearby that we visit occasionally), and it's not just for the selection or how well the store is organized; it's also because of how welcome we feel there.

Today was U.N.'s annual Hawaiian culture festival; they had local dancers going for much of the day, plus special island-authentic foods at the deli. We needed a few ingredients from the store anyway so Wynn and I went over to check it out.

Quite the crowd! In fact I've never been there when so many people are in the store. And all eating and buying things - it's great publicity for sure but it's even better for community-building.

 Wynn was fascinated by the dancers; no surprise with that!

We know the owner of the store, too. What a whopping big rice cooker he's using!

Wynn got her lei from the store owner's mom, and showed off some of the moves she picked up!