WORKING LIFE

Thursday was game night at Värmlands. I learned backgammon from a Greek friend named Vicilious, some sort of property generation game with a whole bunch of people, and ended up with Settlers of Caton. Gotta love that Värmlands.

I swung by Kalmar on Friday, hoping to sign up for some work. Things at Kalmar are a little more laid back than at the other nations I have tried to work for. I walked in and asked if I could sign a form to say that I was interested in work, and the curator asks me “you want to work tonight?” So I did.

They call Kalmar the little nation with the big heart. I went right down to work in the kitchen. There was a Swede in charge, and another kitchen helper from San Francisco. They had us doing everything. I was in charge of making the hamburgers, but also did dishes, ran food out, and made salads, nachos, and the “special” (pasta with salmon). It was very fun and fast paced. It reminded me of when I worked at Perkins way back in high school. Around midnight we started to clean up, and this is when I started to get tired. I didn’t get home until 2:30 or so. All in all it was real fun, but I think I’d take the short shift in the future, which ends at 11:30.

Saturday Steffan, Emma, Philip, and I went out to Gamla Uppsala, the old town. This is where the old kings of Sweden were buried back before Sweden was Christianized. They are buried under large mounds of dirt which make hills, a whole chain of them. We climbed on them. Apparently they also used to have human sacrifices at this spot, but when the church moved in the first thing they did was take over the sacrificial plot and build a big ol’ house of worship there.

SUPERBOWL- Last night, Dylan and I took out as many people we could, which turned out to be Emma, Steffan, Philip, and Mattias, to educate them in the ways of American football. We went to a local sports bar, which was moderately packed with other Americans and well wishers watching their several big screens. Kickoff didn’t happen until after midnight. Fortunately the game started out very exciting, so that we could draw the foreigners in. How many turnovers were there in the first quarter? 6? Ridiculous. And best of all Prince played the halftime show, and we could tell our friends that he comes from out hometown. By the end we were all very tired but I think we convinced them of the joy that is football. For about 5 hours it was like being in a little pocket of America.

OTHER THOUGHTS- Legal history is wild. You really can study a limited number of legal families and get a decent feel for the traditions of the world, because so many of the powerful countries influenced others. All the colonial powers imprinted their legal systems on their colonies. Developing countries and revolutionary governments borrow wholesale from whoever is viewed as the most progressive system at the time. Most of Latin America is based on the French Code Civile. Japan took the German system when it was modernizing in the late 19th century. Turkey took the Swiss code wholesale, for the sole reason that the head minister at the time of the switch was educated in Zurich. The system which everybody says is the weirdest is Scotland (I know, Scotland? Who’d have guessed) because it’s such an odd and balanced blend of common and civil law.

Thursday, Lappland.

-The Wandering Norseman-