Guus Bosman

Today Ettie is graduating from the Van Hall Larenstein institute in Environmental Science (Milieukunde). Congralutions from both of us!

After graduating in Delft three years ago, and now completed a study in Leeuwarden. She has found a job and started last Monday with her new employer.

Ettie has a website with her final thesis.

We just watched the World Cup 2006 final. Yesterday's game was great, today's was even better. Yesterday we saw Germany beating Portugal with 3-1 in a beautiful game, and today's game was -except for Zidane's last action in international soccer- a great game to watch.

Zidane had announced he was retiring after this game, and I thought he played very well today. Scoring the first goal, making many plays, almost scoring a second and staying in the game after a shoulder injury -- I thought he was well on his way to make a great final performance.

Sadly, he lost his temper in extra time and made gave a Materazzi a headbutt in the stomach, and was rightly sent off the field by referee Elizondo for this nasty foul. It was a disgraceful end of his career, and perhaps also of the game: the shock of losing the experienced captain, just after Henry was replaced, may have proven too much for the French team.

Italy ultimately won on penalty kicks -- I was supporting France, and thought that they were playing better than Italy but that's how the game is sometimes. This has been a great World Cup to watch, and we're looking forward to the 2008 Euro Cup.

We didn't do much this Sunday, and that was perfect. We woke up looking out over the woods, in the summer house, and we had breakfast on the deck in the sun.

It was quickly getting hot again so we went to the river. The summer house has a long dock, reaching far into the Mill Creek, where Rick has his boat. There we had our coffee and stayed for a long time.

We spent a great weekend in Rosa and Rick's summer house in Reedsville, at the Chesapeake Bay.

On Saturday Rosa picked us up at 1.00 pm and we drove down the I-95 to Fredericksburg. We used the HOV lanes in the first part of the trip, saving a lot of time with the heavy holiday traffic. After two hours we made a stop at the usual place, a gas station called "Racetrac". From Fredericksburg we went east and took local roads that brought us to Reedsville.

We arrived at the summer house around 6.30 pm. After we had set up the house (drinks in the cooler, airconditioning on) we went to visit Barbara, a friend of Rosa. We learned that the Independence Day Celebration was on Saturday and that there would be fireworks on the river a bit later.

We had dinner outside, in a restaurant overlooking the river and after our meal we had a good view of the fireworks. It was warm but there was a refreshing wind coming over the water. The Chesapeake Bay is famous for it's seafood, especially crabs, so we had a crab meat dinner.

After the fireworks we had coffee with cake at Barbara's place.