Guus Bosman

Last week Rome, Italy, then Washington, DC and now Montreal, Canada... Sasha is traveling quite a lot. She is presenting her paper at a conference there tomorrow.

Sunday morning she'll take an early flight back to DC to get ready for the big game! I'll drive up on Sunday morning. Things on my other website are absolutely crazy -- so many new visitors, all looking for a place to watch the final. A lot of fun.

Yesterday was Fourth of July, and we spent a nice evening at the American Tobacco Campus.

The weather was great, and we listened to several good bands, drinking 'mate', an Urugayan drink, and 'locopops', a local Durham icecream. Around 9.30 pm there was fireworks in the Durham Bulls stadium.

Sasha and her parents are in Rome, Italy, exploring the city together.

Sasha was invited to present her paper at a conference last week, and she flew to Rome on Tuesday. Friday evening after the conference Milan and Nadia arrived from Bulgaria in Rome and they're having a great time together.

It's the first time in Rome for all of them so there is a lot to see; for example they were all day in the Vatican yesterday. Sasha is flying back to Washington tomorrow.

Last night I celebrated the result of the soccer game, and the fact that we're back home, with a small dinner with friends.

Now on to Esteban & Belen's, where I'll watch the game between Germany and Argentina with German and Argentine friends.

I arrived in Durham a little after 8.00 pm. It's nice to be home again.

It took me a while to unload the car -- moving is a lot of work! If we ever move out of this apartment it would be a major project.

The road I usually take to work, I-40, was closed in both directions in the afternoon due to a suspect package. In the end it turned out to be harmless.

I just finished most of the packing... I underestimated the effort somewhat.

Now I'll find out if it will all fit in the car.

Tonight I started packing our things. We've had this apartment in Somerset since November last year and Wednesday I'm returning to North Carolina.

It's incredible how many things you can collect in 7 months. True to form we had a box full of books and more than two boxes of cooking tools and ingredients.

With the packing our home in Somerset is disappearing and becoming an empty apartment. We've had good times here, especially with the Zanes, so it's a little sad to leave. At the same time I'm looking forward to be back in our real home in Durham and see our friends and pick up our regular lives.

Sadly the USA lost its game against Ghana on Saturday. We watched it at the pool in Secaucus; it was great weather and we went for a swim after wards. In the evening we prepared for the week; lots of travel and things to arrange. Sunday morning we saw a great game between Germany and England over breakfast.

Sunday afternoon we drove to Trenton where Sasha took the train to DC for the last time. I visited Noor to drop of some materials that I had borrowed and stopped by at the Zanes for a few minutes.

This morning's match between the Netherlands and Slowakia was exciting, but the Dutch were clearly the stronger team. Friday, against Brazil, will be a very difficult match...