Our first scrimmage: Ljungby VBK vs. Gislaved

The match began very slowly, our team struggling to find a way to score. Our serve receive and first ball contact was very touch-and-go, allowing the visiting team to come out on top with a first set score of 14-25. In between the two sets, we decided to come back with more focus and communication. Set two we were able to put that talk into action, resulting in a 25-14 victory. Jimmie and Daniel both told me “keep going to Jo”; there was just no stopping her. She and I have been connecting very well on all attacks, thanks to our much-improved passing. The 3^rd set was similar to the one before, winning 25-16. Despite our two high-margin wins, we struggled in the 4^th to go on a run. (Emma started at M2, and then Asha came in to finish out the set.) The points were back and forth throughout the set, as neither team gained more than a 2-3 point lead. Finally, we came out on top 25-23. As this was just a scrimmage match, we would play a fifth set to 25-points. Linn started at setter, Lisa played O1, middles were the same, and Mia played Libero; a little over halfway through the final set, Nata finished out setting. This final game was back and forth, with Gislaved taking the lead at 21-19, but after a few strong serves from Malin, we tied it up. The final score was 26-24; we won 4 sets to 1. (Usually you just play best of 5, but for the scrimmage, we wanted to get more time playing.) Despite our victory, we all knew that this did not mean anything. We needed to focus on the aspects of our game that needed improvement: serve receive and defense, this upcoming week in practice. 

See below for a crude line-up for the match:

           Game 1                        Games 2-4                        Game 5

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Jo        Malin        Jule    |   Jule     Asha    Sofie   |    Jule     Asha    Lisa

Me      Sofie        Asha   |   Malin    Jo         Me    |   Malin    Jo        Linn

We're going $HOPPING in Växjö !!!

Friday night, we got a text message from Daniel, our coach, asking if Jo and I would be interested in going into Vaxjo for a day of shopping. Always eager to visit new towns, we agreed. 10:30 the next day, we began a 45-minute drive from Ljungby to Vaxjo down a 2, sometimes 3-lane, highway with the speed limit ranging from 100kph to 70kph. While on the drive, Daniel pointed out an area where a girl on our team, Jazz, hit a moose. Despite the fences surrounding the roadway, the moose sometimes still manage to break free and challenge cars on the road, typically resulting in Moose: 1, driver + car: 0. Jazz was fine; her car on the other hand was not. After parking near the movie theater, we walked to the main street to begin our day of shopping. Jo and I followed Daniel and his friend, David, into the first shop. Not sure of what this day would bring, we approached each store with an open mind. After the first shop, Daniel released us on the town with a warning: stay on this street, or you will get lost. He already knows us too well. Each store had the same fall-fashion with summer clothes for sale. I’m not sure if we were really awake or not, because we wandered in and out of practically every retail store on the street. Jo and I finally tired of going in and out of the stores, and sat to observe the locals. We noticed how well dressed everyone seemed, despite just wearing jeans, a jacket, and converse shoes. It was then we realized that most people here wear skinny jeans or leggings. Together, we decided that the American fashion of somewhat flared or boot cut jeans made us look sloppy compared to the Europeans. Jazz finally texted us to meet up for lunch. She took us to an Italian restaurant, where the food was delicious! We explained to her, Daniel, and David, our new revelation about fashion. Jazz took it upon herself to help us with our fashion-crisis. After trying on about 9 different articles of clothing each, and being eyed up and down by each other and then Jazz, we moved from H&M to another store in the mall. Yet another round of dress up, and it was on to the final store, Cubis. At the end of it all, Jo and I were satisfied with our choices: Jo got a pair of black skinny jeans, a shirt, and a dress; I got a shirt and a pair of light colored skinny jeans. Hopefully this can help ease our transition from unglamorous Americans to chic Swedes. 

Back to school, back to school, to prove to Dad I'm not a fool..

So, the sun rises between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning here in Ljungby. My mom would NEVER be able to sleep in such bright conditions, and apparently after my relentless mocking, I had to learn the hard way that payback is indeed a b****. Last night was the first, and only, night that we left the blinds open in our room – yes, Jo and I are still sharing a room at the moment. Due to the beaming sunshine, I woke up at hourly intervals beginning at 5am and continuing until our alarm went off at 7:15. There is absolutely nothing worse than waking up a few minutes before your alarm is about to go off. After breakfast, we headed across the “banana bridge” to meet Daniel. We would spend the morning at Astradskolan (a local school here in the Ljungby community) where both Daniel and Johanna work. We signed in at the front desk for our visitor badges and then went into the exclusive teachers’ lounge. Daniel showed us our article in the local newspaper, complete with a full-color, half-page picture of Jo and I. I’m going to try to get a picture of the article to show everyone, and hopefully can mail a copy of it to my parents; unfortunately, its 100% in Swedish thus very unlikely that any of you can read it, but best of luck to you all. Daniel also told us that there is a new American coach at Lindesberg, Matt Botsford, former assistant at University of Miami, who knew both Jo and I. Such a small world!


Back to the main story: school. Our first class of the day would be with the English teacher, Lena, with a group of 13 year olds. After a brief somewhat awkward introduction of who we are and where we’re from, we distributed sheets of paper for the class to write down a question for us to answer. These questions varied from “do you watch Family Guy/Simpsons/South Park” to “how long have you been playing volleyball”. This first class was fairly reserved, partially due to this being their first class of the day and partially due to their hesitance about speaking English out loud. There is a ten-minute break between the first and second class, just enough time for students and teachers to have a quick sandwich and coffee. Johanna arrived just in time to take us back to the English teacher for another class. This one had the same routine of “hi, my name is Meghan, I’m from Florida” followed by question and answer time. This class provided us with a few new questions such as “have you been to Europe before”, “how long have you known each other”, and “do you have a boyfriend?” The last question was followed up by Lena asking me “will he come to visit?” Hint hint ;) We spoke a little more to the class about our trip here before we had a 20-minute break. Back in the teachers’ lounge, we had an interesting conversation with Johanna about the death penalty and Bush vs. Obama, exposing some of the fundamental difference between our two nations. We had to rush back upstairs for our final class with Lena, her mentor class that she has been with for the past two years. They were a year or two older than the previous two classes, providing the necessary confidence boost to allow them to voice some of their questions aloud. Finally it was the end of our classroom experience and we went with Johanna to eat lunch in the cafeteria. On the menu: ham and potato soup or vegetable soup, served with 2 slices of bread, and followed by ice cream. We decided we had had enough of school for the day, and would go to Maxi for much needed groceries before heading home to rest before workout and practice.

Grattis på födelsedagen, Jo!!!

Today was just like all the others, beginning extremely slowly and well into the afternoon. However, unlike the previous days, this one was special. It was Jo’s 23rd birthday! Being the great roommate that I am, I woke up a little bit before her, and made her a surprise birthday breakfast of nutella on bread with bananas cut in the shape of a “2” and a “3”. We were supposed to go to TC sometime this weekend for a workout, so we dressed in identical black leggings, sneakers, and our new red zip up fleece jackets and started walking. Malin had given us a town map the first day here and marked on it her apartment, the volleyball gym, and the training center; naturally we didn’t really rely too heavily on this map and instead attempted to find TC using our own intuition. Over an hour later, we had managed to find our way to the church that Jo’s dad recommended to us, but not too many other things. Just beyond the church there seemed to be a large green space. My assumption: its definitely a park; Jo’s assumption: more specifically a dog park. Upon further examination, this was a cemetery. Clearly, we wouldn’t be spending too much time around there. Instead, we continued walking, only to realize that after almost 2 hours in search of the training center, we were right back at Maxi. Maxi is approximately 5 minutes from our apartment, just in the opposite direction than when we started walking.


As we finished up our lunch, we got a text from Lisa: “Hey girls! Do you have any plans for tonight? Or do you wanna party? ” To which of course we responded, “we wanna party!!!” We took turns showering and skyping (finally!) before finally getting dressed and ready to go over to meet Lisa. The night began with French kebab sandwiches for dinner – essentially just a kebab on a baguette – then pre-gaming at Lisa’s friend Emma’s house. We drank some beer, had a few shots of Mintu and then started up some drinking games. More friends began to show up and before you know it, it was a full on house party. We met another American, born in Ft Lauderdale, who has been living in Sweden for the past 5 years. It was funny to see how much English he had lost after being here so long and not able to practice as much. Many of the Swedes had better overall English than he did. There was actually one point in the conversation where he was talking in his American-English accent (its more common here to have British-English accent, so its important to differentiate), paused mid-sentence to ask his friend, IN SWEDISH, how to say – wait for it – “admit”. Now, you know you’ve been in a foreign country far too long when you have to ask the non-English-speaker how to say a word in your own first language. Later that night, we somehow got onto the topic of being circumcised versus uncircumcised; apparently if you are European and a non-Jew or a non-Muslim, you will not be circumcised. This lead to all the girls questioning Jo and I about what the differences are, if the penises look bigger or smaller, if they function differently, and the biggest question: why do it? Neither of us could provide them with a serious enough medical or cultural answer that they were willing to accept. Hysterical laughter ensued before Emelia finally suggested that we headed over to Harry’s, which would be a 15-minute walk towards the city center. Harry’s is directly next to the Hotel Terraza that we eat lunch at during the week. Thus begins the mass consumption of free drinks. Jo’s selling point: IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!!! My selling point: I’M AMERICAN!!! From here, we instantly made friends with anyone and everyone in the bar. People flocked to us as if we were celebs. Literally. They walked into the bar and asked, “where are the Americans??” It was like a dream come true. Pretty sure that there was a moderate form of paparazzi snapping a photo or two. Ok, that last part was just Jo and I taking random pictures of each other at the bar. The night got a little bit crazy, with us meeting practically everyone. A Greek man bought me a drink for going to Paros, a Peruvian guy asked Jo for our number, and Emelia was making out with a rando. The bar closed at 2 and began kicking everyone out, so we decided it was time to go to sleep. This was definitely a great way to celebrate Jo’s 23rd birthday and welcome us to Ljungby.

It's the Swede life for me

Today marks the beginning of my Swedish volleyball experience here in Ljungby – try to pronounce that as “Yoon-bee”. After sleeping in until 11, we went to Hotel Terraza, where we will eat 5 days a week, for lunch with Daniel (the head coach) and Malin – our teammate who’s apartment we are currently living at until our apartment gets furnished. After eating our meal of pizza salad (shredded cabbage – like in coleslaw – with oil, vinegar and pepper; apparently this salad always comes with pizza in Sweden, hence the name), sausage, and mashed potatoes, Jo and I decided to try to maneuver our way from the city center to Malin’s apartment. The walk was pretty basic: follow the parking lots to Maxi – our grocery store – go across the main road, turn left at the library, and stop at house #45. Luckily Ljungby is not such a metropolis thus making it very unlikely that we can get too lost. As a form of insurance, Malin gave us a town map with the 3 most important locations circled: Malin’s apartment/our current home, the volleyball hall/gym, and gym/training center/weight room. After doing some quick shopping at Maxi for tonight’s dinner and shampoo, we ventured back to the apartment for some R&R. Despite sleeping over 12 hours last night, this jet lag thing is really kicking our butts. Johanna, another teammate, would be picking us up to go to the gym aka TC 5:20, so we had plenty of time.


By 4:30, we were finally up and somewhat ready to begin getting dressed for practice. Jo’s bag that the airline lost has all of her spandex, t-shirts, kneepads and sports bras, so until that arrives she is stuck wearing my clothes; I really hope she likes the ripped seams that are present on every pair of my spandex. Johanna arrived and we headed over to TC (training center) for lifting. So apparently, this weight lifting program that both Jo and I were dreading has more of a DIY concept, where the girls are technically lifting together, but are able to pick and choose what exercises and body parts they want to do on any given day. This was somewhat of a relief, as we weren’t going to be participating in what we had assumed to be an extremely rigorous Swedish work out before our first practice. I think we might try to contact our former weight trainers from home to get some sort of program so we can actually benefit from working out, as opposed to just doing lunges, bench, sit ups, and squats each day. After an hour in the weight room, we headed over to the volleyball gym for our first practice. There, Jo and I had our first newspaper interview, and of course some pictures (good thing we were looking super attractive). I believe the girl who interviewed us will be emailing us the interview in PDF format, so as soon as I get it I can send it out to everyone. Not sure if it will be able to be translated, but good luck with that and welcome to my life :P

Our practice wasn’t too bad, we did some hitting lines off of live Libero passes, first setting outsides, then moving to middles and opposites. All of a sudden Daniel starts counting “10…9…8…7…” and Jo and I freeze, look around and see our teammates scrambling for loose balls. Apparently, if he ever starts counting, we have that much time to shag or else we have to take laps for every second we go over our 10-second time limit. From there, we did 5-on-5 out of system, where you have to set from the back row; a similar drill we did at Tampa. We did this for a while to make sure everyone understood before we competed. First team to 10 points would win; my team lost by 3. Fail. Daniel did some more counting, which we ended up having to run laps before we were allowed to get water. Finally we split up into two teams for a scrimmage. My team had Jo at M2, Johanna (who is called Jula, pronounce that Yoo-la) at Opposite, Asha (Polish teammate also named Joanna) at M1, Selma at Libero, Sophie at OH (she stayed from row the whole time), and of course, me setting. Everyone started off pretty slow, and had some minor communication errors, but things started getting a little better. The team cheers “två, tre, opa!” after each play. Of course, I can’t really pronounce those words, so I just end up doing a super awkward dance move to distract them from my disabilities, and wind up shouting OPA! So far I think it’s working out pretty well for me, and I usually get a couple chuckles out of my teammates, and sometimes even our opponents. We ended winning 25-19, with our middles having to play back row—pretty sure this was a first for Jo, but she did pretty well. More counting from Daniel before we were allowed to get some water and it was back to another scrimmage. This time instead of Sophie hitting outside, we had Lisa, but she would only play front row with Selma, the Libero, playing back row the whole time. Again, our team won, 25-20, and that would conclude our first Swedish practice.

There seems to be somewhat of language barrier, as the literal translation of “set” in Swedish to English is called a “pass”, so after I play the ball, if they think it was good, many of my Swedish teammates will tell me “good pass”. Also, the setting zones have completely different names from the offensive systems that we use in the States. Of course, that varies between coaches and teams across our own country, but even between Jo and my own pervious experiences, we had never heard some of these names for their respective sets. For example, a low, quick outside set that some call a “hut”, “shoot”, or “go” is called a “6” here; whereas a high outside ball here is called a “5”. A quick front-set to the middle is called an “A”, a quick backset is a “B” – both somewhat common in the States – but a slide is called a “sigma”. I’m not sure exactly how one would begin to make that hand signal… Our low, fast back set is called a “0”, or “null” and a high back set is called a “1”. Needless to say, when we got home, my head was definitely hurting from constantly trying to substitute my old offensive names for the new ones. I think this may take a bit of time.

It’s fair to say that tomorrow we will both be a little sore, and still seriously affected by jet lag, but that is the price we pay for, as Jo calls it, “the Swede life”. We wound up staying awake until almost 3am local time, talking about our friends and family, and learning more and more about our new built-in best friend. Anyways, that’s all for now, so until next time, I bid thee farewell.

Somewhere over the rainbow...

I think there is something truly magical about rainbows. I won't be taken to tears like the youtube sensation "double rainbow guy" (if you haven't seen it, look it up: "Yosemitebear magic giant rainbow"), but they have taken my breath away. I have no idea what it is exactly, maybe that after it rains something beautiful emerges, or maybe it's my child-like naivety appearing. Either way, I think they are ahh-mazing. That said, if you have something better to do than learn about this "optical and meteorological phenomenon", I would suggest you stop reading now.

July 4th weekend, I found myself driving down the road through a rainstorm, only to come through the other side and see a rainbow. I literally almost crashed as I stared, mouth agape, at the colored arch. My half asleep boyfriend next to me didn't even budge, nor did he acknowledge my attempt at whispered shouts of "OHMYGOSH...LOOK!!!" Finally, after the rainbow had completely disappeared, he woke up, and ruined all my rainbow fun by informing me about the scientific explanation behind them. Talk about a rainbow-scrooge.

There are many kinds of rainbows, seen based on different refraction of light off water droplets. Similarly, there are many different cultural and religious beliefs associated with rainbows. "A rainbow a day keeps the blues away" and many other mantras have been formed speaking about their magic or healthy qualities. Whatever you choose to believe is up to you. For me, a rainbow is just another way of nature reminding us to pause for a second. Like Ferris Bueller said "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Anyone who is still reading this clearly has NOTHING better to do with their lives than procrastinate via reading the-life-and-times of me. Thanks anyways :)

Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer

I've been a little absent to the blogging scene since my return to the good ol' US of A. A lot has happened for me during my summer back, but instead of boring you with a bunch of individual stories about my American adventures, I will instead just list them for you month by month:

APRIL/MAY - Niki, my teammate from Hungary, and I flew to Orlando from Budapest over Easter weekend. Of course, we were delayed like 4+ hours in the Budapest airport--something we attributed to Chuck Norris' excellent strength and Marth Stewart's absence. Upon our arrival, we would be making 2 week Tour de Florida, which included a detour up to Clemson, SC to pick up my sister from her first semester at college. Niki and I went all over, hitting up the House of Mouse (Disney World) and Busche Gardens, visiting St Augustine and Tampa, and of course, spent as much time as possible at the beach. She got to visit my alma mater (its so weird to be able to say that) and meet many of my college friends. After she went home, I began coaching 4 nights a week at the JJVA center with the club teams who were heading to Nationals and AAUs. In the 3 weekends that followed, we had a friend graduate from law school (Matt), another friend get married (Lauren), and a family reunion for Memorial Day weekend. Before I knew it, it had already become June.

JUNE - This month brought forth more family time, as everyone gathered in Ponte Vedra to watch my sister walk across the stage for her high school graduation. Combine that with it being my mom's birthday weekend and BAM! craziness. I began nannying for a local family near my parent's house during the week, but managed to keep my weekends free so I could still visit with friends and boyfriend. After spending a week in Siesta Key doing some condo work for another family (yeah basically I had a free vacation while "assembling" their nearly-almost-complete-condo), I had to bid my mom and sister farewell as they ventured across the pond for the BIP summer tour to Italy and Montenegro. I got to go to Busche Gardens again, as well as take the kids I nanny for to Universal Studios + Islands of Adventure. Finally, another month had passed me by and it was time for me to head over to Tampa to begin UT volleyball camps.

JULY - 3 weeks of volleyball camps made this month FLY by. Most of my time in Tampa was spent in the Bob Martinez Sports Center, however, I was able to get out and engage in my favorite social activities every now and then. It was during my first week here that I received my official contract from my new team in Ljungby, Sweden - Ljungby Volleybollklubb. I gladly accepted this new job and will be heading over August 30. I found out that there is another American girl who will play with me from University of Illinois; we've been facebooking back and forth and will be meeting on the flight over from DC-Copenhagen. The last week of July, my mom, cousin, mom's friend, and I headed up to visit my dad's parents in Maine. 22 hours after being stuck in the Newark airport made me decide that Jersey wasn't all its cracked up to be. Finally we arrived and got to spend a week on the beautiful island off the coast of Maine where they spend their summer months. Yes, I have grandparents who are snow birds in the winter. Whatever, they're cute. Finally we flew home, without much delay, and thus I would begin my final month in America.

AUGUST - to be continued.....

Ok, so I know I said I wouldn't bore you too much with my stories, but I have to explain random things here and there so my randomness makes some sort of sense. Besides, you know you liked it.