Monday, March 14, 2011

Continuing my experience in Aland


Two weeks have came and gone.  Still loving it!!  There is still snow on the ground; slowly melting.  It has not really snowed since I have been here, only a little flurries during the night hours.  It is about 30 degrees here and has not been any colder than that.  It makes me happy because ever since I decided to come here everyone’s reaction is like “it is soooo cold there!”  Ever since I have been here all I have been hearing from everyone is “I cannot wait for summer!”  Apparently here, is one of the biggest tourist places in Northern Europe, June-August gets as warm as 75-80 degrees.

I live about half of a mile from the beach, so oh yeah in a few months I will realllllly be living the dream.  Playing the sport I love, living .5 miles from the beach.  People here say a lot of tourists come here and go so you meet a lot of people from all over.  Beach volleyball is very popular here in the summer.

The PAF open 2011 will making a stop in my town/city August 17-21st!  This is the world tour for beach volleyball for men’s and women’s.  So I will definitely be going to some of the games over the 5 day course in August.  I love beach volleyball.  Nothing better than spending the summers at a beach playing beach futbol and volleyball.

Two nights ago America had their spring forward, so you all Americans lost an hour of sleep.  We do the same here in Finland but not until March 27th.  So currently until then I am 6 hours ahead of you guys.  Once March 27th hits I will be 7 hours again.

I still have not done much of anything quite yet.  After our first friendly match last Saturday, I did the polar bear plunge.  We went to the pool on one Saturday afternoon and at the pool you have to go in the shower naked and wash off then go in the sauna (optional) naked.  Then you can put your bathing suit on and go out to the pool.   The pool is indoors but you can go under the wall and go outside.  The water is obviously warm.  The scenary right now doesn’t justify what it would be like in the summer.  The Baltic sea is frozen as of right now.  Outside of the indoor pool there is a deck and stairs that goes down to the Baltic Sea, there is a ladder and a hole drilled for those who want to jump in the icy cold water and run back up the stairs and jump in the pool.  After I did that, we got yelled at and since the sea is salty we were supposed to jump in the sea and go to the showers.  There was no way I was going to be able to jump in the shower, it was FREEZING and the showers were too far away!  It was quite the experience.  It is something you should try once in your lifetime just for the thrill of it.

After we left the pool, I went home and took a shower and went to the IFK Mariehamn game, a men’s professional team here in Aland who play in the best division in Finland.  They played a team from Sweden and lost 1-0.

Over the course of the week, we had one practice on Monday, two on Tuesday, then the American’s arrived mid-day Tuesday.  I was so excited because I had company in my room.  One of them is my roommate, from Columbia, Missouri and went to Mizzou.  The other American is from the suburban’s of Chicago but she went to University of Florida (yuckkkk, love you Liz).  Liz is staying in a hotel for 3 weeks while they look for a 3bdrm apartment so we all can live together.  Ever since they have arrived I have not been as bored at all.  We have gone next door to get some gelato.  There is a gelato shop next door so you can bet we will be making about 2-3 stops a week!!  Thank god I am playing futbol because I would be really fat if I wasn’t after eating all of that gelato (ice cream).

We had another friendly match against a team from Sweden this past Saturday.  We played very well defensively but we need to work on creating opportunities through the midfield and working on our transition from winning the ball in the defensive third and transitioning through the midfield and attacking third to create opportunities.  We scored the first goal off of a free kick; our center back finished a loose ball from inside the 18.  The second goal occurred about a minute or two before half time.  The center back made a bad pass to the outside back and I took advantage of it and chased after the ball and took a shot at the 18 yd line to right lower corner.  It was 2-0 at half, we ended up finishing the game 2-1.   We have many quality players and will be very good if we learn to work together nad create more opportunities offensively.

I am so excited; season opener will be in Helsinki, the capital of Finland against HJK on April 10th.  We still have about 3 and half weeks until then; plenty of time to find the team’s chemistry and plenty of time and room for improvement.

On Saturday I went out for the first time with 2 girls on the team.  The americans were too tired because it takes probably a little over a week to get over the jetlag.  I was too tired to go out last weekend.  We went to this  huge bar called Arken, it has a casino, two floors, and two huge dance floors.  I was definitely not aware of this but most European singers/bands sing most of everything in English.  Haha, how many of you Americans knew that?  I most certainly did not, but I guess it’s not THAT important for me to know since I am deaf.  I met some guys from the guys team and they were all really nice. 

I am having fun so far, sorry there isn’t too much to share at this point since all I am doing is sleeping and playing futbol.

Last night I found out I have two weeks off June 19th-July 3rd.  Thinking about some places to visit during that time.  Definitely going to go to London the first part of it and visit some friends from the Deaflympics.  I am also hoping to run into Alice and Mia, my two exchange students from Denmark and Italy (they stayed with my family and I my senior year of high school). 

The Deaf European football championships are in Odense, Denmark (an hour or two from Copehagen) so I may make a stop to catch some games and meet some deafies and football players.

Hope things will start to speed up in the next week or two so I will have more to share with all of you!!

Miss and love you all!!

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