Dec 1

December 1, 2006 9:32pm

Wow, I feel like I’ve been everywhere! And, everywhere I go I can be sure to see at least one of two things… either a Swedish Christmas star hanging in the windows or a traditional Swedish Christmas candle set. I’m sure there is a name for the later of the decorations, but close to every window has one in it. There are either five or seven candles (or light bulbs if the candles aren’t real!) that forms a pyramid of light. Supposedly they are a very typical Swedish decoration, so much so that you are pretty much expected to have one in you window. Guess I’m not holding up my end of the bargain right now!

So back to today… this morning I went into lab and everything there ran smoothly. Aaron is gone with his family to Israel on a weeklong vacation, so I am now relying on everyone else in the lab for help. That’s really good though because it forces me to ask other people for help and to get to know more and more people in lab. It never ceases to amaze me how nice and helpful people here are. They again invited me to their weekend holiday-Glogg celebration on Friday afternoons during the winter season, but I couldn’t make it because of practice. Maybe we’ll have a Friday off on one of these December days so that I can join in this tradition as well.

Aeroboxed with Jasmina at noon. Really, you have to try this! You leave with exhausted muscles but refreshed mind. I always feel such a pleasant mix of sore and energized when I finish one of these workouts. Tomorrow our whole team is going to the fitness club, but I think we’re doing more of a core workout. We’ll soon see.

This afternoon I met up with Maddy and Martina to go shopping downtown. The two of them confronted me the other day… just kidding, not so much confronted as they just approached me all excited and wondered if I would go shopping with them. For the longest time (well, I guess since I got here), Maddy’s been wanting to take me around to learn about all the best places to buy clothes. She’s so cute. I love her! So anyway, we met up at T-centralan and headed off. We started at H&M. Oh, and I should add, the motive of the trip was to get an outfit for the Christmas party most of our team is going to tomorrow evening. We were invited to this party at a club/bar place and the only requirement for entry (I think) is to wear something red. I figured I would just wear jeans and then find a red shirt today while looking around. Oh, no! Thanks to Maddy and Martina’s styling expertise, tomorrow I will be wearing a black dress with a cute red belt along with some black heels (I had already bought the shoes). If I must say, the outfit is pretty cute; they did a great job picking it out. Hey, maybe I’ll even bring it home and sport it for some Christmas party there too. Also, they talked me into buying a real nice black peacoat-like jacket – with unique buttons and good lines. That was a practical purchase too though… I’ve just been wearing vests around and people are always asking me, “aren’t you cold?!” After making our purchases we glanced at my watch… shoot! Time to get to practice. We grabbed a sandwich at Sandy’s – it’s this American-style sub shop that’s quite tasty (it was my first time there, but Erin is a rather frequent visitor I think), and then headed to practice.

Practice was as early as it ever is – started at four, and that was because there was a big men’s game tonight. We had a really good practice… worked on our motion offense and zone press. We haven’t played a game since last Saturday and now we don’t play until Wednesday – pretty big break. The team workout at the fitness club tomorrow will be good to mix up the routine.

So… tonight… my teammates and I were models! Sort of : ) We were in a fashion show!! One of our sponsors is a designer clothing outlet (maybe I already blogged about this, if so… sorry; I can’t remember) and the store wanted us to model clothes at halftime of the game. It was really really fun. Some of my teammates were so nervous, but it was really pretty chill. I was like laughing the whole time! I wore my hair in pigtails and loved wearing the red rubber boots with monkeys on them. Maddy did my make-up too. I hope we might get more people to come to the store; that was the point of us modeling I think.

Of course aside from our little halftime modeling gig, we watched the men play. They had a very disappointing loss against our biggest rivals, Solna. Solna (the team Charmin played for when she was here) is just on the other side of Stockholm. We lost to the girl’s team (our only loss since Erin and I have been here) and the guy’s team lost to them last week. Tonight was our chance (or, more accurately, the guy’s chance) to get back at those Vikings and beat them on our home court. Well, it didn’t exactly happen. Very close right until the end though; I think we lost by three points. We better beat them when we play them on our home court!

So, it was a good day. All over the place, like I said earlier, and now I’m ready for a good night sleep. Tomorrow night we have that Christmas party… and it’ll be fun to get all dressed up and go out. Really though, I just like being with my teammates. I love them more and more whenever I get to spend time with them.

How was your first day of Advent?