Saint Theresa

March 25, 2007 11:23pm

This morning my great-grandmother died. I was lying in bed just now unable to fall asleep and I couldn’t stop thinking about her and about Gramp lying alone in bed. It could be the first time in over 70 years that he hasn’t had her sleeping by his side. I cannot even imagine what he must be feeling. My heart goes out to everyone who ever knew her, but especially to him. Great-Grandma was an amazing woman. She was a magnificent mother and wife: selfless, loving, and strong. I picture her playing cards in Auntie Linda’s pool-house, sitting at the bar in our house on Beaumont Highway during many different family gatherings and just laughing and laughing and being smart as a cookie, riding in that convertible and wishing that her hair wouldn’t get messed up by the wind, making the countless trips to NFA to watch my many high school basketball games, hitting the tennis ball like no other!, and just making everyone feel so loved. As my mom so perfectly described to me earlier today, my great-grandmother was a living example of unconditional love. I’ll never forget her great big, beautiful brown eyes and her soft, soft skin. I too will never forget the taste of her delicious butterscotch cookies. My favorite. I feel so blessed to have been able to know my great-grandmother. She is an inspiration to us all about how to live a selfless, loving life. My thoughts and prayers go out to all our family, and especially to Gramp. Yes, Gramp, you two are the King and Queen of Romance – and that will never change! Great-Grandma, I will miss you dearly.

Tourny Time

March 13, 2007 6:44am

Well, I didn’t sleep very well last night… I couldn’t stop thinking about the NCAA tournament! I needed to know where we were seeded in those brackets!! And, given that all the games before the final four can be played in Palo Alto and Fresno, I’d say we’re in a pretty good spot. Now, I just can’t wait to watch everything unfold :)

By brother is here visiting this week, and another friend arrives here this morning. They come just in time for our own playoffs here. Last night we had our first game of our quarter-final series, and we beat the opposing team by 30 points or so. They did have two Americans on their team and another talented import post-player, but one of the Americans was sent home because she’s been here for more than six months and violated Sweden’s 6-month-tax-rule… an unfortunate break for them, but also not so careful planning either. The game yesterday was at Fryshuset, tomorrow is a 4-hour bus ride away, and then we play home on Saturday at Åkeshov. I really hope we can wrap the series up by Saturday afternoon (then, I can enjoy the weekend by watching NCAA tourney games!).


Nothing much more to report on at the moment. March certainly is “basketball, basketball, basketball!” And, I love it!

Get this bus home! :)

March 8, 2007 2:42am

Ok, so its now almost three in the morning and we still have a couple hours left to our trip home (i think). Pretty much everyone seems to be sleeping now on the bus. The driver even provided us with these narrow little sleeping pads that allow some of us to lie in the aisles and create a makeshift bed. These are especially helpful for those of my teammates who have to get up and go to work tomorrow. For me though, I’ll probably just go into lab after I sleep late (hopefully I will be able to sleep late), so I’m still awake right now.

We are on our way home from a win against Jamtland. This is a team who has a very strong record at home – maybe with only a couple losses all season there, but a not-so-almost-perfect record on the road. Anyway, the game didn’t matter much for us. In fact, because going into the game we knew who we would play in the playoffs whether we won or loss the game, we sorta could determine our quarterfinal match-up. Of course no coach wants to scratch a game, well maybe some do, but we weren’t going to travel 8 or 9 hours on a bus to lose a game purposefully. Everybody got to play, everyone did some good things, and we won by 2 points. Now, just to finish the ride home.

On Friday I’m hoping to go to an influenza conference hosted by some scientists at Karolinska Institute and then on Saturday Noah gets here! I’m really interested in what some of the guest speakers and researchers will be sharing about the influenza epidemic. They are coming from all over the world – including a few from California universities, though I don’t believe from Stanford – to present and share their work and thoughts here in Stockholm. And then of course, I’m super excited for Noah to arrive.

Perhaps I will try to fall asleep now. God natt. Oh, my teammates say that I’m beginning to sound more Swedish. Yay!

Laget?

March 4, 2007 8:41PM

Is it really March already?! I won’t necessarily say that the time after Christmas until now has flown by, but it certainly has passed much quicker than ever expected… and now I feel as if I have made it to the “homestretch” of my time here in Sweden!

This very past week was about the most “usual” week that I’ve had in a while. Given that I was out sick with the flu for an entire week and then my parents were here visiting the next week, last week provided the chance to get back into lab, do some coaching, and of course play a couple games.

After having missed two weeks in lab, I was feeling a bit anxious about my return. I knew Aaron and Eva (and everyone else too!) would kindly welcome me back, but I just don’t like being away from such a place for what felt like so long. Even though all I do there is on a volunteer-basis and I really have no stated commitment, I felt like I was slacking. These concerns were put to rest rather quickly upon a rapid reintegration to the scene. My original project was mostly finished (and the small bit I didn’t accomplish was left for Aaron to do since my bball schedule proved too challenging to afford enough time in the lab to produce a quality Western Blot of my data from start to finish). Thankfully, the data from the work I’ve done thus far seems to fit right in with our predictions and of course there are some results we are still waiting to see about. I’ve now started on a new project that I’m very excited about!

Basketball is going well too. We only have one more regular season game and then playoffs start. I cannot wait for playoffs! Basketball is a pretty long season and it just seems as soon as March rolls around, everyone gets a renewed energy and sense that its time for the final crunch! Right now our team is in third place, but depending on some games this week we could finish either at 2nd or 3rd. The final position doesn’t matter so much, though we definitely would like to finish in the top four so that we would have homecourt advantage in the first round. The first playoff game is next Monday, so obviously I’ll know more at the end of this week about the details of the tournament.

Talking about tournaments… I miss being at the PAC-10 tournament so so so so much! I think of the team everyday, think of what they are doing, where they’re at, how they are preparing, how much video they are watching… I pray that everyone stays healthy and we win it all!!

On another note, I just finished reading a good Swedish historical-fiction novel: “The Emigrants” by Vilhelm Moberg. It’s the first novel in a three part series and the series has been made into a movie as well. As I read the book I couldn’t help but imagine my own distant family members moving to America on an old, wooden Swedish ship. Oh, if I could only track down some of my very very distant relatives living here now!

Ok, well that’s all for now. Not a huge update, but I figured I’ve been so out-of-date in keeping up with this blog that I should at least write something! I will try to be more disciplined in checking in during my last few weeks here, but given that I have visitors and play-offs coming…. we will see : )

Hope you are well. I would love to hear from you!