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!