Happy November

Hello everybody. How is America treating you? Sweden has been treating me very nicely. I love it. School is going well. Lots of computer models. It isn’t too difficult though because the instructions tell you everything you need to do. The workload is not bad at all. I haven’t been able to work because I’ve had class everyday. But after these three weeks classes stop for a month while we work on a paper so I’ll hopefully work a bunch. Hockey is so much fun. We won our 2^nd league game on Sunday against Trollhattens, which is about 4 hours away. 7-0. They were a lot worse than us so it was a frustrating game because they were more in the way than anything else. They had no skill so they reverted to being physical instead. It was really annoying. We should have beaten them by a lot more and our coaches weren’t very happy. My scoring streak halted. I got an assist, but I am not happy with how I played. Oh well. As my dad says, “You’re only as good as you next game.” Also, we only have 13 on our team so even if everyone shows up we still don’t have that many players. It is tiring at practices and hard to do drills when we don’t have a lot of skaters. We are trying to recruit more from around the area. Potentially steal some players from LHC (Linkoping team) that are on the junior team. LHC has like 20 players on their A team and then like 20 players on their B team which they sometimes pull players from to play with the A team. It would be nice to persuade some of them to come to us because they will get to play games as well as have fun because we are so much cooler. We have gotten into a consistent practice schedule for the most part. Practice Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and an off-ice practice on Tuesday. I went to the Vita Hasten guy’s game with a couple teammates which was fun. The hockey isn’t as good as the Union guys team but it is still good hockey. It was nice to get out and do something with people. I realize that I don’t hangout a lot with people because it feels amazing when I’m out of the house with people talking and laughing. I’m in class, working, playing hockey, or home. So I need to get some solid friends to hangout with. My roommates and I all have different schedules so we rarely find time to hangout outside the house. My main source of talking and laughing is in the car ride from Linkoping to Norrkoping with the Linkoping crew on the team. The conversations are hilarious. We have all gotten really close so it is a fun trip rather than a burden to have to travel to hockey. And my other source is with the hockey team. Good times. Halloween is Sweden is like any other day. It is weird not seeing pumpkins and Halloween decorations everywhere. And no one said Happy Halloween to me. However, Saturday night I went to a Halloween party my roommate threw and it was really fun. Deb’s boyfriend went into the forest and cut down a tree to put in his living room. I then covered it with spider web my mom provided me in a package. It looked awesome. My mom also sent candy corn, which Swedes don’t know about. People had great costumes. I was “Super Girl.” My favorite costume was someone dressed up as the boss from Office Space and he looked just like him and walked around all night saying, “Yeahhhh, so I’m going to have to ask you to come in on Saturday.” It was hilarious. Two Swedes dressed up as the World Trade Centers buildings.  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the creativity or feel weird about it. I mostly laughed…A custom in Sweden is that they hug you when you arrive if they know you. It definitely won’t happen if you’re new, but if you have hung out with them before they hug you when you come to their house. It’s weird. I don’t like when people touch me. Also, no matter how many people are in the room, if someone new shows up they go around to every person and shake their hand and introduce themselves. I feel like we just walk into a room and say hey, I’m so and so and then learn names as the night goes on. So I taught my team the U-G-L-Y song. They love it. U-G-L-Y you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly yeah yeah you ugly. M-A-M-A that’s the way you got that way, your mama yeah yeah your mama.  They tried to teach me a Swedish drinking song but it is a lot harder to learn a song when you don’t know the language. I’m throwing an American theme party for my team to show them how to actually party. Beer pong, flip cup, power hour, kings, asshole, LSD (the game not the drug), catch phrase, you got served, etc. Everyone has to dress up as an American using any type of stereotype they choose. I can’t wait to see what people come up with. There are no red solo cups here but I’ll manage to find something. I MISS BRODY. Oh and guys here roll their jeans at the bottom.