Every time I open my FRIDGE!!

Hello Everyone,

Man, Every time I open my fridge here it makes me miss home. Not the kind of miss that you want to hop on a plane and go home, more of an appreciation for how nice I had it in the summer. I had my choice of Gatorade, green tea, orange juice, fruit juice, grape juice, Kool-Aid, lemon aid and the occasional Michelob light. Yes, they do have many of those drinks here and actually I might even say the apple juice is better here. The problem lies in the big hill I must climb to the store. Anyway let’s get back to the topic of appreciation! I never really gave a proper thank you to my parents for housing me this summer. It is a unique thing when you build more of a friendship with your parents and really enjoy hanging out with them! So anyway THANK YOU!!!


There was a basketball camp this past week during a fall break for the students. We had to work 2 days for a couple hours. I learned the Swedish word for “substitutions” because the kids did not understand me when trying to sub them in an out. This club is pretty good about doing promotional things for games which we are usually involved with in some way. It is nice to get out and do some different things while putting a smile on kid’s faces.

This week was not a very good week on the court for the kings. We lost both games, one at home and one on the road. We just are not playing well defensively and it is hard to win games when you don’t defend. Coach actually read the stats today and it is not something you want to hear. We are last in almost every category defensively. Unless we figure out how to fix that we will stay at the bottom of the league.

I went from one extreme to the other in the games. The game at home against Sundsvall was horrific. I shot 1-8 from the field and finished with 3 points. I just could not get anything going. Too many games like this is what gets you sent home!!! The team didn’t play all that bad, but again defensive mistakes just killed us. They have a player on their team that played for the kings last time I was here and is a friend of mine. It was fun to go up against him the whole game, but wish I would have performed a little better.


The other game was in Gothia, which was about a two and a half hour train ride. This is another thing I can add to the list of things I have done. My first train ride to a game. I must say not a very big accomplishment, but still comes off the list. The hotel was called Scandic Crown, and the inside of the hotel reminded me of an embassy suites. We had our pre game and after game meals there. The pre game meal was excellent. They had some cheesy potatoes and some kind of fish. It looked almost like salmon patties, but the fish was not salmon. The after meal was just meat sauce with some bow tie noodles. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before, but many places in Europe put ketchup on their pasta. Sweden is one of those places, I’m one for following the crowd when it comes to food so I also did it, and it was pretty good, but I could probably put ketchup on anything and like it. In fact I think I used to put it on my broccoli (just a random note about me).


The game was in a different gym then their normal home gym which was fine with me. Their normal home gym is on a grey rubber floor. The gym we played in reminded me of an old boys and girls club gym. We got off to a horrible start. We were down 18-2 after the first 3 minutes. We pulled within 4 by the end of the first. They pulled away at the start of second half and ended up winning by about 20. Again defensively we are just not stopping anybody. They shot over 50% from three and 60% from 2, you are not going to beat anybody giving up those kind of numbers.

I had a really good first quarter and got my shot going. I finished the game with 21 points on 3-8 from 2 and 5-10 from three for 21 points and 3 steals. I defiantly could have made a few more of the 2’s. I haven’t been finishing well lately and I have not been getting to the free throw line. Two things I will be working on improving. They name a player of the game for both team and I was named it for our team. They gave me a 2 GB flash drive, a nice thermos, and 2 lottery tickets (I won 50 Krowns).

We have 2 more games before a 2 week break, we defiantly need to get these two wins to go into the break with a little confidence and then try and get better.

Hopefully everyone had a safe and fun Halloween. It is called “all saints day” here in Sweden. They put lights on the tombstones and they go and visit them at night. I live right across the cemetery and it looks pretty nice all lit up. They do dress up, but it is more the night life crowd. I don’t believe they pass out any candy either, but I’m not entirely sure on all the customs for this day.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now