Jan 10, 2010

Welcome to 2010!



Hello Everyone,

These last three or four weeks have flown bye! I kind of wish I could go back and live them again, but no need for looking in the past. I got the memories in my memory bank. It started off with my trip to Prague/Slovakia to spend Christmas with Julian and finished with my fiancé visiting.

I left on the 23rd, the morning after our loss to the top team, but I will get to the games later. I arrived in Prague at 10 AM and was greeted by Julian and his dad (Big BOSS). The funniest thing about me flying to Prague was that there were like 5 other airports that were closer to Julian, but of course I went with the cheapest ticket. That would come back to bite me as I had to board a train at 4:30 in the morning on the 27th for the 7 hour trip back to Prague! (The trip was worth missing out on some sleep). Never the less I wanted to see Prague so I could put it on my list of places I have been. It was a pretty cold and drizzling on us, but we still went to the main squares. I got a good feel for the city and it was beautiful even with the bad weather. We ate these things called Langos similar to a funnel cake only without the sweet. It was the same kind of dough only they put garlic, cheese and ketchup on it (anything with ketchup I will usually love). We also had a Czech beer which was excellent. Julian swears you will not have a better beer then a draft beer in Prague. I will have to agree with him at the moment.



We then started are journey to Ruzomburek in Slovakia. It was about a 6 hour car ride that flew by as we were catching up on all things. We also picked up his brother from his in-laws on the way so he could hang with us for one night. We stayed at his grandma’s apartment that was a 2 minute drive from his parent’s place. Slovakia is like a lot of other countries in Europe that celebrate Christmas on the 24th. They don’t put up the tree until the 24th. The only job while I was there was to help put up the tree. I helped put the tree together then Julian did all the decorating of it. After the tree is up they then have dinner. They make a HUGE dinner and then eat on the leftovers for Christmas day meals. We had cabbage soup, potato salad, pork, fish, and some bread. I loved the cabbage soup!! Then on the 26th they have another big meal of duck, dumplings, soup and potatoes. My goodness they were two unbelievable meals that I’m craving again as I type this.






We really did not do anything real special, but eat and enjoy each other’s company. I watched 3 or 4 Slovakian movies that were folk tales. They show them every Christmas and they are like 50 or 60 years old. I couldn’t understand the language obviously, but Julian was pretty good about translating the important parts. I must say the movies did not crack my top 1,000 list of best movies!! We did go up to the mountain one day. Ruzomburek is surrounded by two mountains and normally has 10,000 winter skiers vacationing there, but there was no snow so that kind of hurt business a little. We also went to the water park one evening. The water is mineral water that comes straight from the ground and it was very warm!! Of course you can’t replace Christmas at home with family, but this was an excellent substitute. The Betko’s are wonderful and Great People! I’m glad they have been a part of my life!

After the great visit to Slovakia I came back to Sweden to spend New Years with Morgan. I picked her up at the airport on the 31st. She spent 9 days here and I took her back to the airport on the 9th of January. She was over here last time I was here so I didn’t really have to play tour guide or anything like that. I must say I was a little disappointed with the lack of things going on for New Years. I guess in the states it is more of a hangout with friends and family, but I don’t know enough ppl here. We just hung out and watched a couple movies then headed down to the lake for the Fireworks. They defiantly didn’t disappoint with that again. I think the fireworks here would beat many Fourth of July firework shows. They are all done by individuals here which makes it twice as dangerous. One of the fireworks misfired and sent little sparks everywhere including a teammate’s jacket. After the lake we went to a teammate’s house for a little while. We did find a pretty fun card game called monopoly deal. We played many games of this, and I was a little disappointed as I was not able to dominate like I did in UNO! After her visit I still want to marry her so I guess you can call her trip a success;)

After a long break we got back on the court for two games this week. We lost one and won one. The first one was up in Plannja which is a pretty tough place to play. They are in the top three right now. There man player is Brandon McKnight who played at Purdue. Once again we had three players on the court from Indiana!! We didn’t play all that bad, but def. had a stretch of about 5 minutes that lost the game for us. I didn’t shoot the ball as well as I would have liked esp. on their soft rims. I went 3-10 from three and 1-2 from 2. I get pretty frustrated with myself when I settle for threes too much. We are right there and we know we can beat them just have to focus in a little more.

The second game was at home, and we have now won 5 in a row at home. It was a pretty sloppy game with the refs feeling they needed to call a foul every 4 seconds on someone, but we played very well defensively and was in control the whole game. I finished with 18, and 8 boards and finally got my first dunk of the season!
We have a very important stretch of about 7 or 8 games where we need to get a lot of wins to get a little breathing room on the playoff line. Right now there are 3 teams that are 8-15 including us and one team that is 9-15 so we are right there but still need a little separation. We have a big away game against the 5th place team on Tuesday.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

4 comments:

Mom said...

Great blogg, can't get all that out of you on the phone, BUT I love hearing your voice anyway. Can't wait to see you in Feb, I am excited about seeing you play and yes you will have to play tour guide for your Mamma:) Love ya

Anonymous said...

Brandon,

great blog update
glad you enjoyed you visit with julian and morgan

good luck with games..hope you make the playoffs! :)

Big Al

Anonymous said...

nice mamma
you beat Al by 15 min.

Anonymous said...

It's Ruzomberok dude!