You Can Find Me On 'Dem Internets!

Today: So the internet was finally up and running after only THREE weeks of waiting impatiently. What a relief though I must say. I actually have an outlet to the world. However, I was getting quite fond of sitting on the front stoop of an apartment building stealing a signal from my dear old friend unsecured ZyXel, or sitting in the "nook" with my other unsecured signal buddy Linksys. The "nook" was the first spot that I could sit relatively comfortably and check my email. It was a small window ledge cut into the side of the apartment building about 4 feet high and 2 feet deep a perfect little nook to steal a signal. Between odd looks from passerbys, lost signals, precipitation, and back/forearm fatigue I am glad that I finally had to break up with the "nook."

August 18th-September10: So let's go back to the beginning. I left on August 18th arrived on August 19th in Denmark. My flight from Chicago to Frankfurt was not so bad I watched episodes 1-7 of season 1 of Mad Men which kept me busy. The plane however was not so nice. It was old so there was only one TV screen up in the aisle and not on the back of every seat. Now maybe I was spoiled on some of my other flights but come on if you have to watch what they put on one screen lets pick something other than Hannah Montana! My seat was also very small there was a noticeable 3 inch increase in knee room on my connecting flight from Frankfurt to Copehagen. Not only was the plane like an archaic sardine can but my seat was an aisle seat in the last row near the bathroom. There was a ton of traffic constantly going by. Now I have reasonably wide shoulders but they were absolutely not sticking out far enough to justify a stumbling right or left cheek square on my shoulder. One girl did it three times and I almost had to strangle her. I kept my cool though and took a deep breath and hit play to another episode of Mad Men.

When I landed in Copenhagen it was 9:30 am local time, the flight wasn't too bad and the layover in Frankfurt was just an hour so the trip really didn't take too long. I wasn't that tired and Christa was waiting outside of baggage claim to pick me up so everything went really smoothly. Drove directly to Middelfart (2.5 hours) moved all the essentials into the car trailer to bring back to the apartment back here in Odense. Once we got all the boxes in and bed set up I passed out at 7 pm which was like noon for me on zero sleep. I slept straight to 5:30 am. I was wide awake so I started setting up the place and unpacking. Seems pretty normal right? I always am up at 5:30 am cleaning. Had a meeting at noon with the club they welcomed me to Denmark and I got the rest of the supplies for the apartment from a storage warehouse. Table and chairs, microwave, bowls, pots and pans and a vacuum. All was fine but when I fired up the vacuum it nearly started a fire. It worked for about 20 mintes and did a good job but then it went pop and wouldn't turn on again. Ooops!

• On a similar odd note - I know I mentioned this before in other emails and writings but all the doorways in Denmark have this strange rising sometimes a small one but other times it could be a good half inch and it just makes you trip all the time if you aren't looking down or used to it. When barefoot its not nice kicking one. Another strange thing is that in the center of the ceiling is the power for a ceiling light. You string power from that to where ever you want the light placed on the ceiling. Now since they are so interchangeable people take these light fixtures and you are left with no light unless you have your own. Now we didn't have one or one that was so easy to install so we had small end table lights on the window sill and the TV as our only source of light in the dining and bedroom for a week. Really odd. Also the electricity wall outlets are located below a light switch so they are high up on the wall. It's really ugly, chords everywhere dangling. Just a few observations of strange differences.

So where was I? Ok so the meeting with the club. The club director and coach/do everything guy were really nice and gave us some money for a couch because the one they had was too big to fit in our place reasonably. Everything that I have encountered so far has been run really well. No suprises like on other teams that I played on. They really want you to be comfortable and it shows. I couldn't be happier. Oh and the couch is awesome too!

Our first games were against a German First Division team called Wuppertal. We played two exhibition games against them interchanging squads frequently. I think we lost both in 4 but we weren't that far off. Following these two exhibition matches we had a small tournament called the Scandic Cup with 4 teams: Wuppertal, us, Middelfart and Gentofte. We lost in 5 to Wuppertal basically gave them the match it was pretty bad but you could see we were getting it more and more as we kept playing more together. Matches 2 and 3 we won both. 3-0 against Middelfart and 3-2 against Gentofte so we took second in the round robin tournament. 5 matches in 4 days was a brutal assault on my body. Jesus!

Since then we have just been conditioning and trainging as a team. Two Americans from the exposure tour made the squad my good buddy Chris Nelson a teammate from Loyola and a new comer from St. Louis Joe Deimeke. Both good additions which should put us over the top as the favorite to win everything this year. Other than that I have been dominating books on my Kindle and coaching twice a week on top of practicing 4 times a week so far. It has been a great first few weeks and I am looking forward to having a really nice stay here in Denmark.

The only bad thing really has been that I seemed to have agrivated something in my lower right leg and it is usually left throbbing in pain pretty bad after practice. I saw a doc and had an x-ray and he seems to think that it could be over use or some nerve problem. I am off of it until Monday so I hope to be 100% or really close to it by then. We leave tonight after practice for a team building camping trip of sorts I guess. They haven't filled us in on much of the details, but it should be fun. Orders were to bring a sleeping bag, a pillow, running shoes and a bike. I just say ok and show up I don't ask questions. Miss everyone! Keep checking for further posts and pictures...hej hej