Puzzle

     I wish I could remember where I got the idea to buy a puzzle. I think I might have seen it on TV, but I don’t watch TV here. It’s a mystery! But anyways, I decided last Tuesday that it would be a fun challenge to do a puzzle. I wanted to do a 1000 piece, but I did not like any of the options that they had. They were all scenes from nature or famous buildings from around the world except there weren’t any from Sweden! I decided to settle on a 500 piece instead. Guess how much it cost? $20! I took some photos along the way to show how my puzzle progressed. It took me a total of 4.5 hours to complete the puzzle. One of the girls on the team told me that her family has a lot of puzzles so hopefully this won’t be my only one. I want to accomplish the 1000 piece next! Do they make puzzles with more pieces than that?

The puzzle that I picked out.

After 30 minutes of work, all the pieces are face up.

After another hour of work, the border is complete.

After another 2 hours of work, lots of the inside done.

After 1 more hour, COMPLETE!!!

 A few up close shots...

Denmark Weekend

     After practice Friday night, Meghan and I headed to Denmark for the weekend. The drive went very smoothly. There is a toll to get across the bridge from Sweden to Denmark. It was a $60 toll!!! We stayed some friends’ apartment, Emily and Chelsea. I know Emily from the January Bring It Tour I went on. Meghan played club volleyball with Chelsea. We made some paper snowflakes!

If you do the math, it is a little more than $8 per gallon!!!

     Meghan and I woke up early Saturday morning, 7am! This is on average 4 hours earlier than my normal wake up time. The reason for our early awakening was Meghan’s dad landing in Copenhagen. We picked him up from the airport with no problems and headed into downtown Copenhagen. After a long search for a free parking spot, we were walking the city. Meghan and I felt like pro’s knowing our way around to see all the sites since this was our second visit to this city. We walked past Tivoli (Meghan and her dad went there that night to see the Christmas lights) and down the main shopping street. We stopped to get some breakfast where I had a real Danish danish! This took us to Nyhavn, the famous canal street, which was already decorated for Christmas. We walked along the water heading towards the Little Mermaid statue.

     We returned to the car so that I could grab my bag before hopping on a train to go to Vordingborg. My friend, Tara, plays volleyball in Vordingborg, but she lives in a very small town close by called Præstø. I was a little bit nervous for this trip because I was traveling by myself with no phone. Meghan texted Tara telling her what time my train was supposed to arrive in Vordingborg, and I just prayed that she would show up. I read my book during the hour-long train ride. My train arrived right on time. I started to get nervous after waiting for Tara for 20 minutes. I was already devising a plan for what I would do if I never found her. I filled with joy (and relief) as soon as I saw her walking from the parking lot! We had lunch at a little café where I indulged in some nachos. Lots of places in Denmark will only take Danish credit cards so Tara was forced to pay for both of us after my Swedish card was denied. After the short tour of Vordingborg (it’s about the same size as Ljungby), we headed to Præstø to Tara’s apartment. We hung out there for a bit before heading to the gym with two other Americans on Tara’s team to play some doubles volleyball. It was fun to just get in the gym and play around. We had pizza for dinner before heading back to Tara’s apartment. We stayed up until 2am watching a Lifetime movie on her computer, Marry Me. It was a super cheesy movie, but it was cute. I enjoyed it!

     Sunday morning we headed to Fredricksberg for Tara’s volleyball match. I read my book until Meghan and her dad showed up. We went to get some lunch before the match started. I was thrilled when we found a bagel shop!!! I had an asiago cheese bagel with pastrami, sun-dried tomato cream cheese, mustard, jalapenos, and some other veggies. It was very delicious!

We returned to the gym to watch Tara and her team win in three. She played great! After a bazillion hugs, I said goodbye to Tara. It was so great to get to spend the weekend just hanging out with a good friend.

     We took a different route home so that we could stop at Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark. This castle is famous for being Hamlet’s Castle in the Shakespeare play. In 2009, Jude Law took part in a performance of Hamlet at Kronborg Castle. The security guard that we met later on actually met and talked with Jude Law while he was there. I’m jealous! We arrived at the castle a little before 4pm, and it was scheduled to close at 4pm. We quickly made our way to the castle. It is situated at the entrance to the Baltic Sea so that the Danish king could control who entered and exited the sea and charge them a fee.

Map of the grounds of Kronborg Castle.

Inside the main square of the castle.

We were inside the castle square when a security guard started yelling something to us. After the usual response “we only speak English”, he told us to wait and he would show us some other places that he already locked up. He had a ring of skeleton keys, which he used to unlock a giant red door.

Through all the fog, you could barely see a couple of lights across the water that was coming from Sweden! This is the narrowest passage from Denmark to Sweden; it is about 2.5 miles wide.

The security guard let me help take down the Danish flag. It was pretty cool minus all the bird poop on it!

We headed back to the exit, but the security guard had more in store for us. There was a rope blocking one passageway with a sign that said no one beyond that point. This did not include us! He led us through the dark passageway with his flashlight and unlocked a metal jail cell type door.

There we saw a famous statue of Ogier the Dane. There is a myth that this Danish king went to Kronborg castle where he just slept until he was needed for something.

We went back to the exit, which was an even bigger red door than earlier, but he had already locked it. Good thing there was a little Alice in Wonderland type door!

     There is no bridge from Denmark to Sweden here. Instead, we had to take a ferry across. I believe this is my first time on a ferry like this where you drive your car onto it! Depending on which side of the boat you were on, you could see lights coming from both Sweden and Denmark.

Lights from Sweden.

Lights from Denmark.

Overall, it was a great weekend full of friends and traveling!

Swan biting me!!!

Daily Illini Article

The Daily Illini is the University of Illinois school newspaper. Emily Bayci, sports writer, interviewed me on Skype last week. I think she did a great job capturing all of the different aspects of my experience. Here is the article that she wrote:

Volleyball alumnae continue career, friendship overseas

Six months ago, Johannah Bangert and Laura DeBruler hung out every day in their campus apartment, joking around and talking volleyball. Now, the Illinois volleyball players, who graduated in the spring, still chat all the time. But these days they communicate over Skype instead of on the sofa.

The duo is playing professional volleyball in Europe — DeBruler in Switzerland and Bangert in Sweden. The other half of their senior class (Hillary Haen and Nicole Kump) moved on to the working world, but DeBruler and Bangert were not ready to walk away from volleyball quite yet.

“I can continue playing, I don’t have to stop my career,” DeBruler said. “It’s really sad, I actually talked to some of the girls here about this. They don’t understand how many people play in college and then don’t do it anymore after college. It’s just done, their career is over.”

As professional players, both Bangert and DeBruler are expected to be key contributors to their teams.
Bangert, a middle blocker for Ljungby Volleybollklubb in Ljungby, Sweden, has become much more focused on attacking than ever before.

“I think I have gotten better attacking just because I’ve been put into a different role,” Bangert said. “I am supposed to score most of the points for us. I think I’m held to a higher standard now in attacking than I was before.”

DeBruler, an outside hitter for Sagres NUC VolleyBall in Marin, Switzerland, has been having more difficulty than expected coming back from her ACL injury last fall.

“I’m in a lot of pain and my knee still swells up,” DeBruler said. “It’s frustrating because I don’t feel like I’m at the same level as before I got hurt.”

And she has to adjust to a format unlike what she was used to at Illinois.

“Volleyball is a lot different actually,” DeBruler said. But then she paused for a minute.

“Well I guess it’s not that different,” she said with a laugh.
The setup is similar to college with multiple divisions, usually broken up among countries. Each division typically has about 10 teams, which all play one another twice.

The players don’t practice as much as in college, because most of the team members are locals with jobs or school. The seasons are also much longer than in college, starting in early September and running through April. Coaching staffs are much smaller, forcing players to teach themselves more than in college.

“There, you’re a pro,” said Illinois head coach Kevin Hambly, who keeps in touch with Bangert and DeBruler over e-mail. “No one’s telling you what to eat, no one’s telling you when to lift, no one’s telling you how to change your passing. They just expect you to perform. I think it’s a good life lesson, a good experience for everyone.”

The former Illini are both pretty convinced they’ll play another season abroad — they aren’t ready to be done playing volleyball yet. They might consider joining different teams to experience a new culture, but haven’t thought much about it, Bangert said.

Now, they are focused on enjoying their final months within the current culture.
Bangert found that people of all ages were able to speak English nearly fluently. She is familiar with Swedish, having taken three semesters of it at Illinois.

“We go anywhere and people know us as the American volleyball players,” Bangert said. “A lot of people, when they first meet us, are afraid to speak English because they think they’re going to be bad at it, but really everybody is so good at it.”

During practice, Bangert’s coach and teammates typically speak in English. Sometimes, when the coach wants to get a lot of information out quickly, he goes on a Swedish rant.

“Those times, someone will have to translate for us,” Bangert said.

The language barrier isn’t as simple for DeBruler, who is surrounded by numerous languages.
“In my part they speak French, but like two towns over they speak Swiss-German, which is different than German,” DeBruler said. “Some parts speak Italian and there’s a really, really small part that speaks a combination of all three together.”

Something more difficult to get used to is Europe’s high expenses, Bangert said. A cheeseburger, fries and drink from McDonald’s costs about $13. DeBruler said she only goes there when she’s feeling especially homesick.

“I knew it was expensive, but I didn’t think it would be this expensive,” Bangert said.
Part of Bangert’s contract requires her to eat lunch every day at Hotel Terraza, where “everyone in the town goes for lunch,” Bangert said. Her favorite meal: bacon.

Bangert was amazed by the presence of team sponsorships. Her black jersey has ads plastered all over it and her gym has banners and posters everywhere. The sponsors also give bonus prizes to the MVP of every game. So far, Bangert has won flowers and lottery tickets, which didn’t win her any money. Her roommate, Meghan Sherman, won on the “jackpot day,” Bangert said.

She received flowers, a pair of socks, a hat, lanyard and wallet.
Sherman is the team’s other American import and played volleyball at the University of Tampa. She and Bangert met on the plane to Sweden and have been getting along very well, Bangert said.

The two have been promoted as mini-celebrities, with their pictures often featured in the newspaper and life-size posters made of them.
Bangert plans to travel for Christmas, going to the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Paris. “It’s like I finally get a chance to study abroad, without the schoolwork,” Bangert said.

DeBruler is looking forward to 10 days at home.

She is not forgetting her Illinois roots, and her parents certainly don’t let her. They were visiting Oct. 8, when the then-No. 1 Illinois defeated the then No. 8 Penn State in Happy Valley.

“They stayed up from two in the morning until five in the morning to listen to the game on the radio,” DeBruler said. “I was sleeping, because I had a game the next day, but they are seriously die hard fans.”

Although they are both abroad and hope to see each other, Bangert and DeBruler don’t know if they will make it because of their varying competitive schedules. Getting from Neuchatel, Switzerland, to Ljungby, Sweden, requires a 12-hour drive and ferry ride. They know they’ll continue to speak often, though.

“I talk to her a lot because we’re going through the same situations,” DeBruler said. “I can talk to people at home but they just don’t understand what it’s like to be without family, without close friends. And she was my roommate, my best friend. It’s just kind of cool that we’re going through this together.”

Car < Movie

     In case you did not read my blog about my adventure in Lund, Meghan and I rented a car for that trip. I simply emailed a guy and told him the dates that we needed a car. He replied saying to just show up, and he would have a car for us. We did not have to show our American driver’s licenses. We did not have to sign any papers. We did not even have to tell them our names! A lady just handed us the keys. No questions asked. When we returned the car, we did not even have to fill it up with gas.

     Now last Wednesday, Meghan and I decided to rent a movie. It took us a long time to decide on a movie that neither of us had seen yet. We finally decided on a Ryan Gosling movie called “All Good Things”. We went to the counter to rent it and pay. The guy asked us something in Swedish, which of course our reply was “English?” He asked us if we had identification. Meghan showed him her Florida’s driver’s license. He said that wasn’t good enough and asked if we had Swedish identification numbers like a social security number. When we informed him that we do not, he informed us that we could not rent the movie. We had to call Daniel, our coach, to come to the movie store to rent the movie for us!

Moral of the story: We are able to rent a car, but we cannot rent a movie! Sweden never ceases to amaze me!!!

Facials

     Tonight, we had a really good practice. Our main focuses were on serve receive and attacking (specifically our wing attackers). This was great because these were two of our bigger weaknesses from the match on Saturday. The only bad part was that one of our outside hitters wasn’t at practice tonight. She has a 2-year-old daughter and couldn’t get a babysitter. A lot of the drills that we did had requirements that the first two balls had to go to the outside or rightside. This gave our wing attackers a lot more opportunities. They also had to attack against a well-formed block since the middle attack was not being set. The pace of practice was also very high. Everyone kept the energy high throughout the whole practice, which was really nice to see. I was very happy with the whole practice tonight!

     The interesting part of practice tonight was that there were 3 facials that occurred! I am (sorta haha) happy to say that it was not I this time that was knocking people to the ground. The first facial came during our hitting warm-up.  We call it “in spike”. On each side of the net, there is a setter, a libero passing, and a line of hitters hitting just a normal outside set. One of the girls hit one of the liberos smack on the side of the face. She went down to ground. She said her next was hurting so they got her ice. She didn’t do anything for the rest of practice. The next girl to get in the face was while playing 6-on-6. Someone hit the ball. Both the middle back and right back went for the ball. The middle back got a piece of it, but it was shanked right into the right back’s face! She also fell to the ground and stayed there. Our coach told us to start peppering. She lay on the ground for about 2 minutes before getting up, but she continued to play for the rest of the practice. And now for the third and final facial! Spoiler alert, I get hit in the face! I was playing middle back defense, and the other team’s outside hitter was attacking. I could not see the hitter so I relaxed in my defensive position waiting to run down a touch off the block. That is not what happened. Somehow, she hit a line drive square at my nose! I did not fall to the ground or quit playing. I had the natural reaction of my eyes watering from getting hit in the nose, but I said let’s keep playing! Truthfully, I was just upset because I actually had a pretty decent up (off of my face of course), but no one went after it!!!

This Week's Volleyball

We had two matches this week. Unfortunately, we lost both of them. Here is a little information about each match.

     Thursday, we lost to Hylte/Halmstad, 26-28 25-21 25-22 23-25 17-19. As the scores show, it was a close match the whole time. We started out the 5^th set down 1-5. We were down for most of the set including 9-12, but we got back into it tying the game at 14-14. We had 2 match point opportunities that we did not convert on. The game was tied again at 17-17. Our outside hitter had two errors (blocked and tipping a ball into the antennae) that ended the match. Throughout the match, Hylte/Halsmstad was putting up a triple block against me. I don’t think I have ever been triple blocked before! It didn’t stop me though as I had 20 kills for the match. This is without a doubt my career high kills. They don’t keep track of hitting attempts. I’m not sure how many total attempts I had, but I did have 5 errors (2-3 of which were bad connection). I scored a total of 24 points this match. Our rightside got the MVP award though. She was given a bottle of Champagne.

To view stats for this match, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_61-1112.htm.

     Saturday, we lost to Lindesberg, 18-25 16-25 20-25. This loss was much easier to take than Thursday’s loss. I was upset after Thursday’s match because I felt like we had opportunities to win, but we didn’t take advantage of it. We should have won on Thursday. The match against Lindesberg was a different case. They are a better team than us right now. They have an American coach, and he runs the team a lot like an American collegiate team. They ran a very fast offense, and they got a swing every time the ball came on their side of the net. We also had way too many of our own errors! We had 12 service errors and were aced 8 times. As a team, we hit .037 for the match! As a team, we had 18 kills with 15 errors. I don’t think it is necessary to say this, but that is not good! I was one of three people on our team to be in the positive, meaning I had more kills than errors. I had 7 kills in 14 attempts with 1 error (.429 hitting percentage). One of our outsides had 1 kill in 11 attempts (.091). Meghan had 3 kills in 6 attempts with 1 error (.333). Our other outside had 2 kills in 18 attempts with 4 errors (-.111), and our rightside had 3 kills in 20 attempts with 6 errors (-.150). With all of that being said, we did remain calm during the whole match and didn’t freak out. We kept our mental composure. Now if we could keep that composure and perform better, we would be in much better shape. Meghan got the MVP award for our team this match. She got flowers, a backpack, and a 300kr ($50) gift card to a sporting goods store. I also found out that someone picks the MVP award; it is not solely based on the statistics. There is also a statistic that is called “vote”. I have no clue how this statistic is calculated. But if anyone out there knows, please inform me! I really want to figure it out.

To view stats for this match, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_21-1112.htm.

     The worst part about yesterday was the travel. We got on the bus at 6am to drive to Lindesberg. With a couple stops (including a 30 minute mandatory stop for our driver), it took a total of 6 hours to get there! I tried to sleep for most of the trip, but I wasn’t very successful. We ate lunch when we got to the gym before getting ready for the match. The match started at 2pm. We were back on the bus leaving for home by 4pm! After another 6-hour journey, we were finally home safe and sound.

Our next match is not until November 26^th against Engelholms at home. We have two weeks now to work hard in practice, before we compete again!

#winningrecord

     We played Svedala on Saturday afternoon. We won in three sets, 25-15 25-9 25-15. I don’t really have much to say about the match except that everyone played really well. We had 38 kills, 9 aces, and 3 blocks. On the other hand, we held Svedala to 14 kills, 3 aces, and 0 blocks. Our outside hitter, Sofie, had a really great game! She had 5 aces and 7 kills with only 1 error. They don’t keep stats on digs, but she also played great defense. Meghan got ‘Player of the Game’ this match! She had 1 ace, 2 kills, and 2 blocks. She does a good job of leading our team, as a setter should do. She got flowers, a wallet, a lanyard, a hat, and a pair of socks. She didn’t want the socks so I got them! Ljungby Volleybollklubb is now 2-1, and we are in 3^rd place in the Elitserien division!!!

     I needed to take a night off from going out and dancing and all the craziness. Instead, Meghan, Daniel, Mattias, Joel, and I headed to Växjö to see a movie. When we arrived to claim our tickets, we were informed that we did not have seats. The lady said that Daniel booked the tickets for Stockholm! Our options were to see Contagion like we had planned, but we had to sit in the front row; OR we could wait an hour to see In Time, but we would still have to sit in the front row. It was an obvious decision. The movie was all right. It had a good story and plot to it, but it was very slow. Mattias actually fell asleep; none of the Swedes liked the movie. As we got to the car, Daniel realized that he didn’t have his phone. He headed back to the theater while we went to get the car to pick him up back at the theater. He found his phone, and we were back on our way to Ljungby.

     Sunday morning was a much-needed relaxing morning! I had an hour massage that was great. She only worked on my legs, back, and shoulders. All of those are so tight though that it hurt the whole time. It was a great pain though! I could use a massage like that on a weekly basis. Then maybe, just maybe, my shoulders would lose some of their tension. After my massage, I decided to take a bubble bath. It was a fantastic decision. I read my book for a while and then listened to my dad’s sermon online from Immanuel. It was all very relaxing!

     To view pictures from the match, go to http://brightphoto.se/start/svedala-overkort. To view full stats from the match, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_10-1112.htm. I will warn you though that the stats are still not completely accurate. They are better than last week's though!

Here are two short side stories that go along with things from above:

     I am very happy that I took the weekend off from going out, but I was also sad about it too. The bar in town was having Halloween at Harry’s! I could have had the opportunity to wear my Wilma costume, and not be the only person in town dressed up. Yes, on Halloween I wore my Wilma Flintstone costume; complete with dress, necklace, wig, bone, and sandals. I got some interesting looks especially since I was the only person in the whole town to dress up on Halloween day! I even had someone ask me why I was dressed up; it was sad. I missed out on my chance to be Wilma and not have people think I am crazy in the head!

      Daniel’s lost phone was not his first lost item. Meghan and I have a spare key to our apartment that we need to give to someone in case we lock ourselves out. Two weeks ago, we had officially decided that we were going to give it to Daniel. This same week, Daniel lost his keys at practice twice! They were eventually found both times. Then on the weekend, the coat check people somehow lost his coat. His keys were in his coat pocket. Now this encounter wasn’t really his fault, but this time his keys were lost for good. Needless to say, Meghan and I have still not given our spare key to anyone. We are looking for a new candidate...

Crazy Times in Lund

Notice: Meghan is driving and looking at the camera while I am the one looking at the road!

     Meghan and I had our first official roadtrip. We took a little overnight trip to Lund, Sweden. It is a university town about 2 hours South of Ljungby. I have a friend, Steve, from University of Illinois that is studying abroad there this semester. We ‘rented’ a car for two days. I say ‘rented’ because I am not completely sure what we did. I emailed a guy and told him that we wanted to use a car for November 2^nd and 3^rd. He responded saying to just show up on the 2^nd, and he would have a car for us. We did just that. We showed up at the dealership on Wednesday afternoon. We were handed car keys, no questions asked. We didn’t sign anything. They never checked if we had driver’s licenses. Nothing!

     They don’t have any automatics so Meghan was stuck driving the whole time. Driving a manual is something that I am supposed to learn during my time in Sweden, along with how to swim. We shall see if either of those things happen!? I don’t have too much to say about the actual roadtrip because it was pretty uneventful, which is a good thing if you ask me. The only time we got lost while driving was in Lund when trying to turn onto Norra Ringen. We didn’t even get lost really because we had a GPS!  It told us to take the 4^th exit in the roundabout to get onto Norra Ringen. Well the 4^th exit was getting back on the road we just came off of, but we trusted the GPS. Recalculating. We made another probably 5 turns, then take the 3^rd exit in the roundabout to get onto Norra Ringen. We did just that. Recalculating.  We made another 4 turns before we finally successfully turned onto Norra Ringen! From there, it was straight sailing except for one stalled engine at a red light.

     We safely arrived at Steve’s dorm and parked in the ICA (grocery store) parking lot as directed. We dropped our bags off in Steve’s room before he gave us a tour of Lund. As we walked past the parking lot, I noticed that there was something yellow tucked under the windshield wiper. Sure enough, in the first 15 minutes of being in Lund, we got a ticket! This is when we realized that you had to pay to park at the grocery store. Yes, that’s correct. You have to pay to park at the grocery store! The good news is that we could pay to keep the car there over night as well. We haven’t figured out yet if we actually need to pay the ticket. Shhhhhhhhhhh, don’t tell the Swedish police! It’s for 400kr = $66 for a parking ticket!

     Steve showed us around Lund. It isn’t a huge city, but compared to Ljungby it’s big! There are two main squares. Just one of them is probably three times bigger than the main square in Ljungby. I felt like I was back in Champaign seeing so many people my age. I miss Champaign a lot so in a way it was comforting to walk around Lund. The main site to see in Lund was a huge church. It was awesome!

Replica of the church.

The bottom half has the whole church calendar on it.

Meghan and me at the altar with the pews all behind us.

There was a crypt in the basement underneath the alter area.

     After eating dinner at a burger place, we went back to the dorm to hang out with other students. We chilled and played some card games before deciding to go to a bar. This is where the REAL getting lost occurs! Meghan and I had left our coats in Steve’s room so we started back towards his room. We thought Steve was right behind us. We were wrong! We were lost. We didn’t have a cell phone. Meghan tried to go back to the room that we came from while I stayed in a different part (where we thought was close to Steve’s room) in case I saw Steve. I waited for quite a while with no sign of Meghan. This is when I met Petter. Yes, his name is Petter with 2 t’s pronounced like a person who pets a dog, a petter. He let me into his room to get on my Facebook where I had Steve’s phone number. I used Petter’s phone to call Steve to find out which part of the dorms his room was in (A very big event happened here, or more so didn’t happen here, but I will come back to it later. Just don’t forget Petter!). Leaving Petter’s room, we ran into his friend Peter who decided to help us out. Very shortly after that, we also found Meghan! We were ecstatic to be back together that we instantly hugged upon seeing each other. The four of us made our way to corridor C where Steve’s room is located. The problem now changed from finding Steve’s room to finding Steve. He wasn’t in his room and wasn’t answering his phone anymore. We finally found someone to let us into his hallway. We went to the kitchen and living room area to wait until he returned. I'm not sure what time he returned. But after everything that happened, Meghan and I were ready for bed. We fell asleep quickly after our heads hit the pillows.

     Remember Petter? I hope so! Well apparently in the search to find Steve, I forgot to sign out of my Facebook account on his computer. I realized this when I got back to Steve’s room and saw that there was a status update on my page. It said, “Lost my dignity today (puked on myself) , unclear when I will get it back.” It already had 5 likes and 7 comments before I saw it! I updated my status again saying, “i did not puke on myself. i got facebook hacked. or as the swedes call it... faceraped!” Faceraped is a term that I learned while in Sweden meaning “to have your Facebook (or other social networking site) used by someone else when you have accidentally left it logged in” (urbandictionary.com). I thought that this status update was the extent of it. I was wrong. I didn’t discover the other part until I returned to Ljungby on Thursday afternoon. When I logged onto Facebook this time, I had a notification saying that 50 people had written on my wall. There is only one day of the year when that many people write on someone’s wall… their birthday! Apparently, Petter also changed my birthday to November 3^rd. But Facebook won’t allow me to change my birthday back to the real date, so I just had to take my birthday completely off. I was the victim of a brutal facerape by a complete stranger. I should have known not to trust someone named Petter. I hope you are all spared from this terrible experience in the future. Always remember to log off your account when you are finished on a computer. I changed my password too, just for good measure!

     Yet again, another crazy adventure! I never could have predicted this one though. Overall, it was a successful visit with a friend from Champaign and a fun night. I definitely had a great time!

Sweden's Next Top Model

     At Illinois, we celebrated a holiday called "Preseason Christmas". It's one of my all time favorite holidays. The day before preseason starts is the day when you receive all of your new gear. It is a glorious day filled with new volleyball shoes, new running shoes, new sweat pants, new sweat shirt, new dri-fits, new t-shirts, new knee pads, new socks, new spandex, new sports bras, new shorts, and more! I received a lot of the same things here. The main difference is that it did not all come at once. Meghan calls it "Preseason Hanukkah" because the gifts were spread out over a longer period of time. Well after being in Sweden for two months, I can finally say I officially have all of my gifts/gear! Hope you enjoy my modeling. ;)

New parka because it's that cold here! ELTT hat from an electricity company in town.

Complete with a hood. Notice the "Ljungby Volley" on the left chest.

The newest ELTT hat design.

ELTT practice t-shirts. I wear the purple one to practice every Thursday. :)

Puma warm-up gear. Top has a shoulder zipper.

Both top and capri pants have JB on them.

Puma sweat shirt and pants.

Ljungby Volley on the back along with InterSport, another sponsor.

Ljungby Volley logo on the front left chest.

Puma leather gym bag. Very classy!

Jo B decal on one end of the bag.

Ljungby Volley on the other end.

Awesome purple Asics volleyball shoes.

Base long white volleyball socks. I haven't worn long socks like this since I can remember. I hate them with a BIG passion! I miss my Nike crew socks. :(

Black Euro-style kneepads. They are Nylon instead of the American cotton kneepads. Also notice the hole in the back.

Match warm-up shirt. Puma with lots of advertisements of course.

8 different logos on the front.

4 logos on the right side.

4 logos on the back.

3 logos on the left side. I'm a walking billboard!

Meghan and me in our full gear head to toe. Advertising jersey, advertising spandex, Euro kneepads, long white socks, purple Asics shoes.