Family Fun Day

     I have two children here in Ljungby. My son is Joel, and my daughter is Meghan. They became my children because we hang out a lot and they always fight. I am the one who has to break them up and keep them under control. I have also cooked them dinner while they played with a balloon in the other room until Meghan got hurt and they started fighting!

     Yesterday, we spent some quality family time together. Joel doesn’t have a job right now so he is able to hang out with us during the day. We went on a walk together around town. We decided that we wanted to stop at Roddy’s, the coffee shop, on the way back. Of course, Meghan and Joel did not bring their wallets so mom had to pay. I got an ice latte and a cookie. Both kids just got a latte because Joel said he could only have sugar on Saturdays. BUT Joel got a chocolate latte with whipped cream on top! His explanation was “mom bought me sugar so it’s ok.”

     After practice, Joel made us dinner. It was very delicious! After dinner, we were watching some youtube videos. We came upon a video of attempts at the world record for number of times you can kick yourself in the head in a minute. I decided that I needed to see if I could even kick myself in the head. This of course turned into actually attempting to kick myself in the head over and over again. We decided to only go for 15 seconds though!

     I thought that I had a shot at the world record until I heard the world record! It is 115 kicks in one minute. I definitely have a lot of practice before I am at that level.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-3000/most-kicks-to-the-head-in-one-minute-%28self%29/

First Match of Quarterfinals

     I have not been keeping up with my blog per day promise. I am terribly sorry! Here is what happened this weekend.

     I awoke at 3am Sunday morning from my stomach hurting. An hour later, I started throwing up. I was sick a few times with the last time being at 8am. Our bus was supposed to leave for our match at 9am! After talking with my coaches, they decided that it was best if I did not go to the match. Of course, I was not ok with this decision. I told them that I wanted to go still and that I wanted to play. After some convincing, they told me that our club president was driving to the game at 10:30 and if I didn’t get sick again before then that I could go with him. I slept until it was time to go and slept a little bit more in the car too. I even ate a banana and some crackers. I wasn’t feeling very good still, but I hadn’t gotten sick again so they allowed me to play.

     This wasn’t the first time that I had played after throwing up all night! Last season at Illinois, I had the stomach flu 3 times in one month! I knew that no matter how I felt I still had to give full energy on the court. We lost in 3 games still, but I was really happy with how our team played. We played great defense! The scores were 15-25 14-25 22-25. We stuck right with them up until about 9-9 each game before Katrineholms rolled away with the set. We have had a problem with starting strong all season, but we didn’t in this match. Now we are looking to take our strong start and combine it with our typical strong finish for our match on Wednesday at home!

     After playing on Sunday, I had no energy. I slept most of the day on Monday and had a good night’s sleep again last night. I still don’t feel like I have my typical energy back, but tomorrow will be a different story. We are expecting to have around 700 people at the match! I feel very positive about this match. I know everyone is going to be giving 100%, and I can’t wait to see how we do! You will be able to watch live stats at 1pm cst at http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/?nr=17642493.

Saturday Funday?

     This morning, Meghan and I had the team over for a pancake breakfast. I should clarify… an American pancake breakfast! I made chocolate chip and banana pancakes with bacon on the side. My favorite way to eat them is with peanut butter and maple syrup on top. Talk about a sugar high! All of the girls loved the pancakes too.

Sofie's daughter, Ida, loved the pancakes too!

     After breakfast, I was in the mood to go play. It was nice day here, which means it was 45 degrees and the sun was out! I called up my other American friend, Erik. Erik, Meghan, and I headed to the toy store to get a Frisbee before going to the park. We tried to get some Swedes to join us, but no one wanted to so we were on our own. We threw the Frisbee around for a while, but it was very windy. So we decided to play on the playground instead. It was lots of fun!

Erik and Meghan on our new favorite thing to do in Ljungby!

NO HANDS!!!

     My sugar high finally wore off, and I returned home for a nap. Meghan and I went to our friend, Joel’s apartment for dinner. He cooked us some delicious fish and pasta. We watched Our Idiot Brother, which by the way is a very funny movie! After playing some group Sudoku, I am home and packing my volleyball bag for tomorrow.

     I had a really fun day today hanging out with my teammates and some other friends. But tomorrow is the big day! It is our first match of playoffs against Katrineholms. Our goal is to leave everything on the court and have fun playing. I am really looking forward to our match tomorrow!

Every Day I'm Bloggin

     I don’t have too much time left in Sweden so I have decided to take full advantage of it! And I want to make sure that I am keeping my loyal readers informed. ;) I have decided that I am going to write a blog every day for the rest of my time in Sweden. This is going to be a difficult task for me, but I am looking forward to it as well.

     BUT I am going to need your help! I am sure that I have not written about everything that you are wondering about my life. Now is your time to ask me any questions about my life in Sweden and get the answers you have been looking for! Either comment on this post with your questions, or email me at johannah.bangert@gmail.com.

     Now I am going to ask another favor of you… Please sign my guestbook! I plan on creating a scrapbook of my time in Sweden when I return to America. I would really like to include a page of people who followed my adventures. All it takes is clicking HERE to sign my online guestbook. Someone told me that they did not want to sign it because you have to enter an email address. If this is the case for you, please just enter my email address from above instead. Or you can simply comment on this post. Or send me an email. The only thing I ask is that you include the country that you are reading from.

     Shout out to my readers in Russia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, etc. I want to know who you are! Thanks for reading. :)

Teaching NEEDS Preparation

     About a month ago, Meghan and I went to the local high school to speak in an English class about September 11^th. It went really well! The students paid attention the entire time we talked, and they asked questions. I was amazed how well a class of 24 15-year olds paid attention. It was very different than my experiences during student teaching.

     So two weeks ago when the same teacher asked me if I would like to teach two math lessons, I gladly accepted. I met with her for coffee to discuss the math lessons. She is an English and Swedish teacher so she didn’t have too much information for me at least mathematics wise. She told me that the first lesson would be going over some English math terms and that she would make a list of these terms that she would give to the students and me. As for the second lesson, I would be working with a different teacher. She gave me the textbook and showed me the activity that I would be doing with the students. It was an activity working with the quadratic equation and discovering how the parabola shifted around the graph.

     It was then up to me to come with what to do! I decided that a good way to learn the different English math terms was to play a game like Pictionary. I gave the students about 5 minutes to look over the terms again, and then I divided them into groups of 4 students. I gave each group four different terms that they would have to draw on the board to have the rest of the class figure out what mathematical term they had. I thought this lesson went really well. The students all participated, and even better, they also paid attention while the other students were drawing. It wasn’t the same students who knew the answer every time either. I was very satisfied with how the lesson went!

     The second lesson did not go the same at all. :( I met the math teacher for the first time at 14:20, and the class began at 14:25! All he really told me was that first he wanted to show the students how you go from ax²+bx+c=0 to the quadratic formula.

After that, I would do the activity as a class. That was all the instruction I got! The lesson could have been done in 15 minutes. I tried to add in a little extra information to stretch it out. I decided to show them how we F.O.I.L., but I was flustered from not being prepared and I made a mistake. I think I only confused them rather than teach them! I made it through the rest of the activity as best as I could. But by no means am I satisfied with how it went. I am actually really upset about what happened. It was my first time back in a math class since student teaching, and it was terrible! I am trying to tell myself that it was not my fault. That if I would have had more information and able to prepare for the lesson, I would have done better. But I am still very disappointed right now…

Volleyball Rules

There are some different rules in Swedish/European volleyball than in American volleyball.

1. Substitutions. This is the biggest difference that actually affects the game. A player can only enter the game once per set. This means that if you start the set on the court and are subbed out, you can go back into the game. But if you leave the set again, you are done for the rest of the set. So if you start the set on the bench, you can be subbed in. But once you are taken out, then you are done for the rest of the set. This completely eliminates the ideas of a 6-2 offense or a defensive specialist or serving specialist. Each team has 6 substitutions each set. Players also have to hold up a number paddle indicating which player they are going in for.

2. Liberos. A team can have two liberos for a match. Only one can be on the court at a time still, but they can switch freely. This means that if one libero is in, then the other libero can switch right away with them. Ultimately, you could have a defensive libero and a serve receive libero that you switch every single time based on if your team is serving or not. This doesn’t happen, but it could. The libero is not allowed to serve ever. Once you have declared your one or two liberos for the match, they cannot switch during the match to a normal player unless there is an injury and vice versa.

3. Ceilings. If the ball hits the ceiling, it is out of play. It doesn’t matter if it stays on your side or not. It is automatically out, and the other team’s point.

4. Screening. There is no such thing as screening here. Screening is when the team is serving, and they strategically line up their players so that the other team cannot see the server. In American, your captain can say something to the referee, and he will have the blockers move so that the other team can see. Here people purposely line up so the server is difficult to see.

5. Randoms. Hitting and serving warm-ups are all shared between the two teams. Teams do not say ‘good luck’ to each other before the match. The referees almost do not call any lifts or doubles. They let everything go! Before a set starts and after timeouts, you are not allowed to go back onto the court until the ref blows his whistle. Often times, there is no break between sets 2 and 3. There are no line judges.

Playoffs

     The regular season is over, and it’s time for playoffs! Our team goal at the beginning of the season was to make it to playoffs. It feels really good that we accomplished our goal! As the rookie team in the league, it is a really big accomplishment that we made it to playoffs and able to stay in this division for next season.

     Here is the run down for how playoffs work here. There are 10 teams in our league, and the top 8 make playoffs. It then turns into an 8-team bracket. Each round of the bracket is the best 3 out of 5 matches though. The other different part is that #1 does not play #8 and so on. The #1 team gets to pick who they want to play of #5-8. Then #2 gets to pick from the remaining 3 teams of #5-8 and so on.

Here are the final rankings of the regular season:

1. Engelholms VS

2. Katrineholms VK

3. Lindesberg VBK

4. RIG Falköping

5. Gislaved VBK

6. Hylte/Halmstad

7. Sollentuna VK

8. Ljungby VBK

http://www.cupassist.com/pa/serieoppsett.php?t=SVBF_SERIE_AVD792&k=LS792&p=1

     Engelholms picked to play Gislaved. Katrineholms picked to play us. Lindesberg picked to play Sollentuna. This leaves Falköping to play Hylte/Halmstad. Teams normally pick their opponent based off of location and ability. Engelholms has been in the top of the league for quite a while so they are known to pick one of the better teams even for the first round because they want good competition throughout all of playoffs. We are about 4 hours away from Katrineholms.

     Our first match of playoffs will be next Sunday, March 11^th, at Katrineholms. The second match will be on Wednesday, March 14^th, in Ljungby. The third match will again be at Katrineholms on Saturday, March 17^th, or Sunday, March 18^th.

http://www.cupassist.com/pa/serieoppsett.php?t=SVBF_SERIE_AVD1318&k=LS1318&p=1

     Hopefully, we can play them for a longer amount of time like we did in the second set on Sunday! Nu kör vi Ljungby!!!!