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The Arrival

Well this is my first entry of the second journey and I hope it ends up as well as the first one did. A hair cut at Bills, a stop by Central to receive the good luck blessing from Coach Mangum, lunch at Beth's Country Kitchen with the parents, happened to bump into David Tucker and ate some Burger King in the Charlotte airport with him and 24 hours later I'm here in my room in Stockholm Sweden starting all over again. It is almost 1 am here and I'm not tired...though I have been all day.

As soon as I got on the airplane to come here the same thoughts were going on in my mind again as they did last year. Man this is going to be a long flight...I hope I can make it through all the security without any problems....hope I can play well....can the girls really be that fine...and do they really serve alcohol on European flights? I flew directly from Charlotte to Gatwick London, then caught a bus to Heathrow which is another airport in London about a 30 minute ride aways. I had to exchange money to pay for the bus trip and to buy food and calling cards. $ 125 = 60 Pounds in case you cared. Basically somewhere around 2 dollars per pound. The Heathrow airport in London is basically a shopping mall with an airport surrounding it. While I was in this airport several things came back to me that I had forgotten about.

  • There are a lot of Indians in London
  • A super sized meal in Europe isn't really that big and costs twice as much
  • You get like 2 cubes of ice in a drink
  • And there are no free refills
  • When I got ready to go to sleep...the sun started coming up


So I arrived and was picked up by a coach and one of the players. They were waiting on me and had been for like an hour because there was a delay at Heathrow ...go figure. We took about at 30 minute ride from the airport to Tyreso, which is where I am. We went right through the downtown of Stockholm and it seems pretty nice from my first look of it. We just talked about football pretty much the whole way until we got in the dead center of town and I saw this huge lit up sign that read KPMG. Now I didn't know what KPMG meant 3 months ago either, but my cousin did an internship with them and so therefore I know. KPMG is an accounting firm that is world wide. So maybe David better come check that office out after all.

When I got to my place I tried to plug my computer in but for some reason it wouldn't work. It would recognize the connection, but wouldn't let me surf.  The place I'm staying is pretty nice. The team has like the whole bottom of an apartment building it seems. You have to remember it was dark when I landed so I'm trying to tell you from what I saw. Anyways, we have meeting rooms, bed rooms, bath rooms, a shower, a kitchen, a computer room and everything so its pretty spacious.

The team doesn't have practice tomorrow or Saturday, but then on Sunday we have a scrimmage against the Helsinki Roosters. Yes you may remember the roosters as the team that the Turku Trojans beat last year in the Finnish championship game. My team here in Sweden is scrimmaging them this Sunday. I wont play because its only my second day here and I don't know the plays yet. This will probably be awkward seeing them again, but in a different country. So That's pretty much it for now. I'm sure I'll  have more later and unlike my brother I did call Big Frank and Frances and tell them I made it.

Regards,

Clint


Clint Patterson

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