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Week 3
On April 13, 2011 in Sweden by Clint Patterson Clint Patterson
As you can imagine this week started off rough coming back from Germany and having to recuperate.   When I finally got my sleep straightened out I started back into my routine.  After 2 weeks of wearing everything I had, and much of it twice, it was time to wash clothes.  This was another experience, but I will say that the set up here is a little more efficient than the one I had in Finland... that never drained the water properly.  Over here they have a key and lock system for washing clothes.  Each person that lives here has  a lock specifically for their room number and it is stored in a grid on the wall in the laundry room.  This " grid " is almost like a bingo board or something.  It has sectors divided up into the dates of the month and is broken down into 3 hour sections.  So if you want to reserve the slot for Friday from 9 - 12 then you place your lock in that hole and leave it there until your time comes and then you go and wash your clothes.  When your time comes you take the lock out and then put it in the door that leads to the laundry room.  That door also has a main lock that everyone has a key to, but to keep people from stealing your clothes you have to put your personal lock in the top space that is also built into the door lock. This makes like a double lock.   Now I understood the principal, but not being able to read Swedish and they also put dates backwards here in Europe makes it a little difficult.  However, I had some of the guys explain it to me and I got it done.  I also hope I pushed the right buttons on the washing machine, but they came out smelling better so I guess I did.  They also have a machine in there that I have never seen.  Its like a roller or something that gets the wrinkles out of your laundry.  I don't even know the name of it.  Basically is has a cloth on it that wraps around  itself and you place your sheets or clothes on it and it pulls them in tightly and gets the wrinkles out.  It was neat to see.  Here are some pictures to hopefully help you understand.
 
 
 
 
 
Early this week I received official confirmation in the mail that Garth ( G - Funk ) Knight will indeed be gravitating in May.  I'm sure he will accept all gifts prior to, and after graduation, so send him something.  Rumor has it that it took a lot of prayer to get that boy through, but he did make it so what else can you say except... God is good.  hahaha.  The second half of the week here was dreary and rainy so I kind of stayed in for the most part.  We still had practice and are preparing for the game this coming week.  We still have a ways to go to be good.
 
At practice on Wednesday there were 3 people that came and stood on the field while we practiced.  Everyone was like who are those people, but it didn't take us long to figure it out.  These people came to do drug tests on our players.  After practice they had selected like 6 or so guys to take the test.  They wouldn't let those guys leave until they got it done either.  They ended up coming to the club house because some of the guys couldn't make ends meet for a while.  To me it looked legit and just like an NCAA drug test from the procedures that they were going through.
 
On Thursday I traveled with one of the coaches down to one of the southernmost points in Sweden.  A town called Malmö.  They said that Malmö is like the 3rd largest city in Sweden. It was a 6 hour ride (one way) and it was pretty neat to see the country side of Sweden and some of the coastline.  When we got to the very bottom you could even see Denmark from the shore.  It would be like being at Myrtle Beach looking over the ocean and when you could only see the horizon and at this point you would see towers and buildings.  To me that was odd to be able to see a different country in the distance, but they said that Copenhagen was right there.  We went to Malmö to watch a football scrimmage.  The Swedish national junior team had a scrimmage and this coach's son plays on the team so we went.  They played well and I think they even won.  I think they scored twice or something.  They play against the Junior national team from Holland on Saturday.  We got back at 4 am on Friday.  On the way I saw this building on the coast.  It is like some ruins of some castle like structure. 
 
 
I finished reading Numbers and Proverbs this week.  I was reading them at the same time and now I will start on Deuteronomy and Psalms.  I am jumping around a little bit I trying to cover some ground.  Numbers was tough for me to read because it was so much detail.  This week I also saw a hedge hog.  From watching that thing I don't think that they are intelligent creatures.  I also keep getting these Swedish pop-ups on my computer too, some of which are pretty hilarious.  I noticed that when cars ride by some are quiet and then some are loud, speaking of the tires against the road that is.  It is because they have special tires for the winter with small spikes in them and some people have changed over and some haven't.  They had these in Finland as well, but these spikes must be bigger or something because they are louder.  These people have 2 sets of tires.  One for the summer and one for the winter.
 
On Friday, Ilija and I went to lift weights.  After we lifted we went to get in the sauna.  Well there were like 7 kids in there and when I opened the door I noticed that it wasn't too hot.  These kids were probably around 13 - 17 years old.   I figured they didn't know what it was all about so I grabbed the water bucket and went and filled it up.  When I came back in they were looking at me like I was crazy.  I started to consistently throw water on the sauna heater and they were trying to be hard core, but pretty soon they started moving to the lower levels and when the lower level got full you could  hear them saying " ne ".  ( Ne means no in Swedish).  I just kept throwing and they kept saying " ne, nee, nee ! ".  I was laughing at them.  They sounded like a bunch of horses in there saying " neigh ".....lol.  It honestly wasn't even that hot, but they started peeling out of there like flies.  Like two of them stayed the whole time and when the rest had left one of those guys looked at me and said " what are you Finnish or something? " .  I said yeah half Finnish half American how'd you guess.  So now I have a group of kids at the gym that hate me and look at me funny when I go lift. How great.  I had heard rumors that the Swedish sauna is not as intense as a Finnish sauna and I guess they were right.
 
So now its game week so we have to get ready.
 
Regards,
 
Clint

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