National Team and Nykvarn (neek-vorn)

Hey everyone!
So here's a brief summary of my weekend:
Saturday: We left at 7:30 in the morning for Norrköping, which is two hours North-ish of here. I had to drive, taking three of our players from Enköping to try out for the team, including two pitchers I've been working with a lot since I got here. Tryouts lasted from 10-6, so it was a long day, but it was good to meet the National team coach, a really nice guy that coached the junior National baseball team for over ten years before switching to softball, and talk with him about pitching and the tournament coming up in Holland. The pitchers threw until the lunch break, while the official pitching coach and myself walked around and helped people. It was definitely a mixed group, pitching in this country is pretty weak. The best pitcher there, though not the best Swedish pitcher (she couldn't make it, but she's on the team no matter what anyway, and plays for Mattias'- the coach's- regional team during the regular season), was a girl from Söder (Seur-dehr), who has a great natural snap and release point. Unfortunately the pitching coaching here is even worse off than the pitching itself- hence why they are desperate to bring over American coaches- so even though she should be throwing all of the pitches, she only throws a fastball and dropball. The pitching coach was working with her during the tryouts on other pitches, and I worked with her briefly on a riseball, which she picked up right away.

Our pitchers did pretty well, though I think if they make it they'll both play in the field instead. Jonna (yown-na, emphasis on second syllable), who I'm trying to convince to come to the States on exchange, is a 16 year old with a great attitude and work ethic- I think she'd really benefit from coming to play softball at a US High School. Ida's 17 and has a bit of an attitude problem (though she seems to like me well enough so far), but is a great athlete and seems pretty dedicated to pitching- right now, anyway.

In the afternoon we did hitting and fielding. I basically just helped out wherever they needed me, and went over some hitting stuff with the the girls. It looks like I am going to Holland with the team, both as a coach and as a fill-in pitcher, aka someone who can hop in for a batter or an inning to relieve the Swedish pitchers. Mattias said he was hoping to get two or three Americans to do this for the tournament. He also said that if I was staying beyond September 1st he'd invite me as a walk-on to his regional team, who are competing in the European Cup starting the 1st. This makes me very tempted to ditch the first two weeks of school, I'm not going to lie.

We drove back after the tryouts and I got back around 9:30 or so. It MUST be noted that last night was the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, which is basically American Idol (except the songs are original and are also part of what you vote for, not just the singer), but for the whole European continent. It was broadcast on the radio starting and 9, and it's a huge deal for all of Europe. Everyone here was up watching it when I got back, so it was fun to hang out and watch Freja and Vidar sing and dance to the songs and be amazed over how obsessed everyone is with this contest. The majority of the songs were awful, including one by Greece that almost won and reminded me so much of early Britney Spears it was a little spooky. The Swedish song was actually really fun, but Russia won, after a performance with a famous figure skater and violinist as well as a already famous Russian singer (apparantly Russia decided to sink a lot of money into this year's contestant since they haven't won the competition yet).

Today was really relaxing, we just lazed around during the morning, I jumped on the huge backyard trampoline with the kids for awhile (SO FUN), and helped Ingrid clean off their deck furniture. Then we- Ingrid, Freja, Vidar, Maria and her baby Agnes and I- went to Nykvarn for the afternoon, which is a little craft and pottery village right on a river near town.

We walked through the houses and looked at the pottery and art, then went to a cafe and had a fika (fee-ka- basically having coffee or tea, along with some kind of pastry or cake. Fikas are a big deal here, apparantly). There was some very pretty pottery and glass in the shops, I have to go back to check it out more closely, and to look at the silversmith that was closed today.

The picture on the left is of traditional Swedish Christmas decorations- Santa clause, I suppose? Except squashed. Anyway, they were funny, so I took an illegal picture.

We went back to the house and got more deck furniture out of the attic, and then decided to barbecue and eat outside on the deck- rough life, huh? It was a beautiful day, the first that was really warm enough to wear shorts since I got here. So it was great to just enjoy the sun and hang out.

Tomorrow I'm going to help out in gym class at Assar's school and teach them the basics of softball, kind of what Ingrid and I did last week for Jonna's class.

Thats all for today! (so much for a brief summary, I don't even know why I say that anymore)

Night!

Comments and other stuff

Hey (Or hej, I should say)
So I've had a couple questions from people about the comments thing- when you make a comment on one of my posts it goes to me via e-mail and I have to approve it before it will show up on the webpage. Starting now, I'm not going to publish anyone's comments on the web unless you specifically ask me to. This way you can respond to what I write without worrying about other people reading it, making fun of you, etc. If you still don't feel comfortable doing that, then I love getting e-mail as well, the jen.williams.21@gmail.com is the best account to send any e-mails to. I love hearing your responses to my posts, as well as how everyone's doing- keep me updated!

Not much going on today, just practice and a couple pitching lessons. I'm giving about 2-3 pitching lessons a day, which has been tiring but really rewarding so far. Ingrid's done a wonderful job giving these girls fundamentals, so instructing them on pitching has been easier than I would have hoped. Ingrid herself has also been working with me almost every day, and her pitching is improving a huge amount- she's going to be really tough if she keeps going the way she is now.
Tomorrow I go to the National Team tryout, I just talked with the coach on the phone, and he's excited to talk pitching and to see what I have to offer. The other pitching coach is apparantly also excited to talk to me, hopefully we can learn a lot from each other- she's supposed to be pretty good. So I get back tomorrow night around 8:30pm. Sunday Ingrid said we might go somewhere together- all the kids and she and I (Micke is working), to "show [me] something other than Enköping".

A couple random things:
-Micke is pronounced mik-eh, with emphasis on the first syllable
-Freja is pronounced frey-ah, emphasis on the first syllable
-Enköping is pronounced eyen-shupping, emphasis on the first syllable
-It finally gets truely dark at 11:30 at night, and the days get longer every day!
-I have not eaten anything pickled yet, though on Midsummer I will apparantly eat a lot of pickled fish (called sill) and take many shot of snaps (swedish schnapps)
-Pippi Longstocking is Swedish- which I totally forgot, but man is she popular here!
-Swedes are obsessed with gummi candy

That's it for now!

More than 1 week in!

So I've been here for more than a week already- which feels weird because it seems like it's flown by, but also like I've been here longer than that- which says good things about my comfort level here, I guess. I've pretty much just been relaxing and, with the exception of softball and pitching lessons, lazing around this past week and a half. Thus the lack of exicting events to report- but today I got a bike! So I'm now mobile and ready to go, and am finally over my jet lag. Watch out Enköping!
So this weekend I'm going to a town about 2 hours northwest to help out with National Team open tryouts- I'm going to meet the national team coach and talk pitching for awhile, and if it all goes well and he likes my style then I may act as a second pitching coach for the National team while I'm here. The most significant part of that is traveling with them to Amsterdam during July to participate in a European tournament- so we'll see what happens! They already have a Swedish pitching coach, but apparantly she's more than willing to be taught new styles of coaching, and I might have more pitching teaching experience than she does (she just stopped playing herself 2 years ago).

Yesterday I played a bunch with Freja, the five year old girl who I live with. She's ridiculously adorable, and loves to teach me the swedish words for things and learn the english one in return. Neither of us usually remember the words five minutes later, but that's okay. The only problem is that, as a five year old, her pronounciation isn't always the best, and she tends to draw out the words she says to me in order help me understand her better- which has exactly the opposite effect. We get by with gestures and a english-to-swedish dictionary, and yesterday we played a bunch of board games that I didn't really understand, but were fun anyway (I have a feeling some of them were too advanced for Freja as well, and we ended up simplifying them a lot).

Well, that's about all I've got for now. Hope everyone's doing great!

Email tva post

This is for anyone who didn't get the e-mail. I didn't realize how long it was, so much for being concise!!

So here's installment #2 of my Swedish Log- and things are going just swimmingly! I've picked up a bunch of random Swedish words and sayings, everything from useful (Do you have= har deur (what it sounds like, not how it's actually spelled)) to not-so-useful (ladder= stege - I suppose I might need to use this at some point in the next three months, but I can't think when, and there are significantly more useful words that I wish I could remember instead). I'm living with Ingrid's family in their house on Jordhumlagatan street (which is the name for those bumblebees that nest in the ground), which is made up of Ingrid, her husband Mike, and their three kids.

The kids names are Assar, Vidar, and Freja, and they're great- super friendly, and Assar, the oldest, has been wonderful about translating for me when the two younger kids try to talk to me in Swedish. Ingrid and Mike (pronounced meek-eh) are also wonderful- Ingrid and I get along great, and talk softball all the time. Mike has discovered that I'm not that easily offended and makes fun of me whenever possible- which pretty much makes me feel right at home. All five of them have welcomed me into their family more than I ever could have expected. Enkoping is a great little town, with a small main square and tons of botanical gardens, as well as a small harbor that goes into a lake. Pretty much anything you need you can find here, except an English bookstore and a movie theater. Stockholm is only a 45 minute train ride away, however, so that's not really a problem.

As I said in the first e-mail, the team is very young, and some are very inexperienced, but Ingrid's done a great job giving them solid fundamentals, so I'm having a good- and successful- time working with the girls. I'm working with three pitchers on an individual basis as well, and I have sessions with our catcher, who's on the Swedish Junior National team and has tremendous potential (Hannah you'd love her- tough as nails and doesn't take any crap, she's excellent). I'm helping Ingrid plan and run practices, and we have pretty compatible personalities and coaching styles, so it's working out great so far. It's fun how involved everyone is here- practices are family events, and it's pretty normal to have boyfriends, brothers, sisters, and parents come to just watch. We had our first games today, against the worst team in the league. We won both very easily, and my first game pitching effort in a year didn't go too badly (10 strikeouts, but 2 base hits). By league rules international pitchers are only allowed to pitch in the first game, so I played third in the second and picked off two runners with Amanda (the catcher). I was assured that the other teams we face are signficantly more challenging, which will be more fun- though this was a nice couple of games to come back on, I suppose.

As you can see in the pictures (which I took especially for you, Caitlin) I went to an Ikea the other day with Maria, one of our best players and a good friend of Ingrid's.

I was a little overwhelmed, but I noticed it's definitely cheaper to shop at Ikea in Sweden than in the U.S. Maria has a three month old girl named Agnes, who's adorable- the two of them and Maria's husband Emil came over for dinner last night, which was chaotic, but fun! Most of the time everyone except Ingrid speaks Swedish unless they're talking directly to me (Ingrid's english is very very good so she tends to try and include me more), but I never feel like I'm being ignored, I just sit back and either zone out or try to pick up the conversation through body language or the occasional word that I know (which isn't many, but oh well).

Well, that's about it for now. Tomorrow I'm going to work with some middle schoolers on softball training- one of the girls on our team works with this group on a different sport every two weeks, and this week is softball week, so Ingrid and I are helping out. In conclusion, life is good, I'm having fun, and Swedish children are absolutely adorable. I hope everyone's doing well, God natt!

Welcome to my blog (?)

So I figured I'd try this out, after being inspired by a friend who's keeping a blog of her expoits at cooking school for the summer. Hopefully you all can access it, and now feel more tech-savvy. Updates here as often as I reasonably can!