Orkelljunga Orkelljunga Orkelljunga

Try saying that 5 times fast! I can't properly pronounce it once!

This past weekend, while family members paid there respects to Gramma and I was inducted into the Hall of Uncles with the arrival of Kacie Lynn (!) we had a roadtrip down to, you guess it, Orkelljunga. It's about a 5 hour journey, crammed in the back of a 9 passenger van - great bonding time if you can stay awake!

We were up early, about 7 to grab a small bite to eat and jump in the vans. The sun doesn't rise til at least 8:30 so it felt even earlier than it was - not to mention I haven't been up much before 11 since I've been here.

As you can imagine, we all had on our morning faces. Here are Tarik, Dave, Vildan (Tarik's brother and our biggest fan) and Linus. Linus picked us up from the hotel and we all drove over to the school where we met the vans and the rest of the team. Oh, and Tarik is incapable of taking a picture with eyes open!


We found Erik first, walking up to the school, pillow in hand, ready for some more sleep. He's so beautiful when he smiles! "Paul, I'm so beautiful, even in the morning! What girl wouldn't want to wake up next to me?" The rest of the guys trickled in, but we were all there on time so as not to upset Tobey. He's a bit of a control maniac and the last thing you want from him is the death stare:


I'm just kidding, he's actually quite the friendly guy. But seriously, don't get on his bad-side. :)





We made it the gym no problem. There's a myth that no team can serve well in the Orkelljunga gym because of its low ceilings and bad lighting, but honestly, it's almost exactly like our gym.


Dave said to me, "Take this picture so you can show everyone at home the gym you played in," (like you can see anything), but his point was "They can see how bad it is to play in dim lights with red brick walls. It's hard to pass a ball coming from a server standing in front of a brick wall. The ball blends in and makes it almost impossible. I had the same problem in Stanford, those lousy trees.


I talked with Brian Beckwith before the match. He was the setter at Hawaii when I played at UCLA. He's growing a dirty mustache to match my frothy beard. He said he really likes Sweden, the team is pretty good and the guys are nice, but his number one complaint was that the town didn't have a bar. I feel for him. Word on the street though is that after our match his team fired two of its Polish professionals to make way for some new American player. Guess who? Kris Kraushaar! He's coming up from his latest stint in Barcelona to give the team a try. They'll be eager to sign him, we'll just have to see if SoCal Kris can handle the cold weather. Ha! He actually got into town there today, a bummer, just 2 days after our match!

Well, the match went as we had hoped! We played perfect, flawless volleyball in the first set and won BIG! No one shined, it wasn't flashy, just controlled, disciplined volleyball. It was awesome. We made a few more errors in the second set, but held on to win a close set of about 25-23. After every second set in a match we have a 10 minute break and this has thus far proved to be out downfall. We came back flat and lost the 3rd set like 26-24. Going an unnecessary 4th set is a real pain in my butt, shoulder, and legs. We managed to hang in there and win the 4th in another close set that went to extra points as well. Tarik was named player of the match, GREAT for his confidence which has been seriously lacking lately.

Afterward, we showered. gathered our things, and headed back out to the vans. It was dark again. Yay! the boys thought I was really cute with all the pictures I was taking, so I'll share a few of them here at the end. Can you imagine the ride home if we had lost? It's more fun to win than to lose!
I understand that I have a few more readers than I may have known! Just so everyone knows, I DON'T PROOFREAD! Ha! So if there is poor grammar or any misspellings or typos I apologize! But please feel free to post comments or questions so that I can share anything that may be missing. It would be nice to hear from people, and to know who's reading. You can also email me at vbsetr21@juno.com. Hope everyone is doing well!