8 Days Away

So here's what has happened since day one!

We've officially been here a little over a week.  It hasn't been a huge culture shock being that Sweden is the most Americanized country, but there have been some things that are quite odd or might just take some getting used to.

The first four days we really didn't do much. We stayed in the room, watched TV (which is in English) and took long naps. Jayden took longer to adjust to the time difference so he had me up til 5am the second day, 2 am the third and luckily only 11pm the fourth.  It made us all exhausted, so just hanging out seemed like the thing to do! Phillip had a game the day after we arrived and we were allowed to travel with the team, but another long trip -this time on a bus, just didn't sound inviting. So it was only natural that when his next game came up (Dec 21) we were super excited to attend. I couldn't walk to the game with Phil so he arranged for one of the girlfriends to meet me at our hotel and escort me :) It was a long, cold walk.  It was -2 and breezy, NOT what I am used to but worth it.

The gym was a small building that resembled a high-school gym in the States. There were a few hundred people that attended. They seemed to have good energy, but it was nothing like back home. The team has a lot of good talent, but they just couldn't pull off the win. There are 11 new players on the team so it is going to take the team time to gel. Phil finished the night with 9 points. After the game we went to Paco's (Mexican Restaurant) hoping to find food similar to what we would find back home...Yea, that didn't happen.  (I'll discuss our dinner experience more in my "Eating Out" post)





















Saturday and Sunday were a scramble to find Christmas gifts for Jayden.  The stores here open late (11am) and close early (5pm)  and would be closed Christmas Eve and Day so our time was limited. We found a toy store in the city center. That was exciting, but man it was expensive.  A very small LEGO set was $199 krona ($30) and random other little things were no less than $15-20. And these are things that would be $5-10 back home.  But we had to give in, it was our baby's 2nd Christmas and we were going to make it special.

The city center only offered so much though. The choices were limited, so we made our way to the Marieberg Galleria (closest mall).  We had to catch the city bus and had no idea where to go but we just said, "Forget it, let's go" and off we went! Luckily, the bus stopped right in front of the mall and everything was A-OK! Whew! We were able to find everything we needed even though the whole mall was the size of large department store in an American mall. We even found our tiny little Christmas tree with ornaments and lights included :) Once we were all shopped out (and broke, lol) we had a nice lunch then back home we went.

The next two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were VERY quite but I'll dedicate my next post to the Holidays :)