Farewell Uddevalla

Wednesday night, instead of practice, we had a team dinner at a local Italian restaurant. It was a nice get-together with good people and good food. "T" now gives me a hard time because I busted out a Tide stain stick in the middle of dinner to clean a spot off of my shirt. Whatever! I'm proud of my stain stick. At the end of the dinner, the team presented us some very nice gifts. One was a crystal star candle, to signify the club's emblem. The other was a pair of Resteröds underwear, which is a really popular Swedish brand. Here I am modeling them. In return, we gave each of the girls a USA pin. After receiving such nice gifts, "T" and I felt kind of embarassed with our small tokens, but the girls were gracious and it was just a nice night in general.

Today, we went to the school for the last time and talked to the students. They were really sweet because they were sad to see us go and wanted us to come back. We learned about the Lucia holiday, where children dress up as different roles, such as maidens, Santas, gingercookie boys, boy attendants, and one (Saint) Lucia. They sing traditional songs for the elders and it's a nice little celebration. Yesterday's class sang one of the songs for us with their music teacher (as seen in the picture). It was very cute. We also received gifts from Maria, the English teacher that we helped out. She gave us a bottle of Glögg, which is a traditional non-alcoholic fruit and spiced flavor drink. You're supposed to serve it warm with finely chopped almonds and raisins. We're told it's usually drunk around Christmastime so we'll have to try it out when we get back to the States.

Our last practice was tonight. The girls have a game on Saturday but we won't be able to attend. It was hard saying goodbye because we've had such a great time here and have been treated so well. It's been a wonderful experience for both of us and we hope to see the girls again in the future.

Countdown until USA team comes to Sweden: 36 hours!

P.S. I (Jennie) used my stain stick again while writing this post because I dropped some food on my shirt. "T" is going nuts. You know what I think? I think she should stop hating and embrace the Tide stain stick.