Only in Sweden?

How Much Is Your Dollar Worth?

$1 = 8.3554 SEK
Here's a picture from the 86'ers team Superbowl party last night at O'Leary's (a Boston themed sports bar) here in Uppsala.  We had a good time outside of the Stealers taking home another title. HELVETE!!!

It is definitely a different experience watching the game in another country.  For one thing, no commercials.  Every commercial break here was spent listening to three very boring Swedish commentators in the studio show, one of whom is the OL/DL coach of the Stockholm Mean Machine of the Superseries (the highest league here and what we aspire to be) and happened to play here back in the day with some of our coaches as well as another team called the "Pink Chargers" who happened to wear pink uniforms with the lightning bolts on the helmets.  Quite ridiculous to be sure, but well ahead of the trend for NFL team apparel for women.

Also the game didn't kick-off until after midnight so we celebrate Superbowl Monday here.  I got home around 4:30 in the am.  But at least the game was entertaining.

Check out the Conan O'Brien bud light "Only in Sweden" commercial (even if they didn't actually show it in Sweden).  Jätterolig!

In other news...

Sadly our time in Sweden is about at an end.  One of the reasons we were in the US so long over the holidays is that Ragen was going to a job interview in St. Joe, Missouri.  She was offered the job and we decided to take it.  It is a great opportunity for her because she will still work with dogs and cats and will still have the chance for international travel given that her new company has operations around the world. The pay is good and the cost of living is much lower than it is here in Europe.  Also, my chances of finding work increase significantly when I can speak the same language as everyone else, so I got that going for me...  

It was a tough decision. The people have been great, and I have loved being around football all the time again.  It's been difficult for us to tell people because we feel like we'll let them down but everyone understands we have to do what's best for us.  I know I'm surprised at how some of my players have reacted, especially some younger guys that just moved up from the U17 team and that I've only been around for a couple practices with.  I don't know, it's nice to know you've had an impact on someone's life, even briefly.  It's enough that I'm thinking maybe I should get into teaching and coaching when we get back.  Something I've never thought about before but it seems like if I can have an impact with young men who speak English as a second language than I might be kind of good at it.  Crazy.

It would have been one thing if everyone here had been mean to us but that's not the case. Things have not been exactly smooth for us in the year we've been here, but that's part of the adventure.  We wouldn't change that for anything. We did just get into a nice apartment so it will kind of suck to have to leave it so soon, but we should be able to buy a house in St. Joe within a couple months which is really exciting.  Kind of grown-up like for sure.  And hey, St. Joe is kind of cool, in a Lewiston, Idaho kind of way (there's even a Lewis and Clark state park in the area).  

We'll put some info up about it as we go.  I suppose we should keep the blog going and all. We'll head that way the first week of March so if anyone wanted to come visit, you got four weeks to get here.

So pour some out on the sidewalk for our time here and we'll see you soon.