The Grind

Many things have developed in the last two weeks. In our last home match against Holte, Dodi hurt her knee in the first set, which ended up being an ACL tear. She has a long road to recovery ahead of her and I wish her all the best. Unfortunately, this could not come at a worse time because we have the last round of regular season play coming up and we need to come out at least 4-4 to qualify for play-offs, 5-3 to get a sure spot.
Holger has made a few line-up changes to try and cover Dodi's former position. Simone, a very young player on the team, has taken over the second outside position where Stine used to be. Stine has been moved to Dodi's first outside position where she will have the chance to score a lot of points. I have been moved to right side, in order to create a sturdy block and score some more points in our out of system offense, and Vibeke, a very strong middle that recently came back from having a baby, is taking my old spot. I think these will be positive changes if we all work very hard to perform our new jobs. I am both excited and nervous to play a new position. I really enjoy playing all six rotations but having new responsibilities is quite a test of my discipline as well as my physical capabilities.
We start our expedition with this new line up this Saturday against Fredriksburg. We are 1-1with Fredriksburg and we play them at home. There are three teams that we "should beat" in this final round, and I consider Fredriksburg one of them. This weekend will be a huge test for us and I am excited to see how the girls respond to that test.
Six of our last eight matches are in February. Henceforth, February will be known as "the grind". We've got to concentrate and get through it and come out on the other side at least .500. Wish us luck, and stay tuned for the results :)

It's been a while

So, over a month has passed since my last entry, but to be honest not much has changed. We finished out the first half of the season with a couple bad losses, and I was out for a week with an achilles sprain in December. We are currently ranked third in the league, but I personally believe that with a little discipline and one or two upsets, we can end up in the top two when this is all said and done. December was rather boring for me, probably because I was just on autopilot for the last few weeks until I could go home for Christmas.

Christmas in the states was glorious. I ate Mexican food whenever possible, and home-cooked food when ever Mexican was not readily available. There is not Mexican food in Denmark, or none that tastes anything like Chipotle at least. I didn't even give myself a chance to get hungry at home--I'm not even kidding.

It was great to spend time with family and friends and I even made a few Danish holiday dishes for them to enjoy. My favorite part was making people try salte fisk, which are salty licorice candies that the Danes love for reasons beyond my comprehension. I think they are disgusting, and I took way too much pleasure in watching every American's face when they tried one for the first time. My grandpa actually liked them though, so I left the remaining fisks with him. 

I jetted over to Chicago to spend New Year's Eve with my long lost college teammates and I'm still recovering from the nights of excess that ensued. It's a good thing college only lasted four years because separately we are all reasonable ladies, but when put together we are a hilarious yet dangerous entourage of ridiculousness and any more time together would have killed me. 

So now I'm back in Copenhagen and I have a few things to look forward to. I start Danish classes next Monday so I will probably pick up enough Danish to get by just in time to go home. Additionally, I'm making a trip to Germany on our long weekend in late January and I look forward to doing some traveling. 

We play Vordingborg, the fourth place team, this Saturday in our new red jerseys. Wish me luck!