On Monday, I went on a radio tour of one of the stations here in Turku. There is a separate journal that has that entry.
On Monday night after practice, I headed up to Coach Haula's house to spend a few days up in Pori. This was so I could see another city in Finland and get to play a little golf. He has a son named Erik, who I hung out with most of the time. If we weren't playing golf, eating, or sleeping, we were probably playing Tiger Woods 2004 on Playstation.
On Tuesday, we went out to the course around 10:30 or so and were already 5 minutes late for our tee time. So I teed it up and smoked one down the middle. The rest of the round was a little shaky cause I hadn't played in a while. What clubs was I using? I thought you'd never ask. I used one of Coach's friends clubs they were really nice: Callaway woods, Cleveland irons, and a Oddessy two ball putter that I can't stand. I wasn't really striking the ball that great and we didn't keep score. After the first round Coach had to leave so me and Erik (age 13) hopped on the course again at number 6 with JP (one of our CBs). Erik and I ended up playing 31 holes that day.
The course was harder than I expected it to be. There were some long holes with small greens. Two holes had 90 degree doglegs in them, which made it pretty difficult. There are not that many hills in Finland so in order to make the courses harder they put out of bounds and hazards everywhere. The course name is Kalafornia and I thought that was kinda funny.
On Wednesday, I woke up at 7:30 am, which made it the earliest I have been up since being in Finland. I went with coach to work out. I lifted weights and he played badminton. I guess badminton is pretty popular over here. The gym was a sports center, in which it had weight lifting, badminton courts, aerobics, and some roller hockey rinks. Again, hockey is the most popular sport over here, so there is more hockey stuff than any sport.
Later on Wednesday, I played 18 holes with Erik and one of our defensive lineman Jari. This time I did keep score and I bogeyed the last hole to shoot 80. I was hitting the ball better and getting used to the clubs I was borrowing. It was good to get out and play some golf again.
We were supposed to catch the last few innings of a Finnish baseball game, which is different than in the States, but our round took way too long. We were waiting on every tee so we didn't get to go.
I did get to eat some really good Finnish food on the trip though. Coach Haula made all the food and it was really good. He made some "new" potatoes, which are smaller than normal potatoes but are really good. Since Finland only has one harvest a year, the potatoes that come out are really good. I also had some good homemade pasta and Finnish sausage. Coach was an awesome cook and he made as much as I wanted, so that was my first really good homemade meals I've had since I've been here.
On Thursday, I went and lifted really early in the morning again and then just went back and hung with Erik playing some Tiger Woods. Then we had practice again on Thursday and I stayed in Turku. Megan and Scott said they had some fun while I was gone. They saw Spiderman 2, which they said was really good, and went shopping a lot.
On Friday, we lifted and walked through some stores. Then we ate some kebabs. On every Friday, Scott and I walk down to City Kebab to have our pregame meal. Then we squeezed a win out at Provoo on Saturday.
On Sunday, it was Megan's last day here so Scott and Megan went down to the river and ate on some of the boats and walked around the city again. I went with Thomas to another festival, this one was named Ruisrock and was in Turku on one of its islands. They had some of the same bands that were at Rauma that i wanted to see again. I got real close to see Eggotrippi and they had the best performance. We also saw Apulanta and a few songs from Don Johnson Big Band. It was pretty good, but not as good as Rauma.
Since my package from home with my golf clubs and adapter don't seem to be coming anytime soon, I'm going to try to get my digital pictures on Thomas' laptop that just got fixed. He will be out of town till Thursday, so maybe I can have some more pictures by the end of the week.
I got another story to go on the Random Story page, so I'll do that tomorrow. Scott and I are still sore from the game and I'm going to sleep now.
I hope everyone is doing well...