Bruised, beaten, but amplified

It's been a while since my last update, but I'll try to keep everything short and sweet.
We had our Spring concert, which was a blast to be a part of. The students preforming ranged from a 3rd classmen doing his guitar rendention of Justin Timberlakes 'LoveStoned', to an EXTREMELY talented pianist preforming some sonata that I couldn't begin to spell if I tried. Yet before my class could perform our cover of "Starlight" by Muse, it was discovered that my triangle could not be heard well enough. This, in my mind, was the best news I had ever heard - all my fears of being the stupid American who screwed up while playing the triangle disappeared. To my disappointment, however, they had a solution. I got a microphone. My own damned microphone. For a triangle. Which was to be hit 3 times in the entire song. All my fears rushed back threefold. Luckily, I managed to stumble my way through the song and get offstage without completely ruining the concert. How I managed to do that is still a mystery to me.

I guess the only other real news I've got goin' right now is the recent Easter Tournament BFH recently participated in. That and the giant ice cream cone I ate yesterday, but we'll do handball first.

The Thursday before Easter weekend, every team from BFH packed up into 3 huge busses and drove to Aabybro, in Northen Denmark, to participate in Aabybro's 25th anniversary Easter tournament. Bus #1 and Bus #3 made it to Aabybro on time as expected, but Bus #3 (hosting my team, the U18 boys, and the U14 boys) made it about 20 km before the bus began to fill up with smoke. The INSIDE of the bus began to fill up with smoke, because the engine had begun to catch fire. Luckily, no one was hurt and everyone got off the bus with their bags and belongings and switched over to another bus within the hour. The only casualty seemed to be the clothes of one of the U18 boys who continually griped about how bad his stuff smelled for the rest of the weekend. After our little bus adventure, we got to Pandrup School, where each team got their own room to set up air mattresses in and use for the rare moments where we WEREN'T playing handball. It was a great little set up, we shared the school with maybe 2 smaller clubs, it was a gave our team the chance to bond and meet others from the club. I taught some people from BFH how to play the cardgame "BS" (think "How to lose a guy in 10 days") and I'm not sure I've ever laughed so hard in my life, or lost so badly in a card game. It was a great tournament for BFH, with each age level playing in the final. The U16 team I played with did great, cruising through Friday with 3 wins, and battling for 3 wins on Saturday. However, something was off and after the great day we had Saturday, we just weren't able to pull it off in the Championship. 2nd place was just as sweet, though, for my first 'real' handball tournament! BFH also took home the biggest trophy of the tournament for being the winningest club of the weekend, and I got a new Hummel training set for helping U16 earn 2nd place. I have to say, that even though we didn't take home the gold, it was hard to frown - we put every ounce of everything we had into the games we played on Saturday, and after being behind in each one (once by 5) we pulled out victories each time. That is why I love being an athlete- those times when you can barely stand because you're so tired, but you know it was worth it when you see the smiles on the faces of your team mates. I really want to thank all the girls from my team (and the coaches!) for a FANTASTIC weekend. It's not always easy playing an obscure sport 5,500 miles away from home, but they are the ones who keep me happy, smiling, laughing, and most of all - motivated.

On a quick little side note, my host family took Stine (my host sister) and I out to ice cream on Monday to celebrate the excellent result. We went to Grønvangs Grill in Randers for Grønvangs special ice - a concotion of waffle cone, 3 heaping scoops of ice cream, a large amount of soft-serve ice cream, and marshmallow fluff (a Danish ice cream tradition called Guf) adding up to what I'd guess is roughly 3 lbs. I barely managed to stomach 3/4 of mine, while my little host siste, Irene, who is roughly half my size, polished hers off... I'm sorry, America.