Champions!!!

My first Premier League game was Manchester United at Blackburn, and it was incredible. The atmosphere was ridiculous because Man U needed a point to clinch their record 19^th League title, and Blackburn needed a win to help them keep from getting relegated to a lower division at the end of the season. You know a game is going to be intense when your coach tells you, “we’re sitting with the Blackburn fans. That means don’t wear anything with too much red in it, and don’t openly cheer for Man U. The Blackburn and Man U fans will be separated by rows of police (which they were) so don’t say anything stupid.” Man U fans came out in storm, and the entire quarter of the stadium that held them began singing at kick off, and didn’t shut up until well after we left and Man U held the trophy after a 1-1 tie. I got Wayne Rooney’s goal on video, and it was even more amazing in person.

            I also got my first taste of legit British stadium food! I walked up to the concession stand and said to the guy, “I’ve never been here before, and I know I’m gonna sound like such an American right now, but what do you recommend that I get?” Without skipping a beat, everyone behind the counter said I needed a meat and potato pie! So that’s what I got, and they were right, it was delicious and I hereby declare that they should be sold at every sporting event in the U.S.! I’ll admit, I had to ask one of our British coaches how to eat it because I wasn’t sure if it was finger food or fork food (turns out you eat it like a hot dog). But it just added perfectly to whole English/Soccer environment.

            Finally, we got back to the cottages and it was my house’s turn to make dinner. Apparently, cooking a southwestern egg scramble for 20 people is a lot harder and more time consuming than it seems. I cooked up the sausages and eventually was in charge of cooking the actual eggs and mixing them together on the skillet. Even though it took forever and I ended up covered in egg yolk and grease, everyone said it was delicious and I thought it tasted pretty good myself! Cleaning it up took almost as long as making it, but all’s well that ends well. It gave me a new appreciation for my mommy! Haha Game day versus the Birmingham Women tomorrow. It’s going to be a hard battle but we’re up for it.

My name is Amy Swearer, and POTS stole my life. I'm taking it back (In England!).

When in London...

LONDON!!! After 3 hours in a car and another hour on “the tube,” Husker Soccer took over one of the most storied cities in the world! Peter, one of our coaches, grew up in London and took us on a tour of all the major landmarks in the city. We started at Westminster Abbey and went through the city, seeing Big Ben, the Parliament Building, the Prime Minister’s house, followed by Buckingham Palace (and yes, I took plenty of pictures of the balcony where Wills and Kate kissed), walked through St. James Park and along the River Thames, and ended up in Trafalgar Square, next to the National Gallery.

(Nerd Warning)

           Trafalgar Squarewas probably one of my favorite places; there’s a beautiful large fountain and a hundred foot tall monument dedicated to Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar. At the top of the monument, Lord Nelson stands tall facing towards France, eyes glaring and stance defiant, serving as a warning to the French. That's right you Frenchies...Don't mess with Texas! I mean England....

           
          I must admit, as a self proclaimed nerd, I was really excited about seeing the historical aspects of the city. I really wanted to head down to the Tower of London and take the tour with the Yeomen to see the crown jewels, walk across the tower bridge, see the tombs of the most famous kings and queens who ever lived inside of Westminster, and walk through Piccadilly and the West End. However, I was the only one of my teammates who thought any of those things would be neat, so I lost out on the vote. While I was disappointed, the shopping and walking we did left me with some very good memories and some really cool souvenirs. Though some of my teammates chose to eat at McDonald’s (Don’t ask. I have no idea why you would travel to another country to eat a burger you could get for half as much back in the U.S.) but I stopped at a café and got my first taste of real English fish and chips! It was absolutely delicious!

            We walked along the River Thames and watched some street performers, some of them very entertaining, like the Charlie Chaplin mime and the “statues” of Hamlet and Ophelia, and some of them, well, not so entertaining. We spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out what one of the guys was even doing. He had a pretty big crowd for someone who did a whole lot of talking about nothing, bad dancing, and telling people that he’s a “free man who don’t care if you don’t tip him – the worst that happens is he doesn’t get paid and he’s still alive.” Awesome. Then we rode the London Eye, and even though it was kind of expensive it was well worth it. For 30 minutes, I sat above the Thames and looked down into Whitehall Place and the buildings of Parliament. I traced the parade route that William and Kate took to Buckingham Palace, and admired the beauty of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the surrounding parks and buildings. It was breathtaking. It was such a perfect day and even though I spent a lot of money and was dead tired by the end, it was so worth it.

My name is Amy Swearer, and POTS stole my life. I'm taking it back (In England!).

Husker Soccer...GET SOME!!!

            Whew what a day! We were allowed to sleep in until 10 am, and then had a half-hour for breakfast together in our cottages. We drove into Nantwich, which is a town of about 12,000 people 6 of so miles away from Combermere Abbey. We drove into the town center, and walked around the streets for about an hour or so. It’s a very picturesque square, with a large church in the middle and an acre of open green space that serves as an unmarked cemetery (I thought it was much prettier before I found out that people were buried under the nice grass and flowers.) But the shops that closed in the narrow streets were all so quaint and charming, and the people were extremely friendly to us (partly because one of my teammates kept tossing one pound coins to the men playing instruments in the square, thinking they were only pennies. We finally had to tell her she tipped them over 8 dollars in U.S. money!). I took a lot of pictures, and most of them have flowers somewhere in them because the whole town was just full of flowerboxes that say "Nantwich in Bloom", coloring the day with bright reds, yellows, purples. It was a lot of fun to just look at things (partly because everything is so dang expensive! We passed a store that was selling a bottle of Hennessy Cognac for 1,450 pounds! Not that we would actually buy it, but it just blew our minds that it comes out to almost $3,000).

            Our teams has some really good cooks on it. We’ve been making our own dinners, or lunches if we have a game like today, so we rotate which cottage makes the daily meal. Today, the cottage in charge of meals made seasoned chicken breasts with green beans, carrots, garlic and butter potato wedges, and rolls. It. Was. Delicious. My cabin was assigned dinner tomorrow, and we were going to make a Southwest Omelet Scramble, but we changed plans and our going into London tomorrow! I’m so excited!

            Finally, we left at about 3:30 pm to drive to Coventry, England to play Coventry Women’s FC. After 2 hours, a few wrong turns, and arriving at the wrong field, we finally made it, which was good because we spanked them 8-0. They are an Upper Division team, which means that they are a step below the four teams we will play later, but an opening win is an opening win! I played the entire second half, a few mishaps here or there, but I’ll take a shutout any day. Playing them made me appreciate some things about the Nebraska Soccer program. First of all, we have such great facilities in Nebraska! Here we are playing an English Upper Division team, and we have a much softer and grassier field, better locker rooms, and more fans back home. Second, we have come a long way with level of on-field communication. We talked to each other so much more than the other team, that eventually we heard on of the girls shout, “I can’t handle their bloody talking!” and she wasn’t talking about our accents either!

            Random thoughts from the day…

-          Saw my first double decker bus! It’s so weird to see how tall and skinny it is. Come to think of it, all of the cars here are tall and skinny. I still can’t get over the whole driving on the left side thing. Also, I want to know whose genius idea it was to decide that every few miles, on major highways, they would put freaking TRAFFIC CIRCLES instead of exit ramps. We’ll be going 75 mph, and out of nowhere we’ll come upon cars at a dead stop waiting to go through the “roundabout.” Somebody needs to be fired for that idea! Haha

-          Met a lady whose mother lives in Kansas, so she saw our Nebraska shirts and stopped to talk to us. It’s a small world, apparently. But everyone seems to think it’s super cool that we’re here, which is fine with me because I think it’s super cool that we’re here!

-          WHY IS THE DOLLAR SO WORTHLESS?!

-          Day 3 in England = major success.

Reverie

Right now I’m sitting next an open window in the upstairs bedroom of our cottage. I wish you, whoever you are reading this, could be here with me. As I sit, a cool breeze blows in the fresh scent of the countryside and the sweet smell of blooming flowers, with just enough of the smokiness of burning firewood mixed in to dampen the crispness of the evening air. Countless birds sing their songs to the Maker of the heavens, and their melodies make their way across the gardens to my room. The sun is well on its way to setting, and the bright pink of its fading rays punctuates the darkening sky and the gray-blue patches of harmless clouds. I wait here in the stillness, in my wicker chair beside the window, and the Spirit whispers gently to me from the quiet wind. The LORD is good. The LORD is good. The LORD is good.

Random Thoughts From The Day

Well, let’s see…we’ve been unpacked for only a few hours and already we’ve fried all of our downstairs power outlets, destroyed two hair driers, and started one fire. I’d like to see what would happen if we actually tried to ruin things around here…

I just discovered that my cottage has a supersized bathtub. Guess who soaked in it for 25 minutes? Me.

You know what’s really fun? 19, 20, and 21 year old girls playing charades, and taking it seriously.

You know what else is fun? Trying to convert liters into gallons, kilometers into miles, and pounds into grams. Not really, that wasn’t fun at all.

It’s been decided that we should just carry a sign that says “From America.” It’s better than having to wait for them to hear our accents to understand why we have no idea what we’re doing…

My name is Amy Swearer, and POTS stole my life. I'm taking it back. (In England!).

If first impressions mean anything, I think I might never leave...

Amazing. Absolutely Amazing. That’s the only way I can describe the hours since my last post. Even though I’m exhausted, and it’s only 5 pm local time, this trip has already been well worth the pain of travelling in a large group. First of all, I watched the most amazing sunset out of the plane window, while eating a surprisingly good airline dinner, and listening to Chris Tomlin. That in itself constitutes a good day.Technically, the sunset never really went away – there was always a little sliver of light on the horizon, so it went from sunset to sunrise with no night in between. Then, because we basically went north out of Chicago, and then turned west when we hit the right latitude over Canada, I was able to see the most beautiful thing, and cross another line of off my bucket list. You see, I couldn’t sleep on the plane, no matter how hard I tried. So about half way through the flight, when everyone else was asleep, I looked out the window and saw a strange green glow in the almost completely dark sky. The Northern Lights were greeting me with the greatest show on earth. It was so stunning, so incredible, so unexpected, that I literally almost started crying. Just seeing the green and yellow weave and wind back and forth across the sky, interlacing to create a moving tapestry across the heavens, was mind blowing. And on top of it all, I made it through the whole trip without any migraines, any nausea, and a limited amount of dicomfort! That's a successful flight if I've ever had one....

And then we got off the plane, and my smile went away for a little bit. We all had massive kankles!!!! (omgsh no way that’s horrible sick disgusting….yeah yeah I know). Just kidding it really wasn’t that bad at all. Hours and hours of sitting down in low pressure airplane cabins means that blood and fluid pool in your legs (especially when you have POTS), so our ankles and knees were completely stiff and swollen. Good thing we still had an hour and a half car ride ahead of us! Luckily, between training and just being in a normal pressure environment brought our kankles down to normal size and I can rest easy tonight knowing that they won’t be there tomorrow.

            The one thing that I really can’t get over about England is that all the houses look like cottages straight out of a fairy tale. It’s crazy. I just want to take pictures of every single building I pass! Other than that, though, we’re pretty much out in the middle of nowhere about 6 miles outside of Nantwich – a quaint little village with shop lined cobblestone streets and more crazy drivers than New York City. Everything is so green, and actually, if it weren’t for the hedges that line the sides of the roads, the rolling fields filled with livestock and the relative lack of trees reminds me a lot of Nebraska…just prettier, better smelling, and with cottages instead of farm houses.

Driving in England is, well, an adventure unto itself. The Brits drive on the wrong side of the road, and I won’t lie, I’m pretty sure I almost wet myself when I looked out the right side of the car and saw vehicles barreling towards us…on what I thought was a one-way road nonetheless! Also, for about a 5 mile stretch in the middle of some country road, there were signs every quarter-mile saying “77 casualties in the last 3 years.” I felt really safe after that. It doesn’t help that we started out by getting a flat tire in our van, either. (Though, to be honest, it’s more like a car/van. We call it “a Can.” Gotta love these European cars).

            I know that soccer is soccer, but for some reason, playing soccer in England is just exponentially cooler than playing soccer anywhere else. It’s like how playing golf at Augusta makes you feel like Tiger Woods, makes you hear the roars at Amen Corner, makes you think you’re not some average Joe 29 handicap golfer. It’s something in the air. For crying out loud, flying into Manchester I counted 27 soccer fields, 3 tracks, tennis courts and possibly a single cricket field. No baseball. No football. No basketball. Just soccer. You can feel it when you step onto an English pitch for the first time – a depth and a majesty unknown in the U.S. are woven into the fabric of the very atmosphere around the field. You breathe in the soccer like oxygen. It’s ridiculous, but I felt like a better player just because I was playing in England.

            So right now I’m sitting in my own cottage with some of my teammates, completely exhausted from training, travelling, and switching through waaaaay too many time zones, but thinking that this trip is going to continue to be amazing! First game tomorrow!!! We had a guy on the flight to Manchester tell us we were going to get our @&%$# handed to us. I think it’s time to prove him wrong.

My name is Amy Swearer and POTS stole my life. I’m taking it back. (In England!).

It's Tea Time!

For the next two weeks, I'm gonna be blogging from England!!! Husker Soccer is taking the Brits by storm this summer - we're spending 14 days there, playing 6 games against their Women's Pro teams and watching EPL games (Manchester United, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Birmingham!!!) For those of you who don't know soccer, that's the equivalent of playing Triple A Teams and watching the Yankees, Phillies, RedSox, and Dodgers. It's EPIC. haha I won't have a phone, which means if you read my previous blogs you know how freaked out I am over that prospect for the next two weeks. But I think I can survive with email, facebook, and my blog. I'm not certain I'll come back completely sane, but I think I can muster survival (that's what happens when you watch enough Man vs. Wild). Anyway, I'm sitting in the Kansas City Airport waiting and waiting and waiting....and waiting.....and waiting (have you ever tried to get 25 people with about 60 bags through customs and security? It makes Disney World lines seem like immediate service). So until May 24th, I'm gonna be blogging about my adventure. I know...that really has nothing to do with POTS. But here's the thing - if I can get enough of a hold on this stupid thing to travel overseas and play soccer, then you can, too! Also, if I don't communicate with my mom for the next two weeks, I might as well never come homw because she'll kill me... *kissey face* @ mommy

My name is Amy Swearer, and POTS stole my life. I'm taking it back. (In England).