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RHIAN'S SOCCER JOURNALS:

FIRST AWAY GAME: VICTORY OVER LARVIK 17th September 2008

I played my first away game last night against Larvik. Their ground is about two hours South West from where we live in Oslo. I have to admit that I was not looking forward to the game, as the travel involved a drive through remote farmland, deserted woods and then through massive quarries to reach the city.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the little town that greeted us when we arrived. "Cute" - not one of my favorite words - is unfortunately the only one that comes to mind. However, I am not all that up to speed on Norwegian geography, and I soon realized my error as we sped through the little town, passed over a hill, and arrived at the massive, ugly city of Larvik.

No matter what the city looks like though, the soccer field was great. I enjoyed being back to playing on grass. Strommen's home field is not only on field turf, but the team also play indoors in a covered stadium. In such a setting, it is surprising how quickly one forgets that the weather is an important part of the game of soccer. Luckily for us on this occasion, the weather was not too bad. My only criticism might be that the sun was a little bright... yes I can be that picky.

We won the game 5-1 and I thought we played really well. Even though Larvik is at the bottom of the Topserrien league, this rarely means a team is going to play at its best. Everyone knows that some of the ugliest games often come when you play a weaker team and are dragged down to their level of play. On this occasion though, I was pleased to find this was not the case.

We had a good first half and scored one goal from our midfield Nasra on a great run though. Then, in the second half we lit it up the match, scoring four more goals, two from Ella, the ex Whitecap, one from Eli, and one from Katrina (a 15 year old phenom... the Norwegian Kara Lang?)

Even though we did concede one goal in the first half, which obviously thoroughly annoyed our excellent goalie Ingrid, the game was a good one for us on the whole. I enjoyed being a part of it.

On the Norwegian home front, D and I have been keeping busy. I am not exactly sure where all the time goes, but the days definitely fly by. For example the other day we went apple picking. This was not an official team activity. It was just that my friend Linn said we were welcome to pick some apples from the trees in her backyard. This sounded like fun, so we set off to secure some fruit.

It will quickly become apparent that we did not put too much thought into preparing for this activity. When we arrived, we found most of the apples were out of my reach, and ALL of them were outside D's reach. Thank goodness I found a rake nearby or we might have come back from the expedition completely empty-handed. As it was, we gathered a respectable haul at least. A few of the apples were a little the worse for wear, mostly because D can't catch and they took a tumble after I whacked them with my rake ........ no comments please. These bruised apples quickly became the most delicious applesauce I have ever made or eaten!