Why I'm Here

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Food - How do you stack up with the rest of the world

My friend in Serbia sent me an interesting e-mail about how the world eats and what they spend. I found the original TIME article but I like this blog better because it is attached to a map (this is mainly because of my ignorance for a couple of the places that it mentions). So, how do you stack up? How do the Davis' stack up? Lately, we've done pretty darn well not eating out. Jake and I had to grab hamburgers last night at McDonald's since we had a late night at hockey practice. We had yummy steaks, potatoes, and salad on Sunday. On Monday we had a crockpot roast, potatoes, and carrots. I took out Brats to grill for tonight. Too much meat, I agree. We do go through lots of fresh fruit. We usually eat a bag of apples, a bunch of bananas, a carton of grapes, a carton of strawberries, a couple of cartons of pineapples each week. For breakfast the kids usually eat eggs, hot cereal, or pancakes. I usually have cold cereal, yogurt, and juice. Most days I try and have leftovers for lunch. Like today, I brought leftover quiche, and a couple of hamburger patties from last week. So, to put a dollar figure I would say that the Davis' spend about $150-200/week on food (a bit more than the folks in Breidjing Camp.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

From the Gridiron to the Court of Honor

Yes, life at the Davis home (as well as most other homes with lots of kids) things are always crazy. After playing in his final football game of the season (by the way it was butt cold and rainy) we hurried over to the church for Jake's Court of Honor. No time to change, just show up in your football gear. Good job, Jake. He was awarded his Star along with a bunch of merit badges that he earned this summer. He's still trying to beat his older brother in getting his Eagle. He's on his way. He should get his Life in a few more months and could get his Eagle this summer. You better hurry up, JJ!

JJ - The Cross Country Man

JJ did cross country this year for Lone Peak. Each week he continued to get better and better. This was a picture that I took right after the finish of the race at Region. He along with three of his other buddies. Way to go, JJ! I believe his finish at this race was a PR of 18:35. Faster than I could ever do that is for sure. If I could ever run under 20 these days that would be a miracle. JJ has two more years and could easily be one of the better runners in the state if he keeps working hard.

First snow of 2007

Bring it on. The FFT (freakin' frozen tundra) is back to Highland. Luckily, the snow quickly melted but we won't see any warm days for another several months. Darn!

My 2 favorite grandmas

Even though it's been a month since I was in Denmark, I need to post this picture of Solbritt and Jenny. You would think that these two ladies stay at home knitting sweaters and baking cookies. They are so darn sweet. Nope. They are professors at the University of Copenhagen. Pretty bright ladies and VERY nice and fun to work with. I hope I get the opportunity to go back and work with them in the future.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Outside the Scandinavium

The Davis Cup

Okay, last post for the night. After our orienteering adventures, Par and I went to the Davis Cup. The semi-finals were held here this weekend in Göteborg. They hold it indoors at the Scandinavium. We had pretty good seats and we watched Andy Roddick trounce Jonas Bjorkman in 3 straight sets. After which James Blake quickly dismissed Simon Aspelin. What a fun day today. Now I can say that I've seen an international tennis event. The US will face Russia back in the states in a couple of months.

My first orienteering map

The #1 American finisher

I forgot to mention that I was the top American finisher in today's race. Okay, I was the ONLY American racer today. You should have been there. I would have kicked your butt!

Look! Here's where I got lost

I'm showing Par after the race where I went and where I got lost. Lots of fun

Orienteering finish area

This was quite early when people first started showing up and getting ready. Notice the many club flags flying.

Finish line

Orienteering control point

Orienteering

Do you have ANY idea what this is? I got up early AGAIN to go with the Sander family to Hjortsöndan. Orienteering is an extremely popular outdoor activity here in Sweden. Basically, here is the jest of the sport. You go out to the forest with several hundred of your closest friends and family. You are given a VERY detailed map, a compass, and a plastic fingerstick sometimes called a dibbler. The object is to race around in the forest looking for these control points. You must go in a specific order (listed on your map) and once you find it put your dibbler in to indicate that you have found the spot. Today since it was my first time they suggested that enter the Ö2. Basically, I'd be racing small girls and old ladies. No problem. A couple of things you should know. They are pretty careful about pollution so the potties are behind a big tarp and a number of 5 gallon buckets are lined up. Pretty funny site seeing a bunch of Swedes sitting on buckets. The showers were even more interesting. The last think is that you are not allowed to race in shorts. Apparently, back several years ago, people were getting really cut up and so after the race when everyone would jump into that lake or shower, there were major outbreaks of Hepatitis. Great! So Par brought me these nice running tights. I was running a race with 8 control points covering a distance of I think around 3000 meters. I was going to try for the brute force approach. Not that great of an idea. At first, I tried keeping my running shoes (my good pair) somewhat clean but that went out the window after about 30 seconds. You are running in mud, swamp, through thick brush, you name it. It was actually quite fun. The Swedes, however, are VERY into this sport. Some events attract 15,000+ people (competing, not watching). My time? 44:32. Originally, I thought I finished 5th but ended up 8th in my category. A good time would have been around 30 minutes or lower. The best guy there, Christian, is one of the folks that I'll be working with tomorrow. He's a younger guy and he is currently ranked 30th or something in the world. He's pretty fast. I looked tonight and found the Utah Orienteering site. Not too popular but I bet JJ would love to try this. Believe me, it is much more difficult than it seems. You can't just start running through the woods. The control points are tricky to find sometimes, and you really need to know how to read a map properly. When I get home, I'll scan my map and post it here. I also found more info on Wikipedia of course. Afterwards, I was quite muddy. My shoes were WAY muddy. Time for a shower. So basically, imagine a big open field, with a big huge tarp on the perimeter with hundreds of boys and men (ages 8 ot 80) all naked and showering with these hoses. It was a bit chilly but try to imagine with crappy snowy cold weather. Thankfully, it wasn't that today. It was actually a pretty nice day. We had some sandwiches afterwards and some fruit. It was really quite the experience.