...the token (fill in the blank)

(American).

"Why, Cat? Whyyy?" begged my Swedish teammate, Ansko. Playful, but sincere expressions gazed at me patiently, waiting to be blessed with my answer that would solve one of life's most challenging questions,  why do American footballers insist on wearing their shorts too short and their ponytails too high?

ehh...High Fashion?

Other than avid Tosh.O fans, no one appreciates that answer, including my Swedish, Nigerian, and Finnish teammates. According to them, they can pick out any random girl on any given team and identify her as American or not. Are we really that obvious? Apparently so to the rest of the world. Though I am not the only token American on the team, I had to laugh at their confidence because, as timing would have it, I was simultaneously whining about the shorts being so baggy, while elevating my pony tail to the peak of my head. (Seriously. It really happened that way.) Well, feck. How am I supposed to refute allegations that I unknowingly already proved true? Innocent until proven guilty means case closed for me. I'm guilty, your honor.

Besides the snow replacing the sand, Finnish replacing English, scarves replacing bikinis, and domed turf replacing photosynthesized grass, life in Finland isn't so different from what I know in California. And honestly, most of my biggest speed bumps to adjusting come from old Uncle Sam being off his rocker. Or maybe pesky Sammy is striving to make things a bit tougher in hopes that it will increase our population's average IQ scores? Making us smarter than Japan and therefore enabling our women's national team to stinking beat them. The ballot is out.

Here is a list of what I have gathered so far that America does differently than the world:

1. Short shorts, high hair, no heels on planes. (I'm still not over that, sorry for partying in comfort.) The girls ardently argued with me tonight at practice that longer shorts where the crotch is practically hanging below my knees are better to play in. Never. I feel restricted, uncomfortable, slighty claustrophobic, and somewhat paranoid that my shorts are going to rip down the seam. And if your pants rip down the seam, you want to cry from embarrassment. If you cry from embarrassment, you run off the field, slip on ice,  get an eye patch and wake up in a ditch. Don't wake up in a ditch. Get shorter shorts, Finland.

2. Feet, yards, miles. No to meters? You sure? Okay, great. We'll be the only country to be constantly dazed and confused whenever we travel anywhere outside our borders. Yesterday at practice we had to run 50 meters and then 30 meters, which according to my calculations is precisely 54.68 yards and 32.8 yards. I just did that off the top of my head, no big deal.  They may as well have been speaking another language! Oh yeah, that happened too. Needless to say, cones were vital.

3. More measuring moments: inches and pounds. We had to fill out a sheet with our basic information like height, weight, blah blah blah, today for our weight coach. Without hesitation I wrote 5'7'', and let's just throw one out there, ummm....115. Whoa, how'd that get so low? It must be this anti-Atkins diet I'm on out here, weird. Anyway, curious as to what I was writing for my birthday (30/12/87, according to Finns. I did that all wrong, too), another teammate of mine started laughing. Out loud. Then generously pointed to my height (thank you!) and said that my answer means nothing to her. Perplexed, I looked at her like she had lost her dang mind. Then, a-ha, I'm not in Kansas anymore, it's centimeters. And 115, or whatever, is dangerously obese for a 70 cm. girl. Jokes were made, ha ha ha, all in fun of course. And thanks to our desire to be so hipster and "different," I'm the dumb American. Again.

That's all I have so far, but those are biggies and I have only been here 4 days. It's not all that bad really. It's kind of fun to be the token. I'm never the token anything! I'm usually middle of the pack, average Joe, nothing but mostly normal on my teams. (Except for maybe Boston. I was the token foreigner there, too. I said gnarly and wore sunglasses all the time; and generally operated on what my coach deemed "California time," which I am slowly beginning to accept as Cat Time more than California. Too many people in my life are well aware that I move at my own pace and I don't want to drag the whole state's reputation down with me due to my lack of punctuality. Let me continue on my tangent...)

We're done here. It's bedtime--no naps today, hot sauna after a hard practice, and a drop of Melatonin. Sounds like a recipe for success. Wish me luck!

Good night and thanks for your support,
Cat