Hi everyone!
What types of questions do you ask yourself during the day? Perhaps questions like, “what should I make for dinner?” or “I wonder if there’s anything good on T.V tonight?” Pretty normal, everyday types of questions if you ask me. The question, however, that I have been asking myself this past week has been “When is the sawing and hammering going to STOP?! And more importantly, when are those Italian men going to STOP singing?!!” If I didn’t mention this before, I will mention it now. The building that I live in is more or less a factory with a couple apartments in it. The only other person besides Keisha and I that lives here is a man named, Luchano, and he works in the factory downstairs. So, there seems to be a constant stream of construction going on and it usually starts before 8am!
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| Top left window is my bedroom. Picture big, noisy army trucks coming in and out of this garage... |
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| My bedroom. |
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| The living room. |
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| And the kitchen. |
Yesterday we had our first conference road game. We played in the French side of Switzerland in Fribourg. The whole team, president, vp, coach, two assistants, two moms and two dads all piled into the bus. The bus we took was pretty nice and it had a large, flat screen TV. The drive to Fribourg was GORGEOUS! Right next to the bus the cliffs were reaching up towards the sky and waterfalls were flowing down the mountain sides like white ribbon on Christmas presents. Now that Fall is upon us, the trees are changing colors and the mountains are taking on yellow and red hues. The houses were built right into the mountain side and the cows were grazing freely on the greenest grass I have ever seen. I am really not exaggerating. To me, the grass looked absolutely perfect. Gazing at the hillsides I thought of an incredibly soft, furry, green, thick blanket that was spread out over the earth. The little towns that we drove through were wonderfully quaint with their old brick houses, intricate little designs on the windows and people sitting outside enjoying the sunshine while drinking coffee and talking with friends. We saw a dozen churches and drove through numerous tunnels. The longest tunnel we drove through was 17 km! It is called the Gottardo Tunnel and it is the only tunnel that leads from the East to the West so there is constantly a lot of traffic. The mountains surrounding us were 4,000m, not all of them had snow caps, most of them were covered with lush vegetation, but the mountains in the distance looked very majestic and were covered in snow.
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| A view of a lake and some mountains as I was looking out from the bus window. |
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| As the mountains change... |
Now, before EVERY game that I play I always take a nap, but this time I was experiencing this internal battle in my mind because if I let myself fall asleep I just knew that I was going to be missing out on seeing this amazingly beautiful landscape! Well, I did finally force myself to fall asleep, which I was glad that I did because it was about to be a long, hard game.
The team we played only had one American, some of you might remember her from Michigan State...Myisha Bannister. She played the post, but really did not play much at all. They had a few really good players and it proved to be another physical game. The refs did a fairly good job calling the game, but they were the most impersonal refs I have ever seen and it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that I couldn’t communicate with them. They were just very distant, stubborn and I got the impression that they were very stuck up. Not once did they ever go get the ball when it went out of bounds. I must have chased down 50 balls last night and returned them to the ref and not once did they ever say thank you! I don’t want to bash the French but from what I’ve heard they are capable of acting in a very pompous manner. They also called 3 seconds in the lane on me at least 3 times and I swear they were just watching me and jumping at the bit to call it. Not to mention that their traveling calls are really starting to get on my nerves, for some reason they think that an up and under with a step through is a travel and furthermore, they are not open to discussion.
I was just relieved when the game was finally over and we could drive home happy. We watched three movies on the bus, Evan Almighty, Because I said So and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Evan Almighty we watched in Italian with English subtitles, the opposite with the next movie and MBFGW we watched in italian with no subtitles. I am able to understand more and more of the language every day.
Today we went and watched two men’s teams play. For those of you who know Mitch Henke, we watched his Santa Clara point guard, Brody Angley, lead his team to victory. The fans at these games are constantly using their blow horns, even in the middle of free throws. The other night I was sure that there was a dog in our gym and it turns out that this man was just really good at barking.
On a different note, the food this past week was pretty interesting. I ate onion soup for the first time, and it was definitely nothing like French Onion soup. Along with the soup they served us hotdogs, but without the bun. They gave each of us 1 and a half hotdogs, cut the long way. I just had to laugh because what in the world were they doing with the other half of the 2nd hotdog?! I also had the most delicious chocolate covered piece of fruit! I have no idea what the fruit was, but it was orange and looked like there were a lot of seeds in it and it still had the leaves coming out the top. I asked the lady what it was but unfortunately I was unable to understand what she was saying.
Alright, I hope everyone is having a great weekend and keep those updates coming!;)
Love, Leslie
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