Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Good Morning from Oviedo!

Napolitano de Chocolate

I just had some coffee and a napolitano de chocolate, which is my favorite pastry here. It is probably one of the most unhealthy though too =/ Basically it is a croissant filled with chocolate, and when they are fresh and warm they are delicious! Meredith, my roommate from college who lived in Salamanca, Spain for three months on exchange, also loved these. By the time she told me to try one, I had already been hooked! Unfortunately I have not been able to find a coffee shop that serves like lattes with flavors or anything. They only have regular coffee, coffee with milk, or I think there are cappuccinos too. Clearly, there was no Thanksgiving here, but a few of my teammates had heard of it and wished me a Happy Thanksgiving. I didn't even eat pavo(turkey) on this past Thursday, but I was able to Skype with my family before they feasted! If I had a kitchen in my place, I would have cooked, but I don't :(On another note I had two games with my kids since I last blogged. One on Friday night and one yesterday morning. On Friday night we lost by 43 points. Not good! We were able to bounce back and win on Saturday morning so our overall record is 2-2 and we are ranked  third in our league of twelve teams.

The Friday night game was played outside and I am pretty sure it was about 32 degrees because I could see my breathe! I felt so bad for my kids, but then again they were probably warmer than me because they were running around! It was a pretty dramatic game on Friday, with the parents screaming at the ref, and even coming down onto the court. I was pretty angry with the ref as well ,but then I just started to feel bad. It was his fist basketball game he had ever reffed, and that was clear. Actually, I think that was the first basketball game he had ever seen. On top of the that the person running the score book was a 10 year old boy so he was making fouls for the wrong person, and giving points the wrong team. All the mom's were standing behind our bench and comforting the girls who were freezing and angry about the game, while all the dad's were angry and yelling. The mom's just kept telling me I was doing a great job and to just worry about coaching, meanwhile a few would come tap me on the shoulder and show me what the real score was, because they were keeping track on their own pad of paper haha! So far, no problem parents yet, in fact, they are all very nice. Yesterday we had a big team meal at Tina's apartment. Saturday's and Tuesdays we never have practice, even if we have a game the next day. One type of typical food here is tortillas. Before

Tortilla de patata

Spain, I had always thought of tortilla's like the flour ones that you use to eat tacos, or buritos. Here tortillas are eggs and potates all cooked together to make a big queesh like pie. I am sure that you can put other ingredients in the tortilla like ham or veggies, but just eggs and potatoes I believe is the most common. Today we will leave at 1:30 to head to Vallolidad where we have a game at 6pm. I am still not practice or playing yet, continuing to let my knee heal. If we win today we will be 8-0! Tomorrow is a HUGE game in Spain where Real Madrid will take on FC Barcelona in one of the biggest soccer games of the year! I will be going for Real Madrid :) It had started to get very cold here, and I can now see snow on the mountains that are behind the city. Looks like it's time for me to be on a beach, in 22 days! :)

Some Pics of the City

I realized yesterday that I have not taken too many pictures of the city so I walked to class and snapped some photos along the way. This is on my way to class, and is an area is where a lot of the shopping is, and as you can see there is a big statue of a culo in the middle :) If you click on any of these pictures it will allow you to see them bigger.

This is a statue called "La Gorda" which means the fat lady basically. A lot of times this is used a meeting place with people. For example we will meet at La Gorda at 10 tonight! It is close to the Cathedral and the center of town.

This picture is taken also on my walk to class, as you can see there are a lot of little mopeds or motorcycles or whatever you want to call them. Also the city plants trees and plants like these along every single road! They maintain them well so it always looks pretty. I have seen the city workers hand painting the gold on the flower pots like the one on the right side of the picture, and there are hundreds of those around the city!

 Walking to class takes me about 20 minutes, along the way I pass this Theater. I am not sure what goes on here, but I would like to find out!

This right at the beginning of Uria, which is the street with all the shopping. The weather has been pretty overcast here, and I guess it is suppose to snow in the next couple of days!

Still Undefeated :) 7-0!

Rainy Sunday here for our day off! Yesterday we won 81-24 vs. a team from Lugo. Tina Cabrera, Marta Fernandez, and I all did not play due to injuries. This was our first "home" game that we did not play at home due to it being under construction. Instead we played in San Claudio which is a small town right outside of Oviedo. Pato, the oldest on our team, had 5 three pointers in the game, I think all in the second half! We always give each other a hard time about who is the shooter on the team, so after this, I said she forever has the title as the shooter! The crowd and the whole team was loving it! After each game here, for all teams, the norm is to applaud the fans, something that I don't think is done in the United States. The video above is just a quick one showing that, after our game last night. On another note, I got my first win as a head coach on Saturday morning! My kids team won by 13! The game was actually played outside, on pavement! It has been getting pretty cold out here so I was surprised when I realized we were play going to outside. The past week, the gym that we were practicing in was freezing! The receptionist at the desk gave the injured ones a little heater that we were huddled up next to for our practice! As you can see, that is what I am holding. Based on one of the doctors I have been seeing, and my physical therapist, I was not allowed to do anything this week. No elliptical, no jog, no shoot, no practice! So I have not done anything since the game last Saturday in Leon. My knee is still a little swollen, but I have been icing daily and going to physical therapy for about 2 hours a day. It will get better soon! Next Wednesday I should start doing the elliptical again I believe. Today I am relaxing and resting all day, and the later tonight, going with some of my team to see Feve Oviedo play which is the men's team here. Our assistant coach is actually the assistant coach of this team as well. Usually we both play on Saturdays so he doesn't come to a lot of our games, but this weekend it worked out so he could come to our game, and we can go to theirs!

My 1st highlight tape for those who never saw this!

Got a W in Leon!!

Yesterday was a big day for me! It was my kids first game at 9:30am, and my first game as a head coach. We ended up losing 41-38! My team played so good though. The other team had this little girl who was tiny, and she scored 18 points and stole the ball from my girls like 15 times! She was a problem, that is a lot for an 11 year old! Here, there are six, 8 minute quarters, and you are not allowed to sub during the quarters. I suppose it is a good system, but I have 14 girls on my team and another rule is that only 12 can play! I have to choose 2 girls who won't play each game :(. Anyways about 4 of my girls were crying after the game, they were really angry at the one referee we had. They all had scratches up and down their arms, and were angry that there weren't more "faltas" called. In my Spanglish I explained that we can't blame loses on the refs, and it was only our first game so we needed to stay positive! We will play again next Saturday. The picture to the left is some of my kids at practice in the gym that we practice and play our home games in. It is really one big court where Feve Oviedo plays(the men's team in the Silver Division) but they can divide it into 3 horizontal courts. After my kids game I had a few hours to relax and have lunch, then my team left for Leon at 2pm. Before we left the boss guy of our team was waiting at the bus with some medicine for me. It was some type of a dissoluble tablet for pain. Not quite sure what it was, but he told me to go down the street to the bar to take it. When I got there, there was a bottle of water and a glass waiting for me haha. Anyways, it was about an hour and a half drive, and we played our game at 5pm. This was the first game that we received a scouting report for. I guess we only get those for the good games. This was definitely the best team we have played yet, but we ended up winning 63-49. We are now 6-0 :) Unfortunately one of our starting guards, Tina, injured her calf in the 1st 20 seconds of the game. We are all hoping that she didn't tear anything, and that she will recover quickly!On another note, our home gym that we practice and play in was shut down last week for renovations. The picture to the right is a picture taken from the stands of the old gym. Almost every gym in Spain that I have seen is like this. The stands or bleachers are raised up over the court, and are only on one side. There is a separate entrance to the stands from the gym. We are now practicing in a gym in San Claudia which is a small town like 15 minutes away. We will be playing the rest of our home games there until Christmas, which is only two home games. I recently bought my plane ticket to Mexico so I will be spending Christmas with my family and my aunts family in Puerto Escondido! I can't wait :) Today is our day off so I will just be relaxing all day and resting my knee which is a little sore from the game yesterday!

Rainy Days

It has been pouring here since the last time I blogged, and I mean POURING! I bought a black and white polka dot umbrella the other day from an Ikea store, and so far it has only turned inside out once! Haha, it gets pretty windy here too. I live on the highest floor, and it gets loud at night with all the rain and wind! As I mentioned before, a bunch of us got together for our teammates 35th birthday on Sunday afternoon. She had no idea that we were all going to be there so she was successfully surprised. We all went out to eat and for drinks in a town called Palo(I think that is what it was called) which was about 20 minutes outside of Oviedo. While walking around we came across a nice Ferrari:) I would like to drive one of these someday!

A few of my teammates found out about this blog and read some of it. One of them, Lara was mad that she was not mentioned in it! Well, it is true that I should have mentioned her, and actually I thought I already had! Lara speaks the most English on the team and she has really been helping me learn Spanish, and I have been trying to help her learn English as well. She is studying to be a teacher, and it is a lot easier to get a job(and they get paid more) if they can speak both. 

The other day I ran out of contact solution and I had been looking for some in pharmacies and grocery stores but I could never find any! Finally, at an eye glass shop I came across a 1,000 ml bottle of sterile solution that I have been using since then! On another note, the kids were really hyper at practice today. Sara, the one who like to speak English with me after practice, is too funny! I usually let them play knockout after every practice, or here it is called "cow." When they are eliminated I make them to sit ups or push ups and then they have to gather all the cones and balls and put them away. Most kids want to win the game, but she LOVES to collect the cones or do the sit ups. Whenever I say we are going to play cow, she is like "Ok, what do we do when we are eliminated?" It is cute. Anyways today was our day off. I have physical therapy every day for about two hours trying to heal my knee. This weekend we play a good team in Leon so hopefully I will be able to play some in that game!

Won the Derby!

In our first Derby of the year, we won the home game 62-34! I was able to play for a little over 10 minutes during the game, and my leg/knee felt pretty good! It was a very rough game, though. The environment was the loudest so far this year, as Gijon brought a lot of fans with them. One of their guards got two intentional fouls in the first quarter, for basically trying to tackle two of our guards during a fast break. She got thrown out of the game and had like a tantrum on her way out of the gym. It was pretty funny! This week I will probably not be practicing that much. I talked with the doctor and physical therapist after my game and they want me to do a lot of biking, and non-pounding exercises in order to heal my bone bruise. We have another big game coming up next weekend in Leon, so I hope to be completely healthy by then! Rainy here today, and it is my teammates birthday today so we are having a surprise party for her! This picture is one from practice of me and Patri, my teammate from Valencia.

Rehabing the knee!

It has been a while since I updated my blog, so I apologize to those who actually read this---mom, dad. We won our game on October 23rd, and did not have a game this past weekend. I played for about 10 minutes in the game, and my knee felt okay, but not great. Later that night and the next day it got pretty swollen and was hurting me so they set me up with another doctors appointment. Basically to make a long story short, I saw a few doctors and was finally able to get an MRI this evening. I have not ran or played since October 23rd, so it has been rough for me doing nothing! I have started to bike a little during physical therapy, and am developing a good relationship with my physical therapist so that is good. Anyways, tonight, the doctor told me I would have to wait for a while to get an MRI, and I asked if I could have it any sooner. He ended up calling downstairs to the technician and I was able to go down and get one right away. The doctor was waiting for me and was already looking at the images on the computer as I was coming out of the room. Might I mention, it is NOT fun to have an itch on your leg when you cannot move it or get to it for 25 minutes!!! Anyways, both him and I looked at the images together on the computer and he showed me how my ligaments were fine and that my meniscus seemed to be fine as well. I am going back on Monday to get my copy of the photos after they process and print them. There was some white area in my bone, and he said I have a bone bruise, and swelling within the joint which has been causing the pain. He said I can start tomorrow working my way back to playing at full speed so I am excited about that, but hoping it won't be too painful!

Despite not being able to play, I have been continuing to coach my kids. I snapped a picture of them the other day at practice which you can see on here. Today there was a film crew I think from the news station that was there filming all the practices going on in the gym(there are 3 courts with three different practices going on at a time). My kids were on their best behavior and trying really hard, so that made it easy for me!  We have our first game coming up on November 14th so I am excited for that, they have been getting better and better each day.

November 1st marked my 2nd month living here, I can't believe how fast time is flying! I am still enjoying the people around me, as well the city! Even though I have been here for over two months now I have not done tooooo much touristy stuff, but this past weekend I was able to. My teammate Tina had 5 of her friends up from Ciudad Real which is just south of Madrid. They had never been to Oviedo, so we all did some things to explore this area together. On Saturday we went up to a restaurant called Buenos Aires for lunch. The restaurant over looks the whole city, this was the view from right outside the restaurant, and maybe my favorite picture since I have been here! The mountains in the back are part of the Picos de Asturias.

After we had a delicious meal consisting of a bunch of different types of meat, cheese, cerveza, cheesecake, and chocolate mousse we made our way up a little farther on the mountain to El Cristo statue, or the statue of Christ. This statue that you can see behind us stays lit 365 days of the year. Anywhere you are in Oviedo you can always see it atop the mountain! If you can't tell by how we are dressed, it is definitely getting chillier! This coming Saturday we have a home game against Gijon, who is our Derby game. Here, a derby means rivals. From what I have heard we have a better team, but it will still be a tough match. I don't know if I will be playing in this game, but we will see how my knee feels tomorrow after some practicing. It is midnight over here so I am heading to bed!