Campeonato de España -- Spanish University Champions!

Cathedral in Leon

Hola, from Oviedo! I just got back yesterday from Leon where I was staying with my team for the past week. We played four games in the last five days, and we have our last league home game tonight, so our fifth game in six days! We ended up winning the University Championships in Leon, which is the first time that the women´s team has won in many years! We beat two teams from Madrid, one from Salamanca, and one from Barcelona in order to win the championship. We won the semi-final game on Thursday by 3 points, but won the final by 20! Today´s game is a derby against Aviles, which is just a 20 minute drive away. We only have two more league games left and we have already won the league. The only thing left is to win the Fase to be able to move up to Liga 2 which we are all working towards!

Celebrating after the Finals with the Asturian flag

Team comida after the win

In the city with the team!

Leon was a very nice city and we had a chance to explore on our evenings off. The catherdral is beautiful, and supposedly one of the top 3 in Europe. There were 12 men´s teams and 12 women´s teams all staying in two hotels, so there was a great basketball environment. A lot of the teams there it seemed just came to party, as many teams went out drinking on game nights, including a few of the teams we played against and ended up beating by 20! Better for us :) On the men´s side a University from Barcelona ended up winning it all. A good number of people were able to drive down on Friday for the final since Leon is only an hour and a half south-east of Oviedo so that was nice. After the game, we went out into the city and celebrated with big lunch in the sun were I got a little burnt! After tonights game we have a team dinner and we will probably go out into the city to again, celebrate winning the gold medal! Our team only played with 8 players throughout the last five days, and I was not able to play. I am starting to do the warm-ups before the games, jogging, and shooting :) Everyone is pretty tired after this week, but I am sure we will do well tonight!  I had a game with my kids team this morning, which we won 56-5! I felt kind of bad for the other team, but we were´t pressing or anything, we were just a lot better! It is pretty rainy here in Oviedo, so I hope it gets sunny here soon! April flew by, and I cannot believe that it is already May! Three more weeks until the Final Four, which I hope I will be able to play in. I am pretty sure that I will start practicing this week, so we will see how the knee feels. We are supposed to have a reception in the next coming week with the president of the Unviersity to celebrate winning the championship! Overall this has been a great experience, and I cannot wait to be back on the court again!!

Cumpleanos en Espana + Tarta de Zanahoria

I was lucky to have great weather this past Thursday on my Birthday :) Actaully the whole last week was great, and I took advantage of it by laying outside a few times at the park below where I live. Here in Spain, and most of Europe I believe, it is a tradition that when it is your birthday, you have to bring something for the team to eat. Unlike our greedy culture in United States where we just take take take! I wanted to make something somewhat unique for them to eat so I thought Carrot Cake would be a good idea, becuase when I mentioned the idea to them they all thought it would be disgusting. Only my German teammate Clara, and Tina had tried it before. On my birthday Lara and I set out to find all the ingredients I would need, which was a process in itself trying to translate the things I needed. The funniest part was trying to find Baking Soda. Lara google translated it on her phone, and it said "bicarbonato de sodio." We asked the worker from the supermarket and she took us to where it was, sure enough it was there, and I was so excited they had it and threw it in the cart. Then, Lara picked it up and started reading it, at which point we realized that it was for cleaning dishes or getting rid of bad odors!!! Hahaha, I swear I wasn´t trying to kill them! I ended up googling later where I could find it, and I ended up having to buy the edible version in a Pharmacy! I also couldn´t find confectioners sugar in a big quantity the first day. It was about 6 dollars for a tiny little jar! I had to go to another store in which I found a big carton. While shopping, I also realized there are no Bagels in Spain! Anyways after about three supermarkets and a pharmacy I was able to get all of the ingredients. Lara thought it was impossible that with the stuff I bought, it would turn out looking like the pictures I had showed her. That debate ended in her You Tubing a video of some southern lady making a Carrot Cake! Ha! After translating all the mesaurments from cups to grams or mL, I was able to bake the cake! The back edge got burnt a little bit, but other than that it turned out pretty good! The Cream Cheese frosting was especially yummy. My team said that they liked it, hopefully they weren´t just being nice :) I had kids practice on my birthday as well, and I wasn´t going to tell them it was my Birthday, but somehow one of them found out. They ended up tugging on my earlobe 22 times....Friday night after our practice we went to see the men´s team play, who have now clenched a playoff spot! We won last night by about 20. We will play in Salmanca next weekend (Our longest road trip), and then 2 more games after that and our regular season is over! My doctor´s appointment got moved up to this coming Thursday, so hopefully I will be cleared to run! I don´t have too many good pictures, but here are a couple that Lara had taken with her phone. One of me baking the cake in her house, and the other of me sitting out side during lunch trying to find some word in my dictionary. I try to carry it with me at all times becuase there are always vocab words that one of us don´t know in the other language!

Play Xago & News!

Mujeres y Deportes 2011

Carol and I at Playa Xago

Tortillas, lomo, ensalada, pastel de vedura, patatas :)

Last time I blogged I said I couldn´t wait to go to the beach! Well, last Friday I went to the beach :) Piki, Carol, and I went to Playa Xago for the day which is near Aviles on the Northern coast. The professor for my class actually said today that we are so lucky for this weather and this time of the year. Usually it is pretty rainy and cold! It was a beautiful day, and we had almost the whole beach to ourselves! This weekend we won again, this time by about 60 points. We played against a team in Palencia about 3 hours away. Our whole team was back playing fairly healthy (minus me) but Tina rolled her ankle during the game. It was a good thing she had her ankles taped, because it was VERY swollen as it was...We had a team meal on Sunday, and watched the Nadal vs. Djokovic tennis match that took place in Miami. The Serbian Djokovic ended up winning in the tiebreaker, but they both played really well! This whole week is sunny and in the high 70s so I am a happy girl :) We only have like three regular season games left and then the Universities and the the Final Four at the end of May. I am adding resistance on the elliptical and doing that for longer amounts while continuing with the pool and bike! You can get some great workouts in the pool, I have been doing sprints in there and obvioulsy I am out of cardio shape, but still! Today my girls team had an apperance to do on the Oviedo Television sports program and I was not planning on going. The coordinator called me about 15 mintues before and told me he would like me to go. I was at physical therapy so I ran(figuratively) and tried to look half decent then met my girls at the station. Two of my girls answered questions and the rest of us just stood there, it was fun. I will post the video when it gets uploaded to You Tube. The first picture above is of all the women who spoke at the Mujeres y Deportes round table discussion a few weeks ago. I´m really not that tall, everyone was just really short!! I had sent back my computer with Meredith when she left at the end of Feburary to get it fixed at Merrimack, and she mailed it back to me a few weeks ago. On Friday I recieved a notice saying that my computer was in Madrid in customs! Still not sure how and if I will recieve it here in Oviedo. I had 10 days to show them the reciept for my computer, but I didn´t buy it recently....Anyways I faxed some paperwork today, and the coordinator for our club helped me so I hope I will recieve it soon!