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!

Hannibal Lecter

We won our game in Santander last Saturday 67-43. It was a pretty close game up until the 4th quarter, and then we kind of took off. I was not able to play because of my knee. I had a doctor's appointment this past Tuesday and he said I could run on Wednesday(yesterday) for 20 minutes on the track, and if that didn't hurt 30 minutes on Thursday, and then try to practice on Friday. I don't think I have ever been happier to run in my life! My knee was a little sore, which is expected since I have literally done nothing for the past 11 days. It feels pretty good today. This whole injury thing is making me appreciate being healthy a lot more. Watching practices and games for the past couple weeks I have just been thinking, what I would give to be able to sprint or cut like that right now! Something new for me, but I suppose my patience is being tested in certain ways. The picture is from the game in Santander and the tall girl on the end with blond hair is my German teammate who cannot play right now either because the Spanish Federation has not approved her letter of clearance from the German team she played for last year.

This weekend we face Covipro San Isidro at home on Saturday. I do not think I will be able to play in this game either, and they are second place in our league right now(2-1) so it is kind of a big game! Hopefully I can play for a little bit, depending on my knee. It has been getting pretty cold here during the nights, but the days have been really sunny. I took my camera to class on Tuesday and this picture is of my campus where my class is. This part of campus is all the way across the city so I have to take a 15 minute bus ride to class each day. I could walk, but it would take about 25 minutes, and I haven't yet with my knee like this.

Speaking of it getting cold, I almost always like to wear flip flops when I am wearing athletic clothes. Being from Alaska, it has not been that cold here, so I have continued to wear my flip flops when I can. Here, they are called chanclas, and my team always makes fun of me for wearing them, and think I am crazy for wearing them when it is a little chilly out. I tried to explain how cold it gets in Alaska, and we did some calculations to calculate what 50 below translates to Celcius. They were pretty shocked, and then I uploaded this photo onto Facebook so they could see what I used to run in! This pictures is from my Senior year in high school I when my cross country running team was training for Nike Team Nationals in 20 below weather. The ice on my eye lashes and mouth is from my breathe freezing! I sure do look pretty happy! After seeing this picture, they all were like "Now we understand why you wear chanclas and why you eat ice cream when it is cold out!" They also started calling me Hannibal Lector.... As you can see there is some similarities in the picture. This past week I found a nice little bar to watch some of the soccer games in right around the corner from where I live. Turns out the owner has been to Alaska and loved it. He wears a pin on his shirt every day that is from a Native Village in Alaska. He whipped out his laptop and started showing me all the places he has been in Alaska. Small world!

100 Puntos

Well the last time I wrote on my blog was right before our game on Saturday. I warmed up with the team and my ankle felt good so my coach played me for the 2nd quarter, and then put me in at the beginning of the 4th quarter. We ended up winning the game 102-39! I have never scored 100 points in a game so I was excited about that. Here in Spain it is a tradition that the person who scores the 100th point has to bake a cake for the team. Yesterday at practice Patricia shared a tarta de queso(cheesecake) with us. It was our first home game, so I am sure we impressed a lot of people. A few of my girls that I coach came to the game so I got to talk with them a little after we got done playing. Unfourtunately, during the beginning 4th quarter I went up for a layup and made an awkward movement, tweaking my right knee. I was out for the rest of the game and I have not been able to practice since then. We had some team pictures earlier this week which you can see now.

We head to Santander for a game today which is about 3 and a half hours east of us, right on the northern coast. One of my teammates, Tina, is from Santander so a lot of her friends and family will be able to see us play. Unfortunately this will be the first game that I have missed in 5 years(since my Junior year in high school) due to an injury =(. I saw a doctor on Wednesday evening, and he said it definitely was not the ligament which is good news, but possibly the meniscus. I have another appointment on this coming Tuesday to see if the swelling has gone down.

On another note, I have started my Spanish class which I am enjoying. Almost everyone in my class is American on some sort of exchange program through their college, which I actually don't like because they all speak English! I have found, that the longer I am here, the worse my English gets! I guess that is a good thing, meaning my Spanish is getting better, but I still have a longggg way to go.

The weather here has been overcast and cloudy, with a few sunny days. I still have practice with my little kids on Monday's, Tuesday's, and Thursday's and I have been enjoying that for the most part. We should be starting up our games soon which will be once a week. I have a total of 12 girls right now, and they are all comfortable with each other now so sometimes they are out of control! Well I am off to have some lunch and get ready for this road trip, hopefully we will get our third win of the season!

1st Injury!

Unfortunately I had my first MINOR injury here in Spain. On Wednesday nights practice I went up for a lay up and came down on someone else's foot, rolling my left ankle. The next day I already had an appointment to go to the team physical therapist for a lower back massage, so she checked out my ankle as well. She gave me some ultrasound and gave me some excesises to do with my ankle. The coach would not let me practice on Thursday or Friday and we have our first home game here tonight. I am hoping that I will be allowed to play a little bit, it doesn't hurt to run or walk or anything. I have spent the last two days laying on my floor with my foot up on a chair, icing every hour! The swelling has gone down, but there is more bruising so it looks worse...It is frustrating for me because, at Merrimack, I was used to being looked at by an athletic trainer or doctor each day, and that medical professional making the decision on on how much activity I should do for that practice. Here, the coach just looks at my ankle before practice and says si or no! Pretty odd to me, but I have to deal with it. It could always be worse though, the coach could be telling me that I am fine and encouraging me to practice hard on a hurt ankle!

Octupus and a win!!

Well we won our first league game! The score was 48-37. Very low scoring! I guess last year they only scored 30 points in this gym, and it is very hard to win there. If you want to try to read about the game, in Spanish of course, there is a summary at this website, http://caubaloncesto.blogspot.com/ Throughout the year I believe that game summaries will be posted on this website, with links to the other teams pages as well.

Anyways, we had practice on Friday night, and afterwards we went out for a team dinner for some typical Asturian food(at around 1130pm). This included pulpo(octupus), mussels, and a famous dish with eggs, shrimp, and potatoes all mixed together. I had never tried octupus until Friday, and I was not a huge fan of it. Too chewy! I had never eaten mussels either, but I liked those more than the octupus. The dish with shrimp and eggs sounds pretty gross to me, but it actually tasted pretty good! You can see in the picture my whole team along with our coach and physical trainer. The yellow drink in all of our cups is also a typical Asturian drink which is a mix of sidra and sangria(white wine and fruit juices).

I thought it was odd that we didn't practice on the Saturday before our first game, but we didn't. We left that afternoon for Burgos, where we stayed in a hotel and played the next day at noon. On the drive there in the bus, we watched Finding Nemo in Spanish. We had a big debate about what the movie was called. I said it was called Finding Nemo(pronounced knee-mo), they were trying to convince me that it was just Nemo(pronounced nay-mo). The night before our game, Spain played the United States in the semifinals for the womens world basketball championships. It was fun to cheer against my whole team who were obviously going for Spain! The United States ended up winning by like twenty =)

Last week I also decided to stop into the local McDonalds for the first time! The place was packed!!!! It was more like a restaurant that a fast food place. You still went up to the counter to order, but then there were 3 floors of places to sit with booths, tables etc! McDonalds and Burger King are both extremely popular here in Oviedo. My team loves both places! The McDonalds is right near the Parque de San Fransisco, which is the largest park in Oviedo. This is a picture of the upper area of the park with the fountain and a bunch of benches.

I also came across this picture on one of my teammates pages that shows a better view of the Cathedral. During San Mateo I also got to see this band perform live, and it is one of my favorite songs here! If you paste the link in your browser it should open in youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdUzp8NY9Uc
This morning I had my exam to see where I would be placed for my Spanish class. I start classes tomorrow morning, one hour a day, four days a week. I am excited to start learning and practicing better grammar! Our next game is at home this weekend on Saturday evening, so I am excited for that!