Kaisa's Birthday

It was one of the girls on my teams birthday on Sunday so on Saturday night she had a few of us over to celebrate her birthday. It was nice to actually get out of the apartment where Im staying and go out and have a good time. We went over to her apartment and had some cake and ice cream and other snacks and drinks while hanging out. We attempted to do some new version of Twister where your left foot does what the guy says and the right foot does what the girl says, but the only problem for me was that they both were talking in Finnish, so I definetely lost out on that one! ha! But it was a fun night being able to hang out with the girls outside the volleyball court!

Kaisa, the birthday girl is sitting next to me. She turned 26, 2 months older than me, so im not the oldest on the team! yay! There are 3 other girls on the team in their mid 20's while the rest of the team is pretty young 18, 19 and 20.

cute lil town

So I have been here in Finalnd for almost two weeks now and I had 4 days off in a row. One of the girls from the team was having a wedding so most of my team was gone in a different city so I was on my own for these 4 days. Now this town is not too big and I had no idea what to do or where to go. So I went and ventured out on my own and just see where it would take me. But there were some things that I needed to do first. As of now I am living in the girls apartment that got married so I will be here for two weeks while she is on her honeymoon, so I cant really unpack my stuff yet but I needed to get some neccesities, like food. So I went to the grocery store by myself, which was interesting. In the other countries I have been in it has been somewhat more easy because the languages I could understand or they were close enough to English where I could get by, but not here in Finland. The labels on the food are not written in English, where as the other countries had English labels. Most of the things that I bought I kinda picked bacause of the pictures and a few English words here and there, like cheddar or cheerios. But when I went to go by the milk, I had no idea what kind I was buying. So there I am standing in front of the milk section just staring at all the different kinds of milk cartons deciding how I was going to guess which one I should take. Well I just went with the most plain simple looking carton. And it was blue and the kind at home that we get has a blue lid and label. ha! So I figured I couldnt go wrong there. So I ended up taking that one and hoping I didnt end up with soy milk or something like that. But when I got home and had cereal the next morning I was pleased to find out that I had done a good job and picked the good milk! Succccesssss!!

so then I decided to go walk around the town a little bit. There is a huge 7th century castle here that the coach and his wife took me to the first week I was here but I didnt have my camera with me so I didnt take any pictures so I decided to go walk there yesterday. The town here is super cute and there are cobblestone and rock roads everywhere you go.There is also this huge lake here that runs all the way to other cities like Tampere that people take boats on. Super cute town. We will see how I feel in a few months when there is snow on the ground and that lake is frozen over ha!

there was also a fair going on this weekend so I walked around the fair and looked at what they sell here at a Finnish fair. They had tons of clothes, hand made baskets, jewelery and bunch of other things. There were old cars, buses, army vehicles and a stage with performers going on. There was a bunch of food stands and places to eat, but I didnt try any Finnish food just because I dont know exactly what I would be eating. Once I am here a lil longer and get more used to the food I will be a lil more adventurous. It looked like the whole town came out for this event.

As I was walking around earlier in the day I walked past a pizza place and sounded good so later that night I walked around the corner and ordered me a large cheese pizza. (margarita pizza as they call cheese pizza out here.) It was delicious! Dont worry I didnt eat the whole pizza in one night! :) The man at the pizza place was super nice and really tried his best to speak English, he did a good job and I know I will be back there alot more in the next few months!

happy anniversary

Just wanted to say Happy One Year Anniversary to one of my best friends from college, Ashley! I cant believe one year ago we were laughing, crying, dancing and celebrating at your wedding! It was such a fun day and Im so happy for you and Scotty!! Love you!

aunt and uncle

Just wanted to post something close to the heart. My aunt Eleanor had major surgery yesterday to remove cancer from her lungs. The recovery from this surgery is long and painful so please remember her and my uncle Bill in your prayers and they deal with this daily. I love you guys!

Short Summer

Wow did my summer fly by! I felt like I had just gotten home from Cyprus, it went by too fast! Although it was short I got see alot of family and friends and travel around a lil bit. Although I did see alot of people there were some people I wanted to see but didnt get to see :( I had a great time road tripping it up to Idaho with my dad to see some family, with a short stop in Vegas with family to see my cousin graduate, a trip to San Diego to see friends at a my friends wedding reception, a trip up to Hume lake to see my best friend Reanne, a trip to Venezuala to see friends there, some beach trips and close trips around home to visit with friends and just hang out. It was a short summer but one filled with good times and fun! Here are a few highlights from my summer.

The Blog Is Back

Ok its been awhile since I have done the whole blog thing but since I am once again in a different country it was time to start up again. One reason being is that it takes up a few hours of my day and keeps me busy so I dont get to bored out here and the other reason being so I can keep family and friends updated back in the states. So where am I you ask? well the answer to that is Finland. Ya i know crazy, me beach loving, sun loving girl is in a place where that doesnt really exist! ha! But time for a new adventure and new experience.

I arrives here in Hameelina, Finland on Tuesday, August 4th. The little town of Hameelina is small but very cute. It is also a very close train/bus ride to other bigger cities like Hellsinki and Tampere. I have already been to Tampere and loved it. So I have been here about a week and have finally gotten adjusted to the time difference. The first few days I was up at about 4 in the morning. But the weird thing here is that right now it is light out most of the time. It probably gets dark around 10:45 and lasts till about 4 in the morning. But in a few months time it will be the opposite, i will have no daylight. That should be interesting. When I first got here the sun was shining outside and all the girls were like dont expect that too last too long! And they were right, it was sunny for about 6 days and then the rain came. I was living in the a hotel the first week but right now I am living in a players apartment while she is on her honeymoon for 2 weeks, and then I will have my own apartment..finally! Im ready to unpack and settle in.

The first week of practice was real good. The girls on the team are super nice and they all speak English, which is a huge blessing! The coach also speaks english and the girls seem to like him as a coach. I was excited after the first practice watching the girls because they were good! Last year this team placed 3rd so I am really excited about the season. I watched the first practice because I landed early in the morning and they had lost my luggage! So i was without my luggage for 2 days, so I had no practice clothes, shoes, kneepads, or anything! The airlines gave me this cute lil overnight bag with toothbrush, toothpaste,(which i already had cuz i always travel with my toothbrush,toothpaste and an extra outfit in my carryon,u learn a few things when traveling so much) deoderant,a shirt, face wash,brush and comb. But the team gave me some shirts and spandex and shoes that were about 2 sizes too big for me to practice in. But finally I got my luggage and I was happy practicing in my stuff.

On the weekend we didnt have any practices so the coach and his wife, who is also a player on the team, invited me out to their house near Tampere for the weekend because there was a beach tournament going on and also the mens national team was competing in a tournament there. The girls brother is a player on the mens national team and is one of their best outside hitters. The place was packed for the mens game. The first game we watched went 5 and the second went 4. In the beach tournament there was a girl on our team who was playing in it so we went to cheer her on. It turned out to be a fun weekend watching some good volleyball.

Despite being jet lagged, losing my luggage, practicing in shoes too big, my first week in Finland has been a good one and a good start my season here in Finalnd!

what a trip!

ok so i have been back from my trip with my cousin for about 2 weeks now..unfortunately i was not able to go to egypt because i had to come back to cyprus and play in the semifinal game of the cup, which we lost but we held our own against the number one team and it was probably the best we played all season. But my trip to Greece with Alicia was AMAZING!! we had such a great time! I would be posting pictures now but my camera broke the first day there, but luckily my cousin is a great photographer and she took some wonderful pictures!
The first day we got there we wanted to get started right away so as soon as we landed we took a taxi to our hotel, which was a nice hotel for being cheap and the receptionist was awesome, he told us where everything was and where we need to go. The first day we decided to go up to Mt. Licabecca, which overlooks the whole city. We didnt know that it would take us climbing up many hills and about 500 steps, yes i counted, to reach the top of the mountain, but it was definitely worth it! It was a spectacular view! We then hit up the flea market to check things out. The next day we decided to go see the sights nearby, which included the Acropolis, the temple of Zeus and other tall statues, some museums, cemetarys and other cool things. The third day we went to see the Temple of Posiden. We had to take a bus to get there but the ride was along the coast and beautiful. We decided to make a day of it and had a nice relaxing lunch and then go take some pictures. While we were taking some pics we found this lil trail and so Alicia and I, being the adventurous ones we are decided to folow the trail and see where it would lead, well lil did we know that we would end up climbing down this huge, i think 295 ft cliff...ya i didnt tell my dad about that one...but also very worth the scary trek down the hill, we got down to the water and there were lil springs everywhere and gorgeous rocks. It was awesome. The last day we decided to check out the islands of Greece. So we headed out on a boat to the island of Agnea. This is a cute small lil island where it was nice to enjoy a lunch and walk around and take some pictures. We saw some lil French boys playing some volleyball so Alicia and I jumped in and played with the lil boys for awhile. The whole trip was amazing and we had such a great time just walking around and enjoying the sites, a new country and just talking and hangin out. Some of the things I will remeber are the nice people we met, eating lunch and dinner and having the Acropois be the view we saw, nurse Alicia helping an old man after he fell and him being so nice that he kept wanted to give us directions everywhere, to be caught up in the middle of a protest rally with all the policemen decked out in the full gear with shields and gas masks and also we were in the middle of a poilice chase. It was an exciting and fun trip!! I cant wait until my next adventure with Alicia!!


for pictures of the trip check out Alicias webpage.... http://www.afikse.wordpress.com