random things

I am back from France and had a good time there, we did good in the tournament and played some tough teams, even played a team where there were 6 americans on it, a few who I played against in college. But thankfully we beat them in 3. :) Today we have the day off to rest up for our first home game of the season tomorrow! Im excited! Sorry I dont have any pictures to post of our time in France, I dont know how many times I said in the van, oops forgot my camera.

So today I decided I didnt want to stay in the apartment all day so I headed out to the store to buys some things and on the way i went to a lil farmers market that was goin on right by the gym. Mainly it had all different kinds of food, mostly fish, but it was cool to walk around and see what different kinds of food they made. They sold other hand made crafts too like baskets, handcarved stuff, paintings and jam.

Now that I am finally settled into my apartment there were some things that I needed to get, so I went to the store, kinda like a target it you will. I finally bought a shower curtain..much needed, always had to clean up the wet floor after i would shower. I usually spend alot of my day on the computer whether it is on facebook, youtube catching up on reality shows, or watching dvds that I brought myself. But just recently I was told about some websites where i could watch movies and tv shows. The movie website costs money, but very very cheap and the website where i watch shows is free! I am very happy about this. Now I can spend hours watching tv shows that I have missed and now will be able to stay caught up! Currently I am on last season of Greys Anatomy and I watched the 1st episode of Glee.

Also during my day off today I decided to scrapbook a calendar. It will serve a few purposes,1.) to help decorate my apartments bare walls and 2.) so I know what is going on during the week. So far today I only did August and September.

On the way home from the store I passed the McDonalds, you can always count on McDonalds for a yummy meal when overseas. So far I have only made the trip to Mc Donalds once in the 2 months that I have been here. So far so good! My goal is to not go there as much as I can, but its right by the gym where I practice so sometimes its just calling my name!

off to france!

Off to France!! I am writing this a few hours before I have to wake up and leave to catch the plane ride...we have to meet at the gym at 3 in the morning and then our flight is at 5 in the morning...we are flying to Latvia, then to Belgium and then taking a train to the city in France...its gonna be a long traveling day. We have a tournament this weekend in France and the opening ceremonies are Thursday night and then we start play on friday afternoon and play the rest of the weekend! Its going to be another volleyball filled weekend..lets hope my body doesnt fall apart by the end of the weekend! :)

This is our teams travel shirt. Our team is owned by an organization that also run the mens and womens hockey teams here. We get to go to the womens games for free but mens games we have to pay. Im not a big hockey fan but its the number one sport here so I better not mention that to anyone. The name of the organization is called HPK, which is now our team name. Our colors are black and orange...cant miss us walking in the airport with these shirts! :)

happy birthday!

Happy Birthday to my mom!! She is one of the best!! Wish I could be there celebrating in the fun of her birthday weekend, especially since they went to 2 places that I love, Bennihannas and Disneyland!! But I hope they had fun and she had a great birthday!!! love you mom!!

This last weekend we had our first tournament of the season. Man am I exhausted! We played 6 games in 3 days. I havent done that since college and I forgot what it was like to play that many games in a short amount of time, and of course the last game of the tourney went 5 sets! It used to be fun when I was in college and younger but now my "old" body cant handle it! ha! But it was alot of fun and we ended up 3rd in the tournament. It was good to start playing some real games and see how the team worked together, we played well but still have alot to work on. But I am excited for the season! This week we are off to France for another tournament! We live on Thurs morning bright and early and play fri, sat, and sun and then come home. It is going to be another looooooooong weekend full of volleyball!! :)

home sweet home...for 8 months

On Sept 1st I finally moved into my own apartment! yay! I was so excited, after sleeping on an air mattress for a month and living out of my suitcases I was so happy to finally move and unpack and get a good nights sleep! So after our morning practice my coach and a few of the girls on the team helped me move into my apartment. I actually have some furniture in my apartment! I have a bed and a chair and one of the girls gave me some of her desks to use. Plus a tv with about 4 english channels! :) Some of the shows that are on out here are the Mentalist, Lipstick Jungle, CSI, reruns of Friends, Scrubs,Simpsons, some reality shows and Americas Funniest Home videos when Bob Saget was still the host. So while my coach and I went to go get my stuff from the apartment that I was staying at the girls started getting my place ready for me. When we got back they had done it all! So it was an easy moving day and I was finally at my home for the next 8 months! Its a cute lil place, kinda like a studio apartment, just one living area, a kitchen, bathroom and a walk in closet. I like the place and the only bad thing that I have found is that the key and the door dont exactly work all the time for me, i sit there for like 2 minutes trying to open my door and then the upstaris people walk really really loud but other than that Im happy with it! Now its time to decorate it and make it a lil more like home!

this is what it looks like when you first walk in.

this is the view from the kitchen

My lil scrapbooking table and I already put some pictures up of family and friends for a lil home feeling before I decorate some more. Here is my lil kitchen, as you can see there is a pot on the stove, thats my spagetti dinner that was so yummy!

this is the look on the way out of my place and to that tricky door..the bathroon is right around the corner there and the walk in closet to the left.

on my shopping list : shower curtain and hangers

So now all my apartment needs is some visitors! All you would really need to bring is an air mattress to sleep on! :)

If you can translate it....

The other day at practice the local newspaper from Hammelinna did a story about me playing for the team. They took a few pictures and a guy interviewed me, and thankfully he spoke english very well! Although I do not like doing interviews and stuff this time I did not really mind because I have no idea what the article would say since it was all in Finnish! ha! He asked me typical questions like how am I liking it here, what was my first impression of the team, how do you think the league is here in Finland, what kind of player am I, how do I like living in a small town and if I was excited to start playing. So I hope I answered everything so that he could understand and translate it into his article easily and correctly! Maybe I will have to spend a day on the internet using google language tool to translate the article so I know what it says!

But everything has been going good here. We practice everyday except for the weekends but preseason is about to start and then it will get pretty busy traveling and playing in tournaments. We will play a few tournaments here in Finland and then one in France. It will be fun to go to France again. We do weights on Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning and then practice at night and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays we practice both in the morning and night. Im excited to be doing the weights again with the team, so much easier and better to work out with a team then all alone! I will finally move into my apartment on Sept 1st! Im so excited! I can finally unpack my stuff and settle in and no more sleeping on an air mattress! yessssss! So I will post some pics of my new place when I move in a few days!!

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!