First Loss

Yesterday we had an away game in Roma against one of the 2nd place teams (we are in first and there are about 5 teams tied for second). We were told the whole week of practice this team is going to be difficult and have a tall outside. Well they were right, this team was very good, I would say we were very evenly matched, they definitely had better ball control then we did, which helps a lot on offense. But we lost the first two sets and it was not pretty at all. We decided to show up in the 3rd and 4th sets and won very close sets, both coming from far behind and winning! It showed the fight that our team can have and how well we can play when we really have the heart and will to do that, now I just have to figure out a way to tell them that....ha, google translate? Anyways, after winning the 4th set you could see that the other team was very down and had no momentum, they even took out there two best players, but they also had really good players to replace them with. We lost the 5th and final set due to several mistakes on our side.
Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call and people will start working a little harder to become a little better at things in practice. Let me just say, when you are hiding your libero and your middle blocker has to step in on serve receive there could be a problem....After talking to Lynnea we have come to the conclusion that things that we pick up on in the matches, they may not (and by may not, I mean don't), which makes it very difficult for us to share with them, and also very frustrating because we are thinking if we are seeing it, isn't everyone else? ummm NO.
But oh well, we are still in first because we only have one loss and we go by points, I guess. Which means, if you win 3 games to 0 you get 3 points, if you win 3-1 you get 3 points and the other team gets 1, if you win 3-2 then you get 3 points and the other team gets 2. So because we lost in 5 games we got 2 points, which means we really only missed out on getting 1 more point, and we were very far ahead of the other teams because of our record....so if we are able to pick up our game and improve then we will be alright! Sometimes the only way to learn about your weaknesses are having them exposed by another team.

Italian word/phrase of the day: sta qua  "is here" I heard one of my teammates give that answer when our coach asked how here knee was doing....I LOVED IT!

blocking

You can't eat that now!

Its been awhile again...I know.
This past weekend we had off, we didn't have any games or practices after Friday, it was really nice to be able to rest!
Adri had planned us going to Napoli to see her boyfriend's basketball game on Saturday, but that didn't happen, after practice on Friday she was too tired and her knee hurt really bad and she didn't want to get up early to take the train, AND she was planning a surprise for their anniversary for when we returned Saturday night and she didn't want to do it Friday after practice. So the whole day Saturday we walked around Fondi and picked up the last minute things she needed to make the surprise complete, then I helped her set up her room. She wrote in balloons on the wall Ti AMO, which means I love you, and she had a pillow screened with a picture of them, and got some chocolate. It's a good thing I was helping, otherwise the A and the M would have been majorly deformed. It was really just TOO CUTE. So after we set up the room, I went downstairs to figure out what I was going to eat, and she insisted that I eat with them, because Maria wasn't home and she didn't want me to eat alone, she didn't like that, ha. We ate at about 11pm by the time he got there. Then on Sunday and Monday it was pretty much just the same old daily routine that I do, we walk around the town a couple times, go to the store, and sit a home. It has been fun cooking every lunch and dinner with Adri, she is too funny, she always texts me and asks what I plan on eating for lunch, if I want to eat with her, and what I want to eat for dinner, etc. It is interesting to see the different kinds of foods they put together, it always ends up being good, but different.  Its funny, because it is ok to mix hotdogs and eggs together and eat it with rice, but you can't eat fruit before dinner....yeah, keep reading...
Usually after practice I am super hungry and while we are waiting for the food to cook, I will peel a kiwi or a clementine and eat it, I'm not the only one who does this, I have seen Adri do it plenty of times. Last night while our fish was cooking, I sat down to eat a kiwi and Valentina looked at me and was like "NOOOOO you can't eat that now," and I was like "uhhhh why not?" her response, "you can't eat fruit before fish, or dinner, fruit is after dinner, it is sweet" I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I didn't know there were rules on when I could eat what, I didn't respond, I just shrugged my shoulders and kept peeling, at one point I thought she was going to take the kiwi out of my hand, it was hilarious.

the final result! 

Italian word/phrase of the day: ti amo "I love you"


Got a lot of photos from a couple of our games, I put a bunch up on facebook, check them out!

Houses in the Mountain

Hello everyone!
I know it has been a while again since a blog post, but really nothing too interesting has been happening; this past week I have woken up every day and had something to do, mainly going to work out or walking around the town with Adri. But, on Wednesday Adriana asked me to go to Rome with her, so I did, I mean what else did I have to do. So around 9am Antonio picked us up and we headed to Rome (Adriana needed to go to the Italian Volleyball Federation building). On the way there we talked about several different things including our upcoming trip to Latina; we were planning on going Thursday, but we are waiting to get paid, and that hasn't happened yet, so we couldn't go. But every time we go to Rome we pass this outlet mall, IT IS HUGE! It is called Castelo di Romano and it is an outlet of designer stores, and I mean it is absolutely HUGE. On the way there, I pointed it out to Adri and told her that if we wanted to go, Seba (our coach) said he would take us one day.  We got to the building, Adriana did what she needed to do, and we headed back, it was a very quick trip, most of it spent in the car, with me nodding off in the back seat. But on our way back we stopped at the outlet mall to have a look around. This is the season of huge sales, so every store has a ridiculous discount and all these awesome items. As we walked into one of the entrances we were like kids in a candy shop, eyes wide, mouth pretty much dropped to the floor. Adriana looked at me and said (in italian, mind you) we are not going to Latina when we get paid, we are coming back here. And we hadn't even seen the whole thing, we just went down two little walk ways, I think there were 3 more "piazzas" as they call them. IT IS AMAZING!

After that, we stopped at McDonald's for Adriana, because she loves it, and has been looking for one for a while. Then after that we headed back to Fondi; right down the street from Fondi, on the way out of town, there is a little town that is up in the mountain, and I mean, literally, houses built right into the side of the mountain, and every time we pass it I am just amazed on how beautiful it is, and apparently so was Adri; so Antonio took us up to the top of the town to look out and see it. The name of the mountain and the town is, Monte San Biagio. We drove up what was basically a one lane road, that snaked back and forth along the mountain, with buildings rising high next to us. Then we stopped at this little look out and you could see EVERYTHING, the lake, all the way to the sea, and the little towns below, and I will let the pictures I took do the rest of the explaining....

View from the top of the town 

view

view of the houses from above

view of the houses from the backside of the mountain

 Italian word/phrase of the day: ti voglio bene  "the way you say love ya to a friend"

again, view of the mountain from the backside

New Friends

It's been awhile since a post, so here we go, I will update you on this last week of mine. It isn't too interesting, just the same old same old, sitting around day to day and practicing at night.

Last Wednesday night (the 12th night of Christmas) was the arrival of the Italian "santa claus" La Befana; a women who flies around on a broom placing presents or coal in stockings for those children good and bad. (Again you can read my previous blog and click on the link if you want to know more about La Befana). But unlike santa claus, she is believed to be a person of the bible, that the 3 Wise Men met on their travels to see Baby Jesus; they apparently asked her to join them and she didn't, but later thought she should have so left on a broom to find them but was never able to, so she is still searching to this day for the Baby Jesus, that is why she leaves gifts in each child's home because she isn't sure where Jesus is. Again this is all taken from looking it up online. I guess Thursday is considered to be her birthday, so there is some sort of celebration for that. But last Thursday, Adriana and I sat in the house and made lunch and dinner together and talked (in broken Italian) because we both thought that everything was closed (because usually on holiday's the town shuts down). But around 11pm Antonio came by to fix our TV's and he decided to tell us that everything was actually open today and there was a HUGE celebration and market like thing in the center of town, and he thought we knew, yes you are probably thinking the same thing I was thinking (now how could I have possibly known that everything was open? I don't know how this town works.) So Adriana and I just laughed because we both realized that we had been sitting in the house the whole day, going CRAZY!

But this whole week Adriana and I have become pretty good friends! We have gone to the weight room together, sat on the bus near each other and talked, made several meals together, gone grocery shopping, planned our next day off. Its pretty funny, seeing as she speaks NO english, and I speak very little Italian, but she seems to know that and will make her sentences very simple and usually just asks me yes or no questions, and it works!!

Yesterday (Saturday) we had an away game in Rome, close to the airport, we won 3 games to 0! I guess that team is in last place or something, and I can see why. So now we are 11-0 and I think we have played everyone, or almost!

Well thats all for now...

Italian word/phrase of the day: hai dormito bene?  "did you sleep well"

Playing the Americans!!

I'M BACK! I know, I know, I've been gone for a while and haven't posted anything, for that, I am sorry. But for the last 10 days I have been in America enjoying the holidays with my families and friends! It was a emotional trip to get there but I got there and had a wonderful time.

I got back to Italy on Jan. 2nd and I don't seem to be having that hard of a time adjusting to the time change as I did before! On the 2nd, when I got in, Antonio picked me up from the airport and we headed back to Fondi to eat lunch at his mothers house with his mother and his sister and family (I guess this happens every Sunday). It was a lot of fun, and the meal was wonderful, just like any other home cooked authentic Italian meal!
After lunch I went back to my apartment and slept for a little, then went to the hotel to meet the American girls that came on a tour, I ate dinner with them and chatted about some different experiences I have had.

They have two different age teams here, today their younger girls played our under 16 Fondi team at 11:00 am and after that I took them to lunch at a little pizza place in the center of town, and then showed a couple of them my apartment and answered some more questions. After that it was time to get ready for our match against the older team. It was made up of a couple college grads, a couple going to college next year and then a couple still in high school.

Our team with the Americans! 

When we got to the gym I wasn't expecting there to be a whole big party thing, but then again I forgot that it is still the holiday season for them, here they celebrate the Epiphany so they are still giving candy and having holiday parties. So when we got to the gym, there were two little courts of the mini-volley teams (children under 7) and they played for a little while, while a milk company had carts of yogurt in the lobby. After the mini-volley was over and we were getting ready, they have a hip-hop dance team and a breakdance team perform, I have decided I need to go to those classes during the day, haha. After that it was our turn to play, we had an announcer and everything at this game, they really made this into a HUGE deal. They were handing out little stocking shaped bags with candy and befana on them, it was super cute and such a fun thing to experience! We introduced our sponsors and got pictures with them, and then played our game. Some of our original starters were injured and not playing all the time, so it made for a very interesting and not so good match, and I hate to say it, but we were not successful, but no worries it doesn't count against our record, just a scrimmage, hopefully we will be able to learn from out mistakes and stay strong as the season progresses.

After the game, I went to the hotel to eat with them again, and talk to some of the girls who are thinking about playing somewhere in Europe. It was a lot of fun to have a group of people I could talk to and show around!


Italian word/phrase of the day:  fegato  "liver"