Busy week.....

Wednesday was the first game in the Coppa Di Lazio (Lazio Cup, for series C) which is a separate competition than our regular season. We played a team in our division that we had already played and have to play again for our regular season, Ciampino. Because it wasn't really an important game, because it didn't effect our regular season standings, we didn't play our normal line up; we wanted to rest some injured players. To me and Lynnea, every game is important so we were confused as to why they were taking this route, but we won, in 5 games, so we are moving on to the next round (which isn't until March).

Thursday was our day off and surprise surprise we didn't do anything. We walked around and went to our normal little dinner place and just relaxed.

Random church near the square

Friday after we worked out we didn't really want to go back and sit in the apartment, so we walked around the town and decided to just explore some of the streets we haven't seen before and see if there were any knew places that looked good to eat at. Didn't really find anything except for the old buildings around the town.

open area

Friday night after practice we went to eat at a new pizza place and then came back and sat and talked with our roommates. Maria was making something for her friend's birthday and we were watching her draw and we started talking about drawing and Valentina and I started showing each other how we could draw, she would draw a cat and then have me draw a cat, then a dress, a tree, a face, and then Maria gave us some colored pencils and we started coloring them in, it was really funny, but we had a good time laughing at our lack of skills....

display of our drawing skills 

Saturday we had an away game, this one for our season, we didn't play that well and we lost, so this is our second loss in the season, but we are still in first, we just aren't that many points ahead of the second place team, which we play next weekend.

Hopefully we are able to use this as a wake up call and really really try to get better because other teams in our conference aren't getting any worse.


Italian word/phrase of the day:  anello "ring"

I got an "infiltration?"

Our game this past Sunday went well, we won 3-0! so now we are 14-1!

In the town center getting wireless! 

Monday was our day off, and Lynnea and I decided to go to the town center and try to pick up some wireless. I was hoping this movie I was downloading on itunes would maybe take a little less time with wireless then with the USB internet I have. When I first started to download the movie, it said I had 200 and some hours until it was downloaded, that has never happened to me, but as of right now, it hasn't lied, I am still trying to download the movie...it's been three days.  At around 5pm,  Lynnea and I bundled up and headed to the benches in the town center to attempt wireless. It worked! My download time went down to 3 hours! Unfortunately it was way to cold to sit out there for 3 hours and wait for my movie to download, we sat out there for probably 30 min, then decided to call it a night.

I have been having some pain in my shoulder that hasn't been going away so I went to the doctor today to have him check it out. He did some of the usual tests for the shoulder, then asked me if I would like "an infiltration" in my shoulder, after I figured out that he meant a shot, I talked about what it was, an anti-inflamitory, and we went ahead with the "infiltration." We will see if this helps any.

Tomorrow we have a game in Rome, we are playing tomorrow because we are playing for our region cup thing. I guess they choose 6 teams from our section of the region, and 6 teams from the other section of the region and we play in a little bracket playoff, finishing April 23rd. The winner of this, is the winner of the region for that series. If we won, we would be the winner of Series C Lazio Region Cup. I THINK, this is all based off of information that I was given in a mix of broken English and Italian. I do know that it is something totally separate from our regular season. We are still playing regular season games on the weekends.  For some reason our coach isn't making a big deal about these games, saying that they aren't that important, but we still need to play well, but apparently not even every member of our team can make the game tomorrow, which I am confused on why that is ok? We will find out tomorrow how it goes?!


Italian word/phrase of the day: amiche del cuore  "best friends" (literal translation: friends of the heart)

First Handball Experience

Yesterday (Saturday) was another day off, and our city's handball team was playing at home, so we decided to go watch. The handball team is in Series A, so they are pretty good and get a lot of people at the games. Well, I know nothing about handball and therefore the game was very interesting to me because there are always whistles being blown and apparently physical contact is ok. Lynnea and I were trying to figure out what physical contact wasn't allowed because the whistles would blow for some contact but not for others, so we were very confused throughout the whole game. The game was very close the whole time; the scoring seems to go back and forth, the goalies don't seem to stop a lot, the score was 31 to 30, we won! It was exciting to see how supportive the fans were, they brought noise makers, and a big stuffed panda dressed in a jersey. They cheer very loud and yell at the refs whenever they don't like something, they will even yell at the players of the other team if they do something they don't agree with. Last night I witnessed a man running to the edge of the railing and spitting on one of the players that got a red card as he was leaving the gym. The crowd was going crazy, and I couldn't interpret why because it didn't look much different than the other actions going on in the game. It was just an all out crazy game, players throwing players around, coaches walking off of their bench over to the other bench yelling at players, fans yelling at refs and waving their hands in the air, noise makers going. It was just so intense and exciting, I still have no clue of the rules, and Adri couldn't really explain them to us, but it was fun, and I will definitely be going to another game.  Here are some videos that I took...

Me and Lynnea

After the game, we came home and ate dinner then headed to a little pub with Maria and one of our other "sometimes" teammates, Fabiana.  I use the word "sometimes" because she practices with us every once in a while, but doesn't play, or dress, or even sit on the bench during games.

Simona (teammate) and me

We went to the pub, met some of our other teammates, then went to Terracina, the next town over, to a disco. Good thing we had VIP passes because they don't seem to have a capacity limit of how many people they let in, and the  main floor was packed. And of course the typical house music was blaring, and people were fist pumping the night away.

Italian word/phrase of the night: siete pronte? "are you ready?"

ESPN America, yeah we don't have it...

It's been a while again, so sorry, I just haven't done anything exciting to write about, but I guess I will just fill you in on the last week and a half...

Me, Lynnea, and Adri

After our practice with about 5 people, we had the rest of the week of practices with everyone there, and they were very good and productive practices! They were practices where I left feeling like we actually got better. We played on Sunday last weekend, with Saturday off, so on Friday night after practice, my roommates invited us to go to a little pub for dinner, since we really didn't want to cook. Well we got out of practice at 11:30, so we were leaving for our dinner around 12; haha interesting schedule I have, I know! We got to the little pub and there was a couple of the men's team players there, finishing up eating.  So we sat with them and the people that could communicate, communicated, and Lynnea and I provided our own entertainment, as usual, listening to Italian, trying to figure out what they were saying, and of course, watching the music video channel they always have going. That was a pretty fun night, even if we don't always know what they are talking about!

Me and Lynnea

On Saturday, Adri and I walked around and looked for Valentines Day gifts, there are a couple stores that have stuffed animals and cards so we walked around and looked at pretty much all of the possibilities. The one that I really wanted was at this party store and they had it blown up inside a balloon as a display. Thinking they would gladly pop the balloon to sell the stuffed animal inside of it and redo the display later, Adri asked them to do that, of course the answer was no, I would have to buy the whole display of balloons and everything, so that was a no go, valentines gift idea fail #1. After walking around for the rest of the night, looking at stores and going in and out of all of the other shops in Fondi, we didn't find anything for valentines day, and I was on a tight schedule because I had to send mine back to the US. Adri said that I would find something on Monday and send it then, leaving a week to get there, plenty of time.

On Sunday, our game was away, so that meant another bus trip to Rome. We left at 2:45 this time, we all piled in the little green bus, and headed to Rome. We have started our second half of the season now, so we are playing every team for the second time. This team that we played on Sunday was our teams first match, and we were not there for it because we were in America getting our visa's. The match was good, we won 3-1, probably could have won 3-0, but our team likes to keep it interesting. This game was very good our team was working to fix the things that didn't work in the game that we lost! You could see that those last couple of great practices were really showing. After the game we piled back in the bus and headed back to Fondi.
Sunday night was the Super bowl, as you all know, and our president reminded us of that on the bus and told us that someone was probably going to be watching it, but we didn't know who, they didn't invite us, not a surprise there, and we knew there was no way we were watching it because our TV's a.) didn't work b.) we don't have those channels and c.) are in italian. When we got back we were trying to figure out a way to watch it. At first I tried a website I use to live stream shows, but of course my internet isn't powerful enough for that, so it didn't work. Then I had the brilliant idea of video chatting someone on skype and having them turn their computer toward the TV so we could watch it. Lynnea tried with her friend, but for some reason that didn't work, so then I remembered that my parents were probably watching it, so I called them and asked them, and they DID! But again, because our internet is not strong, it was a very delayed picture and not clear, so we were basically listening to the game and commercials with my parents commentary! It was hilarious.

Monday was or day off, and it just so happens to be the day that EVERYTHING is closed, and I mean EVERYTHING. So valentines gift idea fail #2. Adri went to Napoli to visit her boyfriend for his birthday, and Maria stayed in Rome to eat after the match with her friends then went home for her dad's birthday. So Lynnea and I were all alone in our apartment, with every single store closed and absolutely nothing to do. I would say this was one of the most boring days EVER! The TV's were not working, so we couldn't even watch Italian TV.  Lynnea has playstation and I luckily brought my Nintendo DS so we were both sitting on her bed just playing our games, looking up Super bowl commercials, talking to people and enjoying the company of each other. Then Antonio came to fix the TV's and decided to inform us that he watched ALL of the Super bowl on Sunday evening except for the last 5 min, on ESPNAmerica, and we both said "OH YEAH, we don't get that channel." And for some reason, even though he has worked with our TV's a bunch of times, he thought we had the same channels as he did at home. I was at a loss of words.

On Tuesday, Lynnea and I went to another little store that I saw a similar stuffed animal in, and it was still there, a little bigger then the other one, but the exact same, with NO balloon display in my way, so I bought it and we headed to the UPS store with our president to mail it back to the states. Excited that my valentines gift was going to work out after all.... Well first, the man told me it was going to be 85 Euro to send it....yes 85! But later I was informed that was to send it by express to get there on the 14th. So I said, it wasn't a big deal when it got there, so the price went down to 75 Euro, still WAY to much. So we asked for a smaller box, its a stuffed animal, it can be squished. He came back with a box and Lynnea and I knew we could still go smaller. That brought the price down to 50 Euro, WHY is it so expensive to send things to America, sheesh. So, in our minimal Italian we communicated that we could stuff it into a smaller box, so he came back out with a smaller box and we made it work, only to find out the price to send that one was only 43 Euro, not much better. So valentines gift idea fail #3, depressingly my great idea will not work due to the outrageous prices of the shipping system.


Italian word/phrase of the day:  peluche   "pretty much anything that is a plush (stuffed) thing"

"WE TALKIN' ABOUT PRACTICE...."

Today at practice we walked into the gym and got ready and started to stretch, only to realize that 5 people were there, plus 1 setter from the younger team they brought up to have two setters; so total of 6 people. YEAH 6 people...WHAT are we supposed to do to get better with 6 people? Of those 6, 4 of us aren't the ones that need the practice (and could actually use some rest, because of injuries), and 2 of them don't really come off the bench....just saying, why did we even have practice? Well we weren't the only ones upset about it, Maria (our italian roommate) went OFF on our coach, I didn't know talking back to elders, and coaches was ok...but she WENT OFF. Not sure exactly what she was saying, but I understood some of it, and from what I got, she basically was saying, this is not ok that people aren't showing up to practice, and we need them to be here because they need to get better and blah blah. And our coach definitely wasn't happy about it either but he sat there making excuses for them, saying oh well her back is hurt, this girl doesn't play, she has a conflict, she will be late...I'm just thinking SO, a team is a team, this girl could be playing if she practiced more often, we need everyone to run a successful practice...

After a loss, you would think that the practices would be geared toward working on the little things we need to do to get better, and really focusing on those things to make sure it doesn't hurt us in the future, yeah I thought that too. Well tonight we spent about an hour passing with a partner (this would be ok if the coach was correcting things fundamentally with people, but that wasn't happening). Then we spent some time doing individual serve receive, this we really need (well TEAM serve receive, not individual) but at least it was better then not doing it at all. It was a typical practice, with only 5 people, and nothing specific was worked on, so all I can do is hope everyone was trying to get better at practice like I was, and just hope they perform in the game. We only have 13 games left, so something better happen quickly.....


Italian word/phrase of the day: mi annoio "I am bored"