Rome Adventure

This past week has been pretty usual, but fun! Our dinners at the house have been pretty fun, nothing special, just all of us have been laughing and joking around after dinner, and having a good time together! Maria made an AMAZING desert for all of us one night! And we love to just joke around with each other!

Me and Valentina after practice this week! 

Lynnea with Maria's glasses on at dinner!

This morning I woke up and headed to Rome on the train with Valentina, my teammate who lives in Rome. I was headed there to go watch a B1 match, and she was headed back home. I had the directions written out on what buses to take once I got off the train and what stops to get off at, but then Valentina decided that I would have so much time in Rome before the match, and she wanted me to come with her!

It was a fun day with my teammate, and I am happy that she invited me to come along with her and help me along on my adventure to watch this match.


Once we got off the train we took the metro to the San Paolo (Saint Paul) stop, and she took me to see the San. Paolo church! Inside there was amazing architecture, like most churches in Italy, and the tomb of San. Paolo. At that time there was a group of people around the tomb signing a prayer, and it happened to sound perfectly pitched and harmonized, both Valentina and I were surprised by how wonderful it sounded! At the church we met up with Valentina's boyfriend and then headed (by car) to Valentina's house.

Bell Tower of the San Paolo Church

Inside the church

Her mother cooked us a wonderful lunch, and I got to meet her dog, a basset hound, and we sat and watched tv for a little while, then headed out to go about our day. They decided to take me to the match, so I didn't have to take the bus there and back by myself.

Me and Valentina with our gelato at the park

Before we went there, they took me to this little park area by a lake, where there is some of the best gelato! Then we headed to the gym to watch the match.


After the match we went to a mall where there was an IKEA, because she is buying things for her house and she wanted to look there, and then they took my back to the train station and I hopped on a train back to Fondi.

Italian word/phrase of that day: stai zitto  "shut up" they speak english and one of them said it to the other and so I asked what it was in Italian of course.

Lake view

Olive tree planted to represent the peace between Roman Catholic Church and Lutheran Church

San Paolo Church

Inside the church

Courtyard at the church

Column remains 

Success!

Well this past week has been quite successful in the volleyball department! Last Saturday, the 12th, we had an away game, and we won in 3! Then on Wednesday we had our 2nd round game in the Coppa di Lazio (our region cup) at home, and we beat that team in 3 as well. Then, this past Sunday we had another home game, this one for our regular season, and we won against that team in 3 also! I would say we are on a role! Yes, these teams aren't the greatest of competition and definitely aren't the hardest teams we will face, but, any team can lose on any day, so its nice to win, especially in 3 sets!
With the 2nd round win for the Coppa di Lazio, we are now headed to the semi-finals, not sure when those are, probably some time in April. With our two wins in our regular season we are still tied for first place.
Practices have been great, we have all been working really hard to get better, and it really shows in the games; you can see that we are more of a team, and working together as a system, its really exciting to see!

The weather has been nicer each day, it rained a lot last week, but it was warmer and we had a couple days of sunshine which were really warm and I can't wait for spring!!!!



Italian word/phrase of the day: primavera "spring"

Festa della Donna

Yesterday was the day of Carnevale in Italy, which is very similar to a Mardi Gras type of celebration. I read that children throw confetti on each other, which I found to be true because there has been confetti all over the streets for the last week; I also witnessed children doing that yesterday. I guess the best place to celebrate Carnevale in Italy is in Venice, that is where they make the best masks. One of the celebrations is known as Festa della Donna, which translates literally to "party of the woman," but is known as International Women's Day. In Italy, on this day, men give the women in their lives yellow mimosa flowers to let them know they are appreciated. Read more about Carnevale and Festa della Donna.

The yellow flowers and pasties of course

Yesterday before practice, Lynnea and I went out searching for masks to wear, and realized that people were buying costumes, like Halloween costumes, so after talking to some Italian friends we decided to buy some costumes and wear them that night. At practice our coach gave us little yellow flowers, and their were of course pasties, anything for them to bring pasties to practice.
 After practice we got ready for dinner, the team went to eat before going to Unico (the "disco" in Fondi). After we ate, we went to a pub to see some people the girls know, and everyone was in costumes, it really was like halloween. Some people were in full out costumes that you would find in stores in America, and others had traditional masks from Venice; believe me, if I would have had time to get a mask, I would have gone all out and found a traditional one, but we were limited with time and stores.

Our Carnevale costumes....I went blonde!!

Later we headed to Unico, and let me just say, it was PACKED with people in all different types of costumes, and people of all ages. One of the 15 or 16 year olds that practices with us was there with her friends...yeah I don't know what the age limit is, but this seems to be normal. I'm pretty sure EVERYONE was in a costume! There were a lot of Kobe's and I think a couple LaBron's; a couple football players, one girl in an American flag outfit, and a lot of men dressed as girls. It was really cool to see all the different costumes and masks.

Lynnea and me in our costumes

So I successfully witnessed the Italian Carnevale!

People in costumes 

Carnevale!!! 

Italian word/phrase of the day: maschera "mask"

Back in the WIN column

Well the first week of Marzo has been a good one!
Today we had a home game, and it was very successful! We beat them in 3 sets and we are now 15-3!
This week of practicing hard and actually working on things that we needed to work on really paid off. On the court we were talking and playing great defense. You could really see everyone working together and we just looked like such a TEAM!! Now, I hope just because we had one success we don't stop going hard in practice! We still have 8 games in the season left, and we need to work hard to win them!

On a side note, Carnevale is coming up, March 8th, and the town is getting ready for that. We don't have this holiday in America, but it seems to be like a Halloween type holiday with a little more celebrating then what we have. Looks like I will have to turn to google to learn more about it, since no one can really explain it to me, don't worry, I will find an explanation for this holiday, and I will share it.  All of the stores are selling costumes for little kids, and the photo shops offer pictures with different themed backdrops. These costumes are not just normal costumes, they are the most elaborate costumes I have seen for little kids, EVER. I will have to take a picture and capture the detail of these costumes. Apparently on Tuesday there is a very important celebration (because we bumped the time of practice up) and we are all going out together after, so I will be sure to fill everyone in on that! I just hope they tell me if I need a costume or not....

Italian word/phrase of the day: insieme  "together"   insiemo bene  literally: "together well" but used as a "start strong" kind of comment

love this picture! 

BLOCK

as Lynnea says, "she really thought she was going to win that?"

MARZO!!!!

WOW! It's already March (Marzo), I can't believe it!

Since there isn't a lot to do in this town but eat and workout, thats exactly what we have done. Lynnea and I have established 3 places that we frequent, to the point where the people that work there now know our names and what we like to order. These places are: Maruzzella, a nice restaurant (really the only "real" restaurant I have seen in Fondi). The woman who usually takes our order is very quite, but knows that we like a lot of oregano on our Caprese! She is also pregnant, 6 months, and its a boy! Hahah yes, we know them like that!
The next place is My Way Pizzeria, the guy who owns it is named Antoine and he is apparently an old volleyball player. He really likes us, we are even able to call him on the phone and tell him we will be in after practice usually around 11pm, and he will stay open for us! He frequently gives us free samples of food, like on Monday, he pretty much gave us a free meal. We both had steak and salad after we saw him serve it to another customer, and he didn't charge us for them! We told him "thank you a million"(Grazie mille) and he said "no no, grazie mille a voi" (thanks a million to YOU), he is always so nice and has a huge smile on is face!
The last place that we often go to is a little cafe and gelateria (gelato cafe), and there are usually two younger people who work there, Fabio and Eleonora. Lately, since its been kind of cold outside, we sit inside and eat our gelato (they have amazing flavors! my new favorites are pistachio and fior di latte!) One night we were sitting in there when our favorite TV show came on (Amici, its like American Idol and so you think you can dance mixed together.) One of the singers is from Fondi, and we like to watch, and they noticed that we were watching it and talking about it. Then a couple nights later, or maybe the next night, there was a soccer game on, and we were watching it and Fabio asked us if we like soccer, and we said yes, and he said he loves it, but only Napoli (which was one of the teams playing) and he was going crazy about every goal. Eleonora asked us how old we were and when we played in Fondi next and where. We told her when we played and invited them to come and they seemed super excited to come watch!

On another note, last Saturday we had an away game against the second place team, to cut to the point, we lost, 3-1. We only got one point from that loss and now we are either tied for first, or not very far ahead. But after the match, other players were talking to our coach and telling him that there is no way we could play together in a game if we didn't play together in practice, and didn't start doing more game related things in practice. Apparently we weren't the only ones that noticed that things needed to change. Now that we are playing teams for the second time, they are starting to get better, and we seem to be staying the same. The upside, we have had two practices this week and they have both been GREAT! We have actually started to work on some of our weaknesses and actually talking about things that aren't working on the court during games! Maybe people are starting to feel the pressure and the urgency to start winning, hopefully, we still have a good chunk of our season to go.
Many of the other European counties are entering playoffs, well not in Italy. We are still going strong in our regular season games, and playoffs all depend on how we end up in the season. If we come in first, we don't go to play-offs and we end on May 8th (yes our regular season doesn't end until then). If we get anywhere from 2nd-5th in the regular season then we will enter playoffs, and that could go until the end of May.


Italian word/phrase of the day: comunque  "anyway"  I have heard it used for the longest time and it is probably one of my new favorite words!