Pasqua, Pasquetta and conquering Rome

Man this week has gone by quickly!

Last Sunday, as I'm sure you're aware, was Easter or in Italian Pasqua. Earlier last week, Antonio invited us to eat Easter lunch with him and his family, I took him up on the invitation! I met him in the town center and we walked to his house. His wife, mother, sister, brother-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her family were all there to greet me at the door! I guess his wife's sister and her family and their mother all live in different apartments in the same building as Antonio, interesting.  We sat down at the table and food was brought out to us. There was ravioli, lamb, roast beef and potatoes. After that there was a special Pasqua dessert that Antonio's mother made, it is some sort of rice cake/bread like thing. There was also some sort of strawberry and possibly banana type dish served, it was delicious!

I was really happy to spend Easter with someone's family and not alone, and I am thankful that they invited me into their home to celebrate with them!

Turns out that Monday is also a celebrated holiday here, it is called Pasquetta. Typically people go to the beach and barbecue with family and friends and just relax all day. One of our friends, Fabiana, told us that we were welcome to come with her and her friends to the beach and barbecue with them! Of course, it decided to be an overcast day and not very pleasant beach weather. She sent us a text that morning saying that she would pick us up at 11 and we would go to Gaeta, a town about 30min. away. With very little details on what the day would have in store for us, we got dressed and packed our bathing suits just in case it cleared up. It didn't.

When we got in the car, she told us that we were going to some of her guy friends house in Gaeta, and they played volleyball for the men's Gaeta team. When we got there we were greeted by everyone, and some of them knew english and were very eager to speak to us! We sat there and had some appetizers, before the main meal, which was pasta, NOT BBQ (although we could smell it from another apartment). It wasn't raining but wasn't sunny, so afterwards we decided to walk down to the beach and try to play some beach volleyball. The courts were filled with people playing, so we just kinda passed the ball around until it started raining and we walked back to the house and had some dessert. After that we sat around and watched a mens match on TV and then headed back to Fondi.

The group walking to the beach

It was fun to meet some new people and learn new sayings and laugh at the translations, those always provide hours of laughter.


Today, we had the day off, so Lynnea and I decided to go to Rome and go to the big mall (centro commerciale) that they have there. So we looked up what bus to get on from the train station and where to get off. Once we got to the train station we successfully asked where Line (Linea) 38 was and if the ticket we had would work for it, then got the bus and figured out that we had to get off at the last stop, in front of the mall. It was quite a long bus ride because the mall is outside of the center of Rome. At the second to last stop (which was in front of the mall) we debated on getting off because other people were and we could see the mall, but we decided that we would listen to the directions that the mall website gave us. We waited until the last stop, which was a bus hub for that area and NOWHERE near the mall. We figured out that we should have gotten off at the second to last stop, even though the directions said the last one. So we waited about 15 min for the next Linea 38 bus to come around and hopped on, this time getting off at the correct stop. We entered the mall, and spent the day there! It was fun, we found a place for lunch that was similar to Noodles and Company, and had some Pad Thai, it was AMAZING!!!! Then afterwards we headed back out to the bus stop to catch the Linea 38 bus back to the train station and hopped back on the train to Fondi. I would say we successfully conquered Rome! hahaha it feels GREAT!

Lynnea and Me on the beach in Gaeta

Italian word/phrase of the day: Pasquetta "Easter Monday"

COPPA LAZIO CHAMPS!!!!!

Today was the finals of the Coppa Lazio, our regional cup, we played in a town called Marino against Fonte Roma Eur, the first team to beat us in the regular season.

Since this weekend is Easter, we didn't have a regular season game this weekend, so the Coppa Lazio finals were today. We thought we were going to have to play Terracina (our rivals) again because they won their first semi against Fonte, BUT, this past Wednesday when the two teams played their second semi-final match against each other, Fonte beat Terracina, forcing a GOLDEN SET!! Fonte won, so we played them today!

Our game was at 4pm, so we left Fondi around 1pm. We were all super excited to play them again because  they were the first team to beat us, and their coach told the paper that after we lost to them we wouldn't be any good anymore, so we wanted to prove them wrong!  They had a couple of their girls hurt and not able to play, but they beat us last time with their "second line" so I wasn't going to take this game lightly.

We started off a little slow, getting behind in the first set, but we were able to pull it together and win that set! Then the second and third set seemed to come easily! Our team was playing GREAT together! Our defense was working and we weren't making many mistakes! Glad to see that our week of defensive practices payed off, and we have finally understood the defensive system they want us to play.

Yes, you read that correctly, WE WON 3 sets to 0!!! WE WON THE COPPA LAZIO!!!!!
After our match was the men's finals, and today was also the finals for the Series D teams of Lazio, so those teams came over to our gym for one big ceremony at the end. There was a food tent outside during the men's game that we gathered around and ate, then went and watched some of the game and waited for the ceremony!

Enjoy the pictures!!!  More photos are in my facebook album!




Italian word/phrase of the day: "Pasqua"  Easter

After the match with two of our fans! 

Drinking some wine with some of the team!

Getting our cup

Look at those medals! 

The Americans! 

Team with the cup

Me and Lynnea holding the cup

Me holding the Coppa Lazio!

Me and Adri 

Lynnea, Francesca(libero) and Me

Lynnea, Marzia and Me

I've been waiting for the day!

Super happy about my medal! 

WINNERS!!!

Leaning with the Tower.....PIIIIIIISAAAAA!

This morning at 5:30am Lynnea and I left the apartment in Fondi and headed to the little bus stop around the corner to get the bus to the Fondi-Sperlonga train station, we were headed to Pisa for the day. We had reserved our tickets to climb the tower a couple weeks ago, and we were excited to get there!

First we had to take a train from Fondi to Rome, where we would then buy our tickets for the train to Pisa. When we got to Rome we got in line to get the tickets for the train, we wanted to take the direct and fast train (Frecciabianca) to Pisa, so we wouldn't have to make any stops and change trains. Well, the line was slow, then we figured out we could go into another line a little further down. By the time we got up to the ticket counter it was 8am. The train we wanted left at 8:07. YIKES!  We told them what we wanted, and after figuring it all out, he told us what platform (which was wrong) and we went looking for the train. We found it at 8:05, whew!
NOPE, the train was pulling away from the platform, doors shut, and picking up speed. Good thing I wrote down the times of some other trains, that I figured out would still get us there on time, we would just have to make one stop.  We headed back to the ticket counter and asked the woman if she could help us out, first she said she couldn't refund the ticket, we could just catch the next one that went to Pisa at noon. Well that wouldn't work because, 1. that was already half the day gone and 2. we had a tower climb at 12:20 (non-refundable). So I asked her about the other trains that changed in Firenze (Florence) and at first she said no we couldn't do it, then she said it was full, then she said oh yeah you can take the one at 8:45am and all you have to do is pay the difference in the fare (which was like 8 euro). Why that wasn't an option in the first place, I don't know, but it worked out, we bought it, and we headed to the platform! Found our train, got on board and realized that she put us is different seats AND in different cars. Luckily no one was sitting in the seat next to my assigned one, so Lynnea sat next to me! We got settled in and headed off to Firenze!
Once we got to Firenze, we quickly asked a nice assistance man where the train to Pisa was, he told us, and we hopped on for another hour ride to Pisa. We got there at 11:30, and headed right to the tower to get our tickets for the tour.  It's about a 20-30min walk directly from the train station to the piazza where the main tourist attractions are; could be longer if you stop to look at the shops or venture off the side roads to see the other less known sights. We decided to save those things for on the way back to the train station. We walked down the main street and as we turned the corner where the sign was pointing to the tower, THERE IT WAS, leaning above the other buildings, and I was just so excited that we were there.

View from the street

There I was seeing this in person, after so many years of reading about it in school, watching shows where people visit it, and always seeing it on TV, there I was getting ready to walk UP IT.

Lynnea and I checked our purses (they don't allow any type of purse or bag during the climb) and went up the tower! The stairs were a little bit concave, dipping in the center of each step, it was kind of difficult to climb, not to mention the amount of steps you have to walk up. After going up the first level, they usher you out at the first level, to take pictures and walk around the tower, it was fun to feel it go from incline to decline as you circled the outside of the tower!
Then they usher you back inside and up some more steps, where you exit at the next level,  then you go back in and go up more spiral like steps and exit at the level where the bells are, I thought this was the last level we were allowed on, so Lynnea and I are walking around, sitting on the steps, and we realize there is ANOTHER level, the VERY VERY TOP.

In front of the 

View from the first level

Me on the first level of the tower in front of the Cathedral

Ringing the bell!

Me on top of the tower

View of the Cathedral and Baptistery

View of the Cathedral

Me on top of the tower again

The stairwell to the very top

Me walking up the tiny stairwell

This is a tiny tiny tiny spiral stairwell that you have to walk up and then you are on top of the tower! Looking down onto the square of all of the people sitting on the grass, the tops of the houses in the city, the different monuments in the piazza, and the view of the mountains in the distance, it was just incredible and so unreal! We walked around, took our pictures, then headed back down the steps.


After the tour, we got our tickets to tour the other buildings in the Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles). The buildings in this square are: The Cathedral (Duomo di Pisa), the Baptistery (Battistero), cemetery (Campo Santo Monumentale) the Leaning Tower (Torre) and 2 different museums.  After the tower tour, we went into the Cathedral and walked around and looked at all of the different artwork, pulpits, and items they have set up.

The pulpit in the Cathedral

Front of the church

After the Cathedral, we went into the Baptistery, where you can also climb some steps and go up to the dome area of it and get a great view out one of the windows. YAY, more steps! I read somewhere that if you are lucky, sometimes one of the guards or workers will go to the center of the baptistery and sing some chords and let the people listen to them echo. Well, we got lucky because they did that while we were in there and it was AMAZING! The sound was beautiful!!!

The Baptistery

Looking down into the Baptistery from the top level

The tombs in the cemetery

After that we went into the cemetery, where they have what looks like old tombs along the walls (I think they were empty). In the halls of this building they have a lot of statues and artwork that is being  reconstructed.

The cemetery from the outside

The art that was restored from the walls of the cemetery

The courtyard in the cemetery

After that we had to of course take our pictures with the tower! We walked around and looked at the many carts lining the streets selling little souvenirs, and went to a nice little restaurant to have some lunch!

Just hanging out with the tower!

Leaning against the tower!

 Then it was time to head back to the train station, and we had enough time to stop at some of the shops we saw on the main street. First we stopped a little pasticceria that I read is the place to go (and it was). It's called Salza, and the desserts this place had looked amazing! They were very colorful and so sweet looking, I bought a little chocolate duck!

The sweets in the shop

The chocolate duck

Then we headed to the said to be best gelato bar in the area, you know I had to get some. IT WAS AMAZING!! Then we walked over the Middle Bridge (Ponte di Mezzo) which crosses the Arno river, and headed back to the train station, where we made our train back to Rome, then rome back to Fondi!

Lynnea and me with our gelato in front of the gelato bar!

On the bridge crossing the Arno River!

It was an amazing day!!! Here in the link to my album with all the pictures! enjoy!!!


Italian word/phrase of the day: La Torre Pendente  "The Leaning Tower"

The GOLDEN SET

Right, so when I said that we had the Coppa di Lazio finals today, I didn't really mean that. Apparently the semi-finals consists of two games, one home and one away against the same team. So today we played a home match against those "young girls" that we played last week. And you may be thinking, like I was, what happens if they end up winning this game? Well then we would play the GOLDEN SET!  When? Right away! So, tonights game could have gone to basically 6 sets. Luckily we won in 4 sets, NOW allowing us to go onto the finals...which I think, will be against Terracina, unless they lost their golden set of course.

This game was not the best, probably because we started playing at about 8:45 or 9pm. Its a good thing they didn't have all of their first line girls, or we could have easily been playing that golden set!


Well thats all for today!


Italian word/phrase of the day: ospedale  "hospital"

Trip to Italian Hospital...Check

Saturday we had an away game and we won in 4. Sunday I woke up and went to the market with Adri and then came home and went to the men's game.

After that, my stomach started hurting really bad, and I started to get the chills. NOT AGAIN!  I just had the flu a couple weeks ago. Unlike a couple weeks ago, this wasn't a 24 hour thing. Yesterday it didn't get any better, I couldn't eat anything or drink anything, not even water, without my stomach hurting. Then I had been sleeping on and off until about 4 in the morning when  I woke up with horrible horrible stomach pain, a horrible headache, dizziness and a really high fever. I could not lay there and wait for the pain to pass, because it wasn't. So I woke up Lynnea, and she called Antonio and he came and got me and took me to the hospital.
We went to the emergency room, well it was more like a ready care then emergency room, and they took me back to the room. There is only one room, with one table, and a little desk, it wasn't like our emergency rooms with lots of beds with curtain dividers. I am not sure if they have a separate place for real emergencies and this was just for sicknesses, but it was different and really relaxing. They examined my stomach, gave  me some medicine and hooked up an IV. The IV fluids were in old school glass bottles instead of the bagged fluids that we use in the states, I got two bottles of fluid, my headache went away, and my stomach started to hurt less. After about an hour there they gave me directions for what to do at home and let me go. I got back to my apartment at about 7am.
I slept for a long time, and woke up to a text from Antonio saying that his mother had made me some food that the doctors said I could eat, and he left it on the kitchen table. I attempting to eat a little rice, and have been sleeping all day.

I hope this will pass soon, soon as in by tomorrow, we have the Coppa di Lazio finals tomorrow, against Terracina, its an important game, I'm trying to win those medals.

Well now I can check going to an Italian Hospital off of my to-do list...ha


Italian word/phrase of the day: pronto soccorso  "first-aid" (name for emergency room or ready care)

DERBYYYYYYYYYYY

This past weekend we had a DERBY match, which is what they call a match against your rivals. It was a home match against Terracina, the city right around the mountain from us. They were pretty good the last time we played them, they took us to 5 sets, but we won. This weekend, they were also very good. Our team seemed to be having a rough time starting strong, and getting excited about the match. There was some butting of heads, and well why draw it out, we lost, in 4 sets. Now it will pretty much take a miracle for us to get 1st in the league, but you never know, as we have shown, any team can lose on any day. Looks like we will be going to playoffs.

Today we had the semi-final match for the Coppa di Lazio, we played a team in Rome. They were very good, and it was a very good but difficult match, we ended up winning in 5 very close sets! We probably should have beaten them in 3, but our team hit some rough areas in the match, but luckily we were able to pull out of it. I don't know why, but our coach kept telling us that they were a young team, which Lynnea and I didn't really understand why that was significant, doesn't matter how old the team is, if they have volleyball skills they have volleyball skills. It was just interesting to see the types of things they choose to focus on during "scouting reports."  Well, now we are on to the finals, and guess who we play, Terracina! So hopefully we will bring our A game this time! 

Well thats all for now, just a quick update. 

Italian word/phrase of the day: strano "strange"

Pesce d'Aprile- APRIL FOOLS!

April 1st!!!!!!!!! Hope you played some awesome tricks on people today! 

Today was also my coaches birthday, and last week we were told that we were planning a surprise party for him at our house after practice. BUT they neglected to tell us, or tell us so we could understand, that we had to make a dish to bring to the party, SO, upon waking up this morning, Maria reminded us that we had to bring a dish to the party. GREAT! Well with the stores being closed from 1-4pm, I had limited options for making something, and anything too elaborate was out, so I thought to myself, what are typical dishes that one would bring to a potluck? FRUIT SALAD!!! So at around 5pm I headed out to the stores to find the different fruits that I wanted to put into the salad. I got fresh pineapples, oranges, strawberries, apples, and kiwi. I sat down at the kitchen table and chopped up all the different types of fruits, everything was going great until I started to peel the oranges. Apparently I picked up RED oranges. I have never seen these before, but they are a huge thing in Italy, they have several different pops and juices made of red oranges. It was too late to go out and try to find orange oranges, so I just used the red ones. I finished making my salad just in time to get ready for practice. 

Since today is Friday, we always have a talk with our coach before practice in the locker room about the team we are playing. Lynnea and I decided that we would play an April Fools joke on our coach and our team. We took a couple of our teammates outside with us to talk about it, and they agreed to help us! So after our coach got done talking about everything and was about to leave the locker room, Lynnea jumped out of her seat and screamed that she saw a mouse, and started pointing by me, so I swung my feet on the bench and the other girls involved did the same! Our coach jumped around and yelled and looked, and by the look on his face, WE GOT HIM! At the end of it, we yelled "pesce d'aprile" which literally means fish of april, which is the Italian April Fool's day saying. Read all about the traditional Pesce d'Aprile jokes. I really wish I was able to capture his expression on tape, it was HILARIOUS. 

After practice, everyone came over to our house and sat in the kitchen to wait for our coach. It worked out perfectly that two of the girls in our house are kinda of sick, so we were able to call him over to bring medicine with our manager and he would come in and talk to the girls. Then when he got the the kitchen, we turned on the lights and all yelled surprise! haha poor man, got surprised twice in one day! It was tons of fun, everyone ate; I got kind of worried because nobody was eating the fruit salad or "macedonia" as they call it, but then I remembered from my kiwi experience, that Italians usually eat fruit after the dinner and before the sweets. Sure enough, after dinner, they headed for the fruit salad, and they LOVED IT!!! Everyone seemed to be having a great time, my coach was joking around with people, and dancing, it was really funny to seem him this way! 

What a successful April 1st in Italia! 

My coach when he walked in the kitchen

Some of my teammates 

Our president and my coach acting like fools! 

His cake! who knew is was only 56....NOT ME

My coach acting like a fool blowing out his candles 

The president playing a joke, the candles now say 95!

Italian word/phrase of the day: "pesce d'Aprile"  fish of april or April Fools!