The Moment We Have Been Waiting For...CHAMPIONS!!

Today was the final match of the playoffs, the team who won this match would advance to Series B2. WE WON!

Lynnea in her seat belt on the bus

Saturday afternoon, we boarded this bus with not enough seats for everyone and headed to Bolsena, the town where the finals were being held. It is a town about 3 hours away right on a lake, the lake is pretty big, but nothing compared to the lakes in Michigan!

View of the lake and little area by our hotel in Bolsena

Valentina on a ride, we later got it to work

The bus ride was pretty fun, Maria was apparently telling jokes, i guess they were really funny, we finally figured them out later that day when she slowed them down for us; they actually were pretty funny! Once we got to Bolsena, we checked into our hotel and then headed to the gym to get a little practice in. After that we had a nice team dinner, walked by the lake and then went to bed.

After what was probably the worst night of sleep, we woke up and had a nice team breakfast, a couple of us walked by the lake again and enjoyed the view, then had a team lunch. Our game was at 4pm, so after lunch we headed back to our rooms and packed our things and then left for the gym. The anticipation leading up to the game was crazy, for some reason I had "butterflies" in my stomach. Never before have I felt this way before a volleyball game, a track meet in high school, yes, but a never a volleyball game. I was so excited for the game, and I think nervous at the same time because I think I knew how much the team wanted to win this and advance to B2. We were also playing one of the "best teams" we have seen all year and I was nervous because we frequently have "off days" and I knew that if today was one of those days for some people on the team we wouldn't really have a chance.

Our city organized a bus for the fans that left Fondi this morning at about 11am, they got there right when we started warm ups, I would say it was the most amount of fans we have had all year. They brought all types of air horns and noise makers as well, it was awesome!

We won the first set, and got pretty far ahead in the second set, but we got a little too relaxed and ended up losing the second set. We pulled together as a team, and rolled on with determination to claim the third and fourth sets, winning the match!! Our managers and presidents and important people of the club came running on the court with us and joined our celebration!

We had to get off the court pretty quickly because there was another final right after ours, but we celebrated off to the side and took pictures with the fans, and they played "We are the Champions" by Queen and we sang it in a big circle! It was such an amazing feeling!

After we showered we stayed to watch a little bit of the next match then got back on the bus and headed back to Fondi!

Lynnea and I with some members of the "Under 13" team

Valentina and Me

Marzia and I on the ride back

Italian word/ phrase of the weekend:
1. GRANDI RAGAZZE  "literally translates to big girls, but used as a way of saying great job ladies!"
2. non mi sfottere "do not tease me" one of the few "sf" words I can pronounce!

FINALS!!!!!!!!!

Last night we had our home, and second, semi-final match (because we play one home and one away for semi's). It was an 8:30pm match, and it went a lot longer then we all would have liked. Apparently because we beat this team 3-0 last weekend, we only needed to win one set this weekend to not play the GOLDEN SET and to be in the finals. We started off super strong, winning the first set, and sending us into the finals. You would think then that since there was no reason to play the rest of the game they would just end it. Seems logical to me, and with all the other rules they have here I'm surprised that is not how they do it. We still had to play the whole game, and for some reason our team decided that we wanted to play a full 5 set match before eventually winning it.

To say the least, we won the match last night, and now we are on to the finals! We have ONE MORE GAME LEFT, FOR ALL THE MARBLES, the winner of this game advances to Series B2!!



Italian word/phrase of the day: noi siamo in finale  "we are in the finals"

Climbing things=great views...

My parents left last Tuesday early in the morning. On Monday, Antonio really wanted to take my parents around and show them the surrounding little cities, Monte San Biagio, Terracina and Sperlonga. He picked us up a little after 4pm and we headed to Sperlonga. This town is on the coast, and is the town that we go to when we go to the beach. I have never actually walked through the little town, so it was fun to see. The old town of Sperlonga is built up on a cliff that over looks the sea. It is very interesting because there are very few streets that actually go through the town, there are mainly little walkways that pass by lots of houses and stores. It was like walking through a maze, I definitely would not have known where I was going. When we went on Monday the skies were very very clear and it was easy to see the islands that sit just off the coast along with the whole coast line.

Sperlonga

View of the Castle is Sperlonga

Next we headed to Terracina, and every time we drive by I always see this building up at the top of a mountain and I have always wondered if it is possible to go up there, because it was probably an awesome view, well Antonio must have had the same idea because that is the first place we went. It turns out it is the Temple of Zeus, or the ruins of the temple. In the temple there is a flat open area that looks over the edge of the mountain and you can see all of Terracina, and the other surrounding little cities as well.

My parents and me over looking Terracina

Terracina

Temple of Zeus 

Stairs in the temple

After going up the mountain he drove us into Terracina and showed us the old part of the town, it had the old road that used to pass from Rome to Naples and it had all of the old churches and buildings. Then he took us to this little gelato place, on the way out of town, it had some of the best gelato I have ever had, it was amazing!!! They had nutella gelato, and I'm pretty sure it was just straight nutella, not actually gelato!

Old church and bell tower in Terracina

Once we got in the car, we thought we were finally heading back to Fondi, on the way back he stopped and drove us up to the top of Monte San Biagio. This town is built into the side of the mountain, and has a good view of the "lakes" that surround the area. I say "lakes" because to me, being from Michigan, these are more like rivers and ponds. And that was the end of my parents tour.

View from Monte San Biagio

Italian word/phrase of the day: la bella vita  "the beautiful life"

Playoffs...

Well since we didn't get first in the regular season, we got 2nd, which means we got a spot for playoffs. Now play offs are super difficult to explain and don't really make any sense, but I'll try to make it as simple as possible.

There are two divisions in our region, A and B. The winner of A and the winner of B automatically advance to the next series, B2. Then teams 2-5 of both divisions enter playoffs, which are apparently a combined playoff pool.

We are the 1st seed in playoffs so we play the 4th seeded team of the other division for 2 semi final matches, 1 home and 1 away. Then we advance to finals, where we will play the winner of division A's 1 seeded team and our divisions 4 seeded team. The final match consists of just one match, on neutral ground. Seeds, 2 and 3 of both division are in there own separate semis and finals bracket, don't ask me why, but that is how it works, so there will be two winner of playoffs, and those two with advance to B2.

Yesterday was our fist semi match, our away, against a team that we have never seen. The gym was horrible, and it was VERY VERY VERY hot, but we won in 3! The games were kind of close, but we were able to pull together as a team and played very well. Next weekend we will have to play them again at home.

After our match some of us went to watch the two teams we will be playing the winner of for the finals. And let me tell you, no matter which team wins, we will have our work cut out for us, and it will be a very exciting and interesting final!


Italian word/phrase of the day: vittoria "victory"

Firenze

On Thursday my parents and I headed to Firenze, or as we say in America, Florence.
We had plans of getting the 6:45am train from Fondi to Rome then hopping on a direct train from Rome to Florence, but, when we got to the train station I realized I forgot my passport, so I had to go back to my apartment and get it. Instead we got on the 7:54 train to Rome and then the the 9 something train to Florence.

The fake David, the one they let you take pictures of

Once we got there we had to find our way to the Gallery of Academia because we had ticket reservations to get in. Florence is the hotspot for a lot of the famous art from the Renaissance era and since my mother studied art she really wanted to go see it. The Gallery of Academia is where Michelangelo's original David statue is now housed, along with his other statues named Slaves. They don't allow photos inside the gallery and with the amount of people standing there yelling NO PHOTOS, I really didn't feel like taking my chances. But take it from me, the David is AMAZING! It is absolutely HUGE and the amount of detail that was put into this sculpture is incredible.











After the gallery we had some time to wonder around the city before our next gallery reservation. We headed to the see the church, bell tower and baptistery which were all clumped together. Once you enter into the plaza were these building are it is amazing; the size of the church alone is breath taking, but then you see the way it is painted and decorated and it just makes it even more amazing. We waited in a quick line to enter the Cathedral and look at the dome, which was designed and built by Brunelleschi. The dome of the cathedral is painted elaborately and is very beautiful.

Baptistery 

Church and Bell Tower

View of the church and dome

Inside of the dome

Me in front of the church

Next to the church is Giotto's Bell Tower, which of course I had to climb. There is also an option to climb the dome of the church, but we only had time to do one of them and I thought the bell tower would be cooler, not sure as to why. So my parents and I climbed to the top of the bell tower, 414 steps. It was a little bit of working getting up there, but the view from the top of the bell tower was amazing.

My parents and me inside the tower

View of the church and dome from the tower

Me on top of the bell tower

Giotto's Bell Tower

View from the tower

After climbing to bell tower we headed to the next thing on our list, the Ponte Vecchio, or the Old Bridge, the only thing I really wanted to go to Florence to see. It is a bridge that crosses the Arno river and it is lined with shops and is a beautiful bridge. Again, I don't know why, but it is a really beautiful sight and is so much better in person then in pictures! After seeing that, I didn't really care what we did.

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio

We had ticket reservations for the Uffizi Gallery, which houses a lot of paintings from some of the most famous paintings done by people such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Botticelli.  The main painting that we really wanted to see was Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. Since we were kind of on a time limit because we had to get to our train, we were fine with quickly going through the rooms looking at the paintings, but we really took our time at certain ones, including The Birth of Venus. It was also nearing the end of the day, and we were getting tired, so after seeing The Birth of Venus, we were pretty much ready to go, so we finished walking through the rest of the gallery and then exited and headed back to the train station.

After a bunch of delayed trains we finally made it back to Fondi.


Italian word/phrase of the day: campanile "bell tower"

Small buses and smaller roads.....Capri

Monday, another day off, my parents and I decided to venture down to the Island of Capri. After getting up and looking at the cloudy sky, we decided that we would go anyways, it was better then sitting in my apartment all day. So we headed to the Fondi train station and got on the train to Napoli. Once we got to the Napoli train station we hopped on the metro to stop the ticket man and the internet said. The metro stop was in the part of the city that was right on the coast. We followed the signs to the port and walked up to the ticket office advertising boats to the islands, only to find out that the boats to Capri where sold at a port about 5km or 3 miles, down the coast! It was a nice day, so we decided we would walk along the coast to the next port, turns out it was a super long walk, and I was super annoyed with how close, but how far away it was, probably because I was so anxious to get to Capri!

After walking along the coast, from what seemed like one end of the city to the other, we finally got to the port that had boats to Capri. We bought our tickets and waiting at the docks watching the boats. Our boat, scheduled for 12:40, got there a little late, and we finally ended taking off from Napoli at around 1pm. We had the option of sitting inside, or sitting on the upper deck outside, we choose outside so we could see the view! It was about 30 to 45 minutes to get to Capri and it was absolutely beautiful! It was like one giant mountain in the middle of the ocean.

View of Capri from the dock

Once we got there we decided to take the bus up to the little town called Anacapri, its a little further up the mountain then the town center of Capri. We got on this tiny tiny bus, it had about 8 seats and standing room for about 5 people, and we headed up the mountain. The road looked like a one way road and at first we thought it was, until we saw a car headed right for us. There were large stone walls on either side of the road, mainly marking the entrances to the houses on the island. As the car approached us our bus moved over, inches from wall, only allowing inches for the car to pass. We were all amazed at how fast our bus driver was going and how it didn't even seem to phase him that there was another bus coming right after the car. Our bus driver stayed close to the way, and as the buses passed each other the mirrors were almost touching, the bus drivers literally could have stuck their hands out the window and given each other a high five as they drove by. The bus driver didn't seem to flinch as he rounded the corners of the road that zig-zagged up the mountain, at one point as he rounded the curve, the wall on the side of the road was so low and we were on the very edge of the mountain it looked like the bus was going to drive right off the mountain, that part was a little scary.

View from the bus ride up to Anacapri

From the bus window, how close to the wall we were

When we finally got to Anacapri, the bus lets you off right at the beginning of a little walkway that leads to the historical center of the town. As we walked down the little path we looked at all of the little boutique clothing shops, jewelry shops, and houses that lined either side of the pathway. We were super hungry, since by the time we got there it was about 2:30pm (lunch time). We passed a lot of little restaurants that were advertising lunch menus and all of these specials, but with my experience those places are really tailored towards the tourists and they aren't actually true authentic Italian food and they cost WAY too much, so I passed right by them. I found this little place that wasn't heavily advertised and the prices were as they should have been and it looked like authentic Italian food. The entrance to the restaurant was off of the main path, but you had to walk under this walk way of vines and then turn the corner and walk into the tiny dining area. It looked like an entrance to a private residence, so I figured not many people would be there, WRONG, we walked in and there was only one table left and pretty much everyone else there was American. Although there were a lot of tourists there, it still very authentic and very home cooked food. My dad got a pizza, my mother got a nice chicken salad and I got the gnocchi. IT WAS AMAZING! After the wonderful meal, I had their homemade, special recipe pistachio gelato, again AMAZING!

Church in the center of Anacapri

After our lunch, we finished walking down the little pathway to the center of Anacapri, when we got there, there was a beautiful old church and beautiful painted tile benches. There really isn't a lot in this area, just little stores and private homes to look at as you walk. Once we got to the center we decided to turn around and head back. We found this little leather sandal shop, where you can choose the type of straps you want and they will make the sandal right there as you wait. There are a lot of these shops all over the island, but this one made sandals in size 11!!!! So I stopped and looked at his options, and finally chose the sandal I wanted, as the man sat there and put together my sandal, I looked at the pictures on his shop window, only to discover a picture of him standing next to Kobe Bryant. He then told me that he was one of the best sandal makers in this place and he had made sandals for multiple famous people, Americans and Italians! He then told me to take a picture with him because I would want it and signed the bottom of my shoe and on our way we went! We got the bus back to the Grande Marina. The bus ride down the mountain was just as tight and just as scary as the ride up! Once we got to the marina we bought our ticket for a boat ride back to Napoli, and got on the boat.

The sandal maker

These boat was not even close to full, and only had the option for sitting inside, which was fine because the weather was getting very cold. This ride took about an hour to get back to Napoli, then we headed back to the train station and got our train back to Fondi!

Me in Capri

What an amazing trip! Capri is amazing and I really wish I had some more time to explore the little towns and what they have to offer! Maybe next time!

Italian word/phrase of the day: nave  "ship"

Waiting for the boat back to Napoli

Boat we took back from Capri to Napoli

Galleria Borghese and the day in Roma

Today my parents and I got up and headed to Rome for the day. My mom really wanted to go to the Galleria Borghese, which has a lot of famous art in it. You have to buy tickets in advance for the gallery, and they sell out fast. After trying two times to buy tickets, we weren't sure if we actually did or not, so we headed there a little early to figure it out. Turns out, we didn't pre-order tickets, but luckily there was a nice man who had two extra tickets and gave them to us for free. My dad decided to wait outside, he said he didn't want go in, so my mom and I went ahead without him. We got audio guides to help explain what the main pieces in each room where. Most of the items were Bernini's famous sculptures and Caravaggio's paintings.

Galleria Borghese

My parents walking in the park outside of the Galleria

After that, we headed to the Pantheon because we had never been inside of it before. We passed the Trevi Fountain on our way, and walked around the different Piazza's in the area. After that we ate lunch at a little restaurant and then headed to the Monument of Victor Emmanuel II.

Trevi Fountain 

Pantheon

Parents at lunch

The monument was open and they allow you to walk around the outside and the church that is connected to it in the back. From the balcony of the monument you are able to see the skyline of Rome and all of the different domes of the churches and buildings and the mountains.

Then after that, we took an elevator up to the top of the monument and we were able to see even more of Rome. We could see the Colosseum and the ruins of the Forum. Then we walked past the Colosseum on our way back to the metro.

It was a fun relaxing day in Rome because we didn't have an agenda of what we wanted to see because we had already been there before. And I felt like I knew my way around the city!

The Monument of Victor Emmanuel II

 Italian word/phrase of the day: cornetti "croissants" - the breakfast food here, usually filled with chocolate, custard or jam

Me with my parents on top of the monument

View of the Colosseum from the monument 

Me on top of the monument 

In front of the Colosseum 

My parents in front of the Colosseum 

Coppa Lazio Celebration!

Friday my parents and I slept in MAJOR! We were wiped out from our trip to Pompei! In the afternoon, I showed them around Fondi, we walked to the town center and saw the castle and the center of the square. We had some gelato and sat in the square and people watched.

After that, it was time to get ready for practice, my parents sat at a little cafe across the street from our gym for a little while until my coach was done with our pre-game speech. Then they came in a watched our practice. We had our normal Friday before a game practice, mainly just scrimmaging!!

After practice, everyone got ready and we headed to a pizza place to celebrate our Coppa Lazio win! My parents joined us along with our team president, our managers and some donors, etc., it was tons of fun. We ordered anti-pastas, pizzas, desserts, wines, beers, and limoncellos. It was just a great time with everyone from our team!


Italian word/phrase of the day: potente  "potent"  one of our liberos likes to use this word! she is small but potent!

Lynnea and Simona at our team party! 

Lynnea and Simona again! 

Team and coach having a good time! 

Coppa Lazio party! 

Teammates!