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"