All-Stars

After winning our last Turkish league game of the first half of Turkish League the All-Star game was played in a city in Northern Turkey. It is Turkish all-stars vs. Americans or Foreigners. Last year I played on the Foreigner team, but after getting my passport this summer I was on the Turkish side. We hung in with the all powerful mighty Americans for most of the game but lost it by a few points in the end. It was mostly a game for entertainment so we hope we gave the fans something to be excited about. The city did a good job of putting together the other entertainment. We had a famous Turkish singer for the half time show. I felt out of place when all of my Turkish teammates joined in singing and I had no clue what she was saying.

After the short time to relax and have a fun game we were back to Turkish league and won our next two games. The last one was against my former team at my old gym. it was good to see some familiar faces on and off the court. We are starting playoffs for Euroleague this Tuesday. We will face a great team from Poland. It is a best of 3 series with the first game at home, the second game in Poland and if necessary the third game back in Istanbul.

On another note we got a new player after the break. Our team terminated the contract with our French player and added Katie Smith. She is a veteran in the WNBA, olympic gold medalist, WNBA champion and MVP. Needless to say we think we got a pretty good player. I am excited to play with her the rest of the season.

Awesome Vacation

We lost our last 2 games before we went home for Christmas but I quickly forgot about those on my plane ride back to the states to enjoy a nice 11 day break. And it was as good as it could be. I flew into Chicago where my dad was waiting for me to drive to South Bend, Indiana. My entire mom's side of the family made it in from all over the country to be together for a few days at Christmas. This is pretty rare as there about 30 of us. It was great to relax and catch up with relatives I haven't seen for a while. The only downer was I was battling back from being quite sick before I left Istanbul. And as a X-mas present I think i passed it along to my dad. The weather was also freezing the entire time. My grandparents have said the ice storm that hit after Christmas was the worst they've seen in 40 years. Cars literally couldn't get out of neighborhoods because of the ice on the roads. Luckily we escaped without any incidents.

After the 28th, I met up with my Stanford teammate, Clare, in Chicago where I spent the next five days until returning to Turkey. I saw about 7 friends from Stanford. I couldn't have had a better holiday, I just wish it could have been longer. Lots of great memories from this holiday but now I'm back to reality in Istanbul getting ready to play our last game of the first half of the season against Cankaya.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. Hope 2009 is a great one!