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!