Merhaba (Hi!) everybody! Great to hear that the blog will be useful to a lot of you. I will do my best to keep it updated as much as possible.

Botas is one of four teams that is in or close to Adana, so Carmen, Chrissy and I have befriended the other Americans on the Ceyhan team. Chrissy actually knew one of them (Crystal Smith) from her WNBA training camp this past year in Phoenix. The other two are Kristen Green and Tasha Mills. Kristen and I discovered that we have the same middle name as well! At least we thought that was pretty cool. The six of us went to Incirlik, which is the big American air force base here in Adana. It's only a 10 minute drive. We went out to a bar and were pleased to be able to speak to many Americans. It had been a while since we heard so much english! Of course we are trying to engage ourselves in as much Turkish culture as we can, but it was nice to be able to communicate easily again. Following that we decided to go to a salsa club. I never would have thought my first experience with salsa dancing would have been in Turkey, but it was still a lot of fun.

We had today off from practice so I thought I would do some exploring. I don't know if our apartment is neccessarily in the downton part of Adana, but there are definitely a lot of shops, restaurants, etc. within walking distance. I went into a convenient store and saw some packaged food that looked like chocolate. At least that was what the picture looked like. So I bought it and it was delicious! B.G. our sports marketing guy then took Carmen and I to a huge nearby mosque. I learned that it is actually the second biggest mosque in the middle east. We have driven by it plenty of times and I wanted to see the inside. Before we could enter we had to take our shoes off and Carmen and I had to put on a long sleeved shirt and a scarf to cover our head and neck. They were provided them for us at the door. The inside was absolutely magnificent and beautiful. Arabic writing of the Koran was on the ceiling and huge lights strung down. I took plenty of pictures and as soon as I figure out how to post them on here I will. We saw many people kneeling and praying and B.G. encouraged us to join. Carmen was a little hesitant, but I decided to try it. So trying not to disrupt anyone I quietly knelt, but B.G. quickly tapped my on the shoulder and said that I was facing the wrong direction. You are supposed to be facing east towards Mecca and there were even arrows on the carpet that pointed that way for everyone to follow. Woops! I'm so glad that I was able to see it though and I'm sure I will go again some other time.

I've realized that I haven't even discussed the basketball part of Turkey. I still can't believe that I'm getting paid to play the same game that I grew up playing with my brother and dad in the front yard! We have a very young team. I'm actually one of the oldest. But our coach expects us to compete with all of the WNBA veterans in our league. We have had a few friendly games which means they don't count towards our record. We have done ok, but there is definitely room for improvement. We actually have a "friendly" tournament this week in Keysari. We leave the day after tomorrow so hopefully when I return I will be able to blog about our great games!