On the road

Since my last post we've played and won five straight away games including trips to Hungary, France, and Poland. Great teams win on the road so we've been happy with how we've been playing and are looking to get even better. Although we've been road weary Nicole and I still try to make the best of our time in the countries we visit. In Hungary, our hotel was located next to the city's most recognized church. It was beautiful and reminded me a bit of Memorial Church at Stanford. It just so happened that the night we arrived a band was scheduled to play so Nicole and I were treated to a neat concert. In France, we met a Gospel Choir group (all one family) called The Singletons from Michigan who were on their European tour. They were kind enough to let us listen to them warm up before a performance and they were very talented. We definitely felt spiritual after listening. Look them up on Itunes! Poland was on the cold side (although not as cold as I'm hearing it is back home in Wyoming.) Our view from our hotel room was of a large body of water. Nicole said it was the ocean and I was smart enough to know that Poland's coast couldn't border and ocean so I said it was a lake. We were later educated that it was the Baltic Sea. :)

Those three games don't hail in comparison to our game against our biggest rival, Galatasaray. It's always a huge game when these teams play so we made our management and president very happy people. Instead of driving our president rented us water taxis to drive us to the game. Partly because of the importance of the game and partly because traffic was crazy during that time because of Bayram. It's a four day Muslim holiday where sheep are sacrificed to honor Allah. But it also means family are with each other which equals even more crowded roads.

Looking forward to a whole week in Istanbul. It will be nice to sleep in my own bed for a few nights at least. And I'm also excited for my short time back in the states for the holidays!

Updates from the Bul

As much as Istanbul's trying to keep it away, winter is slowly making its presence known here. Although I really can't complain because our "winters" don't include snow or freezing temperatures. But I now have to wear a coat and must stow away my flip flops for the season.:) I did get to see some snow, however, when we made a trip to Brno, Czech Republic for a euroleague game. It was pretty wet snow perfect for making snowballs. Nicole tried many times to hit me with one but I was much too fast for her. Our game didn't end up as planned as we lost by 8 points.

We've had better luck in the Turkish league with a 4-0 record so far. We avenged the President's cup loss to Mersin. Our record in Euroleague is 1-2 but hoping that will change as our two losses have been to the two toughest teams in our pool. If we can win against the rest of the teams and win by more the 8 points to Brno when we play them again we will be second in our pool which is what we want. But of course, one game at a time. Our next trip is to Hungary.

On a fun note, I saw a friend from my hometown who was visiting Istanbul and got to eat dinner with him and a couple of his friends. He was here as part of an architecture class and they have been traveling Europe looking and studying all of Europe's architecture. But it's always fun to see a familiar face and still baffles me to know how small the world really is to have two small town folk reunite in Istanbul.

And we're off!!

Well it was quite a long pre season (even though I joined the team a month after the Turks started practicing). But it was needed as I'm in shape, healthy, and game ready now. One fun preseason tourney took us to Prague. I had heard it's quite a city and it definitely was very beautiful with lots to see. Our Americans finally finished their WNBA season and joined us just before our first game. We have the same Americans as last year with the exception of Katie Smith. Penny Taylor replaced her who is an Australian and will help our team in different ways than Katie. Neither Penny nor Tammy really had a complete practice with us before we played in the Presidents Cup which is a rematch of the previous year's champs and runner up. We lost that game but we play again in a couple days so we're hoping for a different outcome this time around.

We've played one Turkish league game and one European league game this past week. Our first Turkish league game was a team from Turkey's capital. We started the game with an early 10 point lead and never looked back. We returned to Istanbul and had a couple days to prepare for our first Euroleague game against a strong team from Poland. We played great for the first 3 quarters and almost blew a 20 point lead in the 4th quarter but we held on to win that one as well. If you want to follow those games you can check them out at fibaeurope.com and click on the Euroleague women tab. Our next Euroleague game will be in Brno, Czech Republic on Tuesday. So we are back in the swing of things and there is no sign of things slowing down so I will try to update the blog more frequently since we will be playing two games a week from here on out.

Hope everyone has a very happy Halloween!

Back at it

Well, I'm back in Istanbul ready to start a brand new year. Basketball year....that is. I've been back for a few days and was thrown into two a days like I never left. I've been training long enough to know that this is the hardest part. Getting back in shape. My body is sore all over, I'm tired, and I have no energy. I have to keep going at it until that wears off and I'm back in shape ready to play again. I haven't done a lot since we ended our national team stint in Latvia which we placed 9th after a couple of hard losses to end the tournament for us. Hopefully next time we will have our full team of healthy players because Turkey definitely is capable of competing against the tougher countries.

When I say I haven't done a lot, I'm talking about basketball, because my summer was jam packed of travel, friends, and family. Not two weeks of being back in the states (one of those in Denver to see friends and teammates) my parents and I took a trip to Lucerne, Switzerland to watch Brett compete in World Cup. I haven't seen many more beautiful places than that. Brett took home the bronze. I flew back separately from my parents into Chicago to spend a week with former Stanford teammates. I got to see a little more of Chicago since last time I was there was New Year's and we obviously didn't spend too much time outside without freezing. It's a pretty cool city. From there my parents picked me up on their way to South Bend, Indiana. My mom's high school reunion created a sort of family reunion for all of us. I'm accustomed to seeing my mom's side of the family only once a year so it was a pleasant stay to see them for a week. We also took a day break and drove up to Michigan to see my cousin Aura get married.

I had been living out of a suitcase for three weeks so I was ready to sleep in my own bed once we got back to Riverton. It was short lived, however. I stayed long enough to see friends, Taryn and Garth, wed in the mountains above Dubois. Brett flew in to be a groomsman in that wedding with his girlfriend, Ashleigh. I took off two days later for Stanford. I have so many great friends, teammates, and adopted families that are around the area so I wanted to make sure I saw them before Turkey. I also spent four days in Phoenix during that time with another couple friends.

Summer is the only time I get back in the states these days, so I make sure to have enough fun and make enough memories to last me until the next summer! But now I'm back to reality and shifting gears as best I can. I'll post some pictures soon and keep everyone updated on the games coming up in a little over a month.