Ballin in the new decade

I was lucky enough to get a full 10 days for my Christmas break back at home. And by home I mean, wherever my family is! Mom, Dad, Brett, and I spent the holiday in Brett's house in New Jersey. His housemates were with their respective families for the holidays so we had the house to ourselves and plenty of beds to sleep in. We spruced up the house with Christmas decorations and even chopped down a Christmas tree for the very first time! Brett chopped it down, but I took it upon myself to yell "Timberrrr!" Ashleigh's family hosted Christmas dinner and it was absolutely delicious. In fact, most meals were as we made it a point to eat all the food that I normally don't get here in Turkey. I had no reservations about eating to the brim from all that delicousness because I knew I would be back to Istanbul in no time to work it all off. My last night in the states was New Years Eve and Brett and I along with Ashleigh and some of her friends went into NYC to celebrate. We were able to see "the ball" and party well into the morning before I headed back to Turkey the next evening. Lots of memories in my first East Coast Christmas but like we all know...All good things must come to an end.

Our team picked up right where we left off before the break with 3 wins so far. We've completed our Euroleague group play with a second place finish and will begin the playoffs against an Italian team in a little less than 2 weeks. Unfortunately for me, however, in the beginning of my second game back I was injured. I was running down the court and felt a pop in my heal and severely strained my plantar fascia. I haven't been playing and have been rehabbing for 9 days now and anticipate at least a week or two more before I will play again. Injuries are part of the game and I've been pretty lucky with that since leaving Stanford, but I am in good hands and have experience with listening to my body and will be back on the court as healthy as I can be.

My parents will be making a 10 day visit to see me starting this Thursday and I'm looking forward to getting some TLC parent style! Nothin like it:)

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!