Spalding, I Don't Think We're In America Anymore

So not a big deal but... Europeans changed the rules of basketball!! What would John Naismith have to say about this.  For you basketball junkies let me break it down on what is NOT okay in Europe:

1. Pass the ball into the backcourt from a sideline inbounds.
2. Don't even think about clapping at someone to distract them (while you're on the floor) if they're about to shoot... it's considered rude, which officially makes me a jerk because I did it a couple times before knowing, whoops.  ALSO it's a technical! (And I'd have to pay my coach for those, which considering my not so substantial pay check is a big deal, yet I'm sure he wouldn't mind.)
3. This one is difficult to explain if you don't play the game... but, when taking your first step from triple threat (say when driving to the hoop from the perimeter) it cannot be open, you must cross your legs.. and no not in like a courtesy.. but sort of like to protect the ball with your body.  If you do chose to make this maneuver, you must dribble FIRST.. aka this means throwing it on the floor way before I want to! 

What you CAN do:

1. Apparently foul the shiza out of people in the post and it be okay, but touch them with your finger nail on the perimeter and you're going to hear a whistle.
2. Take three steps on a post move or lay-up.  Side note* while playing I was thinking "hey these refs aren't too bad but they SUCK at calling travels!!" Turns out it was just me being an American.
3. Practice with earrings, bling bliiing!

Now you might be wondering how the games went, to keep it brief we lost the first, won the second, lost the third, and won the fourth.  In the first game I thought my chest was going to burst and/or that I was going to pass out (thanks jet lag)... luckily for me I think I ran that out of my system because the next three games weren't so bad.  

Tomorrow we have one game.. and then I'm going to eat some delicious German food, auf geht's!!!! Aka, "let's go", my German phrase of the day.

Syriasly?

This is some scary stuff... If you're not paying attention to what's going on over there you should be!! 

On a possibly more positive yet seemingly trivial side note we have 3 tournament games tomorrow to test the waters.  The jet lag hasn't quite worn off so stay tuned to how things go!  In the mean time, keep your fingers crossed for the innocents involved in Syria.. yikes :(

Donkey for Reading

I'm starting to learn what jet lag is... and for those of you who don't know let me explain:

It is evil.  I couldn't go to sleep last night for hours and kept waking up randomly.  Then when I did have to get up this morning I thought at some random time in the night an elephant accidentally fell on my face and head.  Good thing for coffee because it got me through the morning and now I'm going to take a nice little nappy-poo before our 6:30pm conditioning and practice after that, which should just be a (insert sarcastic font here) joyous occasion. 

Short story: my roommate and I walked around for a few hours today and bought groceries.  

Long story: what really happened is I struggled through life.  We wanted to find out where the mall was, so I asked to men who were doing some landscaping and didn't speak English to well.  They pointed us in the right direction and I decided to throw out my first German word of conversation and yelled "donkey!" as we walked away.  What I really was trying to say is danke (don-ka).  Smooth.  

We grabbed some lunch and other stuff at the mall, which by the way has some American shops but for the most part it was all in Keija;kdij blah blah Ijdka;ifjsch.  Next came the grocery store quandaries.  Normally I'll buy 1% milk and fat free yogurt, but here there are 0,1% fett, 3,5% fett, and 10% fett... maybe a few in between.  Fett clearly means fat, even a 2 year old could figure that out, but why did they decide they needed to but two numbers together like that?! I'm still lost on that one.  We made it out of there with only one old man getting hit by my shopping cart (sorry fella) and a week supply of groceries.. and possibly non fat yogurt, I'm still not sure. 

Pictures!

 The neighborhood! White houses + red roofs, lovely.

 Some awesomely ancient looking cathedral that if you look closely in the second "view from my room pictures" below you can see pointing up out of the city.  If you're lucky I'll try to find out some history on it, but no promises.

 There's a bakery EVERYWHERE.  My roommate and I walked around for 3 hours today and probably passed more bakery's per square mile than Starbucks in downtown Seattle.  Apparently German's like their bread... and their meats...

 First German bought food for a few Euros.  To my sadness it had a ton of mayo on it, no thanks.

 The next two pictures are the view from my room and the third picture (bottom left) is the view from our kitchen.  Our apartment is tiny but cute, and for some reason the washing machine (which is in the kitchen next to the oven) says "Alaska".  Say whaaaat?

 Thousand Island?  AH 'MUUURICA!!!

Auf Widersehen!

The First Post of the First Day

Two words: flip flopped.

At 9pm Anchorage, AK time my plane to Frankfurt is preparing to take off for it's 10 hour journey where we would arrive at 5pm German time.  So I suppose German time isn't completely flip flopped to Alaska time, but it is darn well close.

My expedition started with one of the flight attendants asking me something in German and I thought to myself "What?? We haven't even left Alaska and already I'm confused." Turns out she wanted me to switch seats with these three people who wanted to occupy my entire empty row.  The trade was good news for me because I got to sit in a two seated exit row by myself and catch some still uncomfortable, yet a little more comfortable, Z's on the flight.

The flight ended up not being too bad.. They even fed me some weird packaged rye bread that my dad - the rye bread fanatic - probably would of liked but I thought tasted and looked like something you would smoosh together and feed a bird.  Any who, we eventually landed in Frankfurt and the first thing I noticed were the awesome little white houses with red roofs... they're everywhere in cute little neighborhoods.  My American teammate/roommate picked me up in our beater little car that's from the 1980's and looks hilarious as well as reminds me of something they would of drove in the Breakfast Club.  There will be pictures to come.

A few hours later I was hitting the court with my new team and listening to the Assistant Coach talk completely in gibberish, I mean German*.  Good thing all the players know English because they translated to my other ignorant American teammate and I.  Side note, there are three Americans, but one is technically a German because of her ancestry so she knows the language really well.

It was surprisingly good to scrimmage a bit and get the legs moving as well as meet all my teammates, learn some plays, and of course miss some left handed lay-ups..nice.  On Saturday, our first pre-season games begin.  And yes, I said games.. we play THREE in one day.  Are you kidding me?!  Someone is going to be wheeling me out of there because I'm already tired thinking about it... hopefully I'll get over the jet lag before then.

Anyway I'm feeling like now is a good time to get some sleep in a real bed and if none of this made any sense blame the fact that my body thinks it's 2pm, when really it's 12am!  On that note, good night!