Better late than never!

So.......I have clearly been way, way behind on keeping up with my blogs this year. Many factors have contributed to that but if you know me it would mainly be procrastination. There has been many times where I have thought, today I should write a blog and then not done it. So here is a quick recap of what has happened thus far.

August: Arrived in Europe and headed to Slovenia to play some ball and hopefully get a contract. Unfortunately that didn’t happen as planned. I went on a couple of tryouts in Slovenia and one to Bosnia. But with money situations and many clubs deciding not to hire players it didn’t go so well. From the 32 or so girls at the camp only about 10 got contracts and only 20 or so even went on tryouts. It was not so good all around this year. So, since I didn’t have a job yet I headed back into Germany and went to visit my friend Tamara in Bamberg. I stayed there for around a week and just waited to hear on a job.

Tamara and I

September: From visiting Tamara I went to Offenburg and trained with the second division team there and also back to Villingen to see everyone and see if there was still a possibility for playing there this season. It was great to see all the girls and it would have been great to be back there but I had a feeling things weren’t going to work out and I needed to distance myself from that place. It was very hard for me to be there. After about a week in Baden-Wurtenberg I headed north to Langen to hang out with my friend Brandon who is playing basketball before I headed to Bayreuth to see Sebastian and Tamara again. It was great being able to go and hang out with friends. Sebastian had a couple of games that weekend, we partied a bit and spent one day at the thermal baths and saunas. It was just what I needed to help me be happy again because the previous week was so emotionally draining and not anything that I would have expected to happen. Having friends I could visit was a lifesaver as I waited for word from my agent about a job. From Bayreuth I headed to Linz, Austria. A friend from university, Carla, is playing there and she said I could come and stay with her for a bit and practice with her team.

Within the first 3 days of being there her coach had called another coach in Austria that was looking for an outside hitter and that first weekend I was there I was off on a tryout! I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to maybe find a job. So after a week of tryouts there I was a new member of WSW Eisenerz/SG VBV Trofaiach!! It was such a relief to find a job! But I knew that it was going to be a lot different than my last year with TV Villingen.

October: In my first 3 weeks there the coach had to find me a place to live. However it was a very unique situation. The team is located in two small villages and I asked not to live there because there would be nothing for me to do. In previous years on this team the import had lived in Graz which is about 75 km south of Trofaiach. It was my first choice to live there as 6 other girls from the team live there and it is a big university town. Now the problem was for him to find a place for me to live. Until the coach was able to find me somewhere to live I lived with a family in Trofaiach. They were super nice and very kind for letting me stay with them. I only had to talk English with their 5 year old daughter which wasn’t too hard for me. After about 3 weeks and near the end of October I moved into my new apartment with a student from the university, Michi. She is a friend of a friend and it was so lucky that she had an extra room! We get along really well and it also has given me a new group of friends besides my team since I am the only import on my team this year.

The season started well we won our first game at home and I was optimistic about how the season would go. Like last season it is always interesting when you play a team for the first time because you have no idea what they are going to be like. We played well in quite a few games but just couldn’t push through to the end and get the points at the end. Overall it is much more fun being on a team where I actually have to try and work hard compared to last season in Villingen where we walked all over most teams and had 4 tough games all season. Each game here is a challenge and I must be ready to play each weekend, sometimes twice in a weekend.

So that's my first couple of months over here. The next couple will be up in the next few days and then hopefully I will be more diligent about posting and telling my experiences like I was last year. Because I definitely have enough time while I am over here!

Tschussy!