Das Leben ist Schön!!

Overdue

2011-10-21T10:08:00.028+02:00

Hi Friends and Fam!

It's been a long time since I've updated, but I'm writing this from my same living room in Dresden! But here's my attempt at a quick and dirty update in fast-forward since April 29 (I doubt this will be quick, or dirty!!:)

Our team had a roller-coaster end to the season. We lost to Suhl on the road in the semi-finals of the championship, but then won in 4 at home and won an exciting golden set to move on to the finals (Sophie was here to witness that, maybe she was our good-luck charm!). We shot ourselves in the foot by losing again on the road in Schwerin, which put our backs against the wall to win at home and win another golden set for the championship. We couldn't make it happen a second time, and ended up with silver medals around our necks while watching the team from Schwerin celebrate their win. It was definitely not what we all had planned for the end of such a successful year! But moving on...

I got a relatively minor knee surgery the week after the championships, and Sandra accompanied me to the Asklepios Klinik in Berlin for a wellness-spa/operation weekend. I really felt like I was in a 5 star hotel and not a hospital, the only difference was that I blacked out for a couple hours while Dr. Labs cleaned out my left patellar tendon, something that has never happened during a hotel stay :)

On the Monday after the surgery, I flew to Klagenfurt for a month of vacation with Marco. We spent a lot of time with his family, did some painting at the nest, enjoyed some sunny days at the lake, and started an epic Scrabble battle that has yet to be won by either side (but who are we kidding, I am TOTALLY in the lead). I also got to visit Sophie and stay with her family in Graz, which was an awesome overnight adventure.

On June 27th I flew to Boston, where my cousin Kendall picked me up from Logan airport and brought me to Mimi's house in Braintree... I mean what better place to go after a transatlantic flight than grandma's house?? I slept like a baby and ate like a king and the next day Auntie Sue picked me up to fetch Marco and Matthias from the airport, who were flying in for a friend's wedding in Albany.

Over the next 3 days we tried to see as much of Boston as possible, and had a great time while Auntie Sue, Mimi and Aunt Marie showed us around the city. I really don't think many people could do see as much of the city as we did in 3 days, many thanks to the helpful (but sometimes not-so-sharp) people at OnStar :)

On Friday the 1st we rented a car and set off for Albany where we met my mom at the airport cell-phone lot and ate lunch at a typical New England diner (they don't have those in California!). Marco witnessed fries being dipped in gravy for the first time (something I don't think they do in Austria), and the boys enjoyed what I think was their 5th giant American hamburger of the trip.

We said goodbyes and I took off for North Bennington with my mom to kick off an awesome weekend at Grandpa's. My Aunt Karen, Uncle Brian and cousin Eric were also there, so it was definitely a full house and something I haven't gotten to do for more than a couple years now. We visited Auntie Barbara in Stockbridge, visited the old Highland Farm, picnicked on Lake Shaftsbury with June, and played cards after a delicious dinner complete with Grandma's rolls, among other things that you can only do at Grandpa's.

On Sunday morning I took off for Sharon, VT with Aunt Karen and Eric, where I got to meet Eric's adorable kids and then took the Dartmouth Coach direct to Boston. It worked out perfectly that I could hop on an evening bus to the Cape, where my Dad, Cath and the kids picked me up in Barnstable. I was there for the morning of the 4th when Cotuit is covered in red, white and blue for the annual parade, and we enjoyed a couple days of perfect beach weather (kayaking to the spit, sailing to Samson's Island) before taking off for Portland, Maine on the 7th.

Portland brought another awesome family reunion, as all the Cmaylo's came to town to watch Rebecca and Graham get hitched! Talia met us on the morning of the 8th after riding up from NJ with Aaron, and Uncle Dave and Carolyn came all the way from California, Caleb in tow! Having lived overseas for the past 4 years, I don't see my family very often, and even more rarely are we all together in the same place! So thanks Rebecca and Graham for the excuse to all get together!

On the afternoon of the 9th we watched a beautiful wedding on a grassy hill over-looking the water, and they became Mr. and Mrs. Botto! It was fun to see my Uncle Butch doing the ceremony, and they had a great 4-person string band playing the soundtrack. It was super relaxed and super cute, and afterward we enjoyed a reception full of food and cider and dancing!

The morning after the wedding we headed back to New Jersey (all 7 of us in the GMC, brought back memories of road trips from long ago), and spent a couple days at home in Madison. Jack accompanied me for a trip into NYC to visit my friend Lizelle, which was a blast. We met up with Tesha and the rest of the family came into the city for dinner, so it was fun to see my worlds colliding!

On the 15th Jack and I flew to Austin to spend 10 days with Talia in the Texas capital. We had been planning the trip for a while, so we knew it was going to be fun, but we couldn't have anticipated how much fun it would be! We went climbing, swimming, paddle-boarding, biking, Jack got poison-ivy, played with dogs, played tennis, ate some amazing food including Torchy's Tacos and Tres Leches cake, toured the university and the capital building, played laser-tag, got stuck in a downpour, watched a billion bats flying, went to a roller-derby, and had a midnight glow-stick (bike light) dance party. It was a pretty full 10 days.

On my final leg of USA trip 2011, I spent 10 days in California, soaking up the last bit of time off before coming back to start season again. I had an excuse to go to Santa Clara when Jordan came in from Boston for a wedding in Santa Rosa, so I picked her up from the airport and swooped down to campus for a short reunion with my old coaches before we drove back up to Napa. We went for an awesome hike at Alston Park before I dropped her off at her wedding, so it was a short but sweet visit.

I was also introduced to the newest member of the California family, a boat named Talianna (original, right?) docked in Emeryville (where they make emery boards, right Talia?). I went down a couple times with my mom and Anthony, where they worked hard to fix-up some stuff on the boat and I worked hard to enjoy the view :)

On August 7th it was already time to say goodbye again, and after a short visit to Amanda and Tim's in the city, mom and Anthony left me off at SFO for a red-eye to Munich, during which I slept a record 8 hours (woohoo!!). I think I should've knocked on wood after such an awesome flight, because the next one, a short Air Dolomiti leg from Munich to Klagenfurt, was probably the scariest flight of my life. We were flying over the Alps in a thunderstorm, and I honestly thought I was going to die at any moment. I even started thinking about the movie I had (unfortunately) watched about the Uruguayan rugby team and whether I would be able to eat my fellow passengers if I were to survive (still can't answer that!)....

OK, so maybe I was getting a little ahead of myself, and by now you know that I didn't die (phew!), but I was probably never so happy to get out of the plane and see Marco as I was that night, and that's saying a lot!!! I didn't pee my pants probably solely because of the really nice American guy who was sitting next to me who did a good job keeping me calm and unsoiled :)

We made the most of my 4 days in Klagenfurt, starting out with an overnight trip to Jesolo, Italy. We had planned to go to Cinque Terre at some point, but we just couldn't seem to make it work out with our schedules, so Jesolo was a last-minute substitute, but we enjoyed it all the same! We also tried out Marco's new baseball bat and gloves, and used the Breithuber family as models for Bell Wine Cellars merchandise :)

On August 13th I flew from Klagenfurt back to Dresden, and on the 15th we started practice. While the beginning always brings the random excitement of calendar photoshoots and PR appointments with sponsors, otherwise since then it's been a pretty consistent schedule of volley, eat, volley, sleep, volley, eat... you get the idea. We finally started league play last Friday in Stuttgart, but unfortunately lost that in 3 as well as our first game at home against Suhl in 4.

We do have a couple new team members which is exciting: Robin and Judith are from the Netherlands, Anne is from Dresden but has played in Italy for the last 2 years, and we have 3 young local girls (Schwabi, Magda and Boini) who are playing on the first league team for the first time. We have a fun group of players, but now we just need to figure out how to win games!

OK, that was a novel, but it needed to be done. I hope all is well wherever you are, and feel free to send me an update email of your own :)

xox

Anna

Time Warp

2011-04-29T10:38:00.017+02:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

I have been a bad blogger, which means I'm looking back at almost 2 full months of life that has passed by without being recorded. Moments like this always leave me wondering how 2 months have flown by so quickly! Now I'm looking at the last 2 days of April on my calendar, thinking about the upcoming playoffs for the team, and planning out my personal Summerfest 2011!

One exciting piece of news: I recently signed a contract to come back to Dresden for the 2011-2012 season! As one of the most indecisive people in the history of the world, I despise having to make big decisions, and find myself questioning my decision-making skills at every turn. But in the end I decided that my situation in Dresden is too good to throw out the window in search for something better, and I'm excited about the future.

One of the best things about coming back for a second year? I feel justified making those purchases that nomads tend to avoid! 1st came a vacuum cleaner.. that was a HUGE step. But now? The options are endless! A bike to get around during nice weather? I'm currently scouring the Dresden version of Craigslist! Clothes that won't make the trip back to the states due to luggage weight restrictions? No prob! I can just leave them here over the summer! Curtains to replace the sheets that I have hanging over the windows right now? I'm not going to get too carried away, but the possibility is there! I think I hear IKEA calling my name :)

Other than the re-signing process madness, March and April had some other exciting moments:

1) Klagenfurt-related excitement: The first weekend of March I was able to spend a weekend in Klags, spending some good time with Marco and Sophie and getting to see some other awesome friends. I watched as Marco successfully de-boned my whole fish dinner at Firenze, and as Floki successfully downed 2 (two!) tiramisu desserts at DaPietro even after appetizers and main course! That was a great start to the spring-ish season.

2) Hockey-related excitement: As I may or may not have mentioned, Dani and Tesha and I were lucky enough to get to know some of the guys from our local hockey team this year, and we got to watch their playoff run in March til mid-April. Fortunately for all of us, the DSC--Eis-Loewen (Ice Lions) friendship extends into the team administrations, so we were able to get VIP tickets to almost every home game that we were able to attend, and that was where we spent many Friday evenings!

When their season ended with a loss in the 2nd round, we got to celebrate with a big group of them before they took off for their respective homes. This meant several crazy nights (Pier 15, Shamrocks) and a couple awesome days (Schillergarten beer gardens, and Markus receiving bets to swim across the Elbe!)

A couple of them have already re-signed to come back next year, which is great news for me because it means I'll have some friendly faces to see when I come back after summer. (What a novel idea, not having to start my social network from scratch for once??) But several are already looking towards options outside of Dresden, whether hockey-related or not, so I was bummed to say goodbye!

3) Berlin-related excitement: You might think that I would get tired of being a tourist in Berlin, but apparently that's not possible for me. In mid-March we took a girls-trip to Berlin, and it was a BLAST. Tesha lived in Berlin for a year, so she was no newbie, and Sandra is from Dresden so she has obviously done some traveling there in the past. But Dani had never been, so we made sure to see as many tourist attractions as possible! We had lunch at the Hard Rock for some American nostalgia (although the waiter's bathroom jokes make Tesha nauseous and unable to eat her Bacon Cheeseburger) and stopped at Dunkin Donuts (only in Berlin!) before heading home that evening. But my FAVORITE part of the day was a trip from Brandenburger Tor to Alexanderplatz on an 8-seater bicycle, lead by an awesome head-peddler/tour-guide!

After the hockey season ended, our friend Markus headed back to his home in Berlin for the summer, which gave us another excuse to visit last Friday, while Marco was here visiting! Once again, we had a first-timer on board, and I was excited to get a chance to show Marco some of the awesome capital city. Thankfully this time Markus was our expedition leader (which meant absolutely no organizational stress for Anna/Sandra/Dani/Marco!), and we rented bikes (single seaters) and spent the day riding through the city. We also managed to squeeze in a boat tour, which was beautiful!

4) Talia-related excitement: On April 19th, Talia turned 26!

5) Marco-related excitement: After Marco's season ended the last weekend of March, he found himself with a little more free-time on the weekends, as well as a week of basketball-free Easter break. He chose to use some of this time to come visit me in Dresden, and I couldn't be more thankful. It was great to have him here for a weekend at the beginning of April, and during his Easter break week he got a chance to spend some time with the people that I spend so much of my time here with!

6) Volleyball-related excitement: Despite the amazingly crazy luck we've had this year with regards to injuries and illnesses, our team has held on to the #1 ranking in our league, and with the points we've accumulated, we're actually now locked in to the #1 seed going into playoffs. It's easy to say that now quite matter-of-factly, but this is the result of many months of hard work and several important unexpected wins along the way! When our 1st setter was out with mono, our younger setter Linda stepped up to the plate and did great. Since one of our starting outside hitters went down with an ACL tear, we've had several girls come through with game-changing performances that kept us on top. Dani, who has been struggling through shoulder rehab, has come in with clutch plays in tough situations, all while battling pain!

Volleyball is definitely a team-sport, but when everyone is healthy and fit, sometimes it can come down to the same 7-8 people making all the points on the court. But this year, everyone has been called upon to play a big role at some point or another, and we're all hoping that we can keep the ball rolling through the playoffs and end up on top!

OK, I think that's all the excitement that I can think of at the moment. Our weather has been up and down, but I think we're in a slow warming trend, to where I feel comfortable wearing a t-shirt on most days! I'm very aware that our season is coming to a close, and I'm trying to enjoy my last few weeks with Dani and Tesha around, since I don't know who is going to be sticking around with me here next season. Other than that, I'm looking forward to making a great run in the championship, and then to the adventures that await me this summer. Should be a blast!

Hope all is well wherever this post finds you!

XOXOX

Anna

....and now it's March!

2011-03-03T17:03:00.006+01:00

Hello Family and Friends!

I'm writing this in my neighborhood Starbucks, where a Caramel Frappuccino tastes EXACTLY THE SAME as at home.. Ahhh the small American comforts :)

I can't believe that January and February flew by so quickly, but I'm excited to report that the signs of spring in Dresden are no longer just a figment of my imagination.. Today was so sunny and almost downright warm enough for us to sit outside while sipping our Starby's treats! I think Mother Nature knew that if she didn't chill out with the winter wonderland-ness, I might have either: a) gone into real serious hibernation; or b) gone entirely bat-crazy. Either way, thanks Mama Nature!

The end of January saw an important birthday for Tesha, my awesome teammate who celebrated the 10 year anniversary of her 20th birthday! We stretched it out over the course of a couple days (possibly a couple weeks), and it culminated in a fun bowling party at a local alley with the team and a night out with a couple guys from the local hockey team. Despite all the "grandma" jokes that more and more people make on a regular basis, T is a trooper and is embracing her new decade of life.

In early February I got a visit from Marco, and it worked out to where he got to watch a home game. It was great to have him around to see where I spend so much of my time (Margon Arena, our gym!), meet a couple of my friends in the VIP room after the game, and enjoy some sunny but cold February weather.

On Valentines Day we decided to dress up for a fancy schmancy Sushi night with our friend Markus, a hockey player. Sandra surprised us all in the morning with roses and cryptic invitations left at our places in the locker room that morning, and in the evening Markus surprised us also with roses. As always at the "Sushi and Wine" buffet, the food was delicious, as was the company, and it was a great Valentine's Day!

From the 16th-21st of February I had a visitor in the shape of an old high-school friend.. Koryn! We met in the spring of 2000, while we were both at the Vintage High campus to take our placement tests for English and Math classes. We were both the tallest girls around at the time, and a mutual friend introduced us by proclaiming that I didn't like Koryn because she was so tall, and vice versa. Ahh Kristina Weber, thanks for that! Anyway, sounds like high-school, right? In the end Koryn and I became friends, and besides being the tall chicks in school, we found out that my birthday falls on her half-birthday, that we both love rice with ranch dressing on top, and we would later both commit to spending 10+ hrs/week driving to volleyball tournaments together with Empire Volleyball Club. That is a good equation for a long-time friendship!

Anyway, when we met up last summer for dinner in San Francisco, she had mentioned a possibility of coming to visit sometime this year, but so many people say that that I hardly take it seriously anymore! However, I got an email in October or November asking for details, and whadya know, a couple months later I was spending almost a week hanging out with her in Germany!

I must say that I was struggling with my hostess skills because my days were interrupted with training, physio appointments and the like, but Koryn was a pretty easy guest. We spent a couple days exploring Dresden, during which she met a good portion of my friends here. On the last day of her visit, a Sunday which we had free from training, we drove to Berlin with our setter Mareen as well as her boyfriend, and spent the day sightseeing. We were able to meet up with another old friend Lizelle (she, Crystal and I were partners in crime in Rome 2 years ago), who was visiting for the weekend from her volley-home in Switzerland.

The funniest small-world moment came that evening, when we squeezed in a quick coffee (seriously, quick=15 minutes, and actually mine was green tea) with Jazmin, who is headed home from Berlin this week to spend several months in the states. So first it was me and Jazmin, who met on the first day of 7th grade while on the bus from Vintage to Silverado Middle School. Total opposites but bffs for life. Next was Koryn, who, along with Jazmin, was one of my best friends throughout high-school. Finally was Lizelle, who is one of the funniest girls I know, and who I manage to rendez-vous with in all corners of the world. My mind was exploding as I thought about all of us sitting at a table at a tiny coffee shop in Berlin called "Hotel" (what kind of name is that? I dunno).

Koryn's trip was over quickly, but it was great to share my life here with her, and I'm glad I got to give her her first taste of Europe!

On the volleyball side of my life, we're doing pretty OK. We lost a close game in Suhl in late-February, which was a major bummer, but also a good reminder that we have to keep working towards our goal of winning the championship in May. We're struggling with a couple key players being sick/injured, but we're kind of at that point in the season where our bodies are getting worn down.. I also have the feeling that we're having to work harder to get the same results, which is frustrating, but thankfully Alex gave us this week essentially free from ball-training to give those of us who are pretty healthy a better chance of staying healthy, and those who are sick/injured a chance to take some steps toward recovery...

As a complete and total surprise, Alex gave me the thumbs-up to fly to Klagenfurt this weekend, where I will have a chance to spend some time with Marco as well as with Sophie, my long lost Austrian-sister :) I'm hoping I'll have more pictures from this trip than I have from the last 2 months, the winter made me lazy!

Hope all is well, and sending love from Germany!

xoxo

Anna

Christmas in Oesterreich, Silvester, and now it's almost February...

2011-01-20T13:18:00.010+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

By now it's pretty old news, but Happy 2011! (FYI 11 is one of my favorite numbers, and I love seeing it on clocks and calendars... 11:11 is my favorite time on the clock [12:34 is second], so you can imagine that I'm pretty excited about having the number around ALL year, and I'm especially excited for November 11th at 11:11.. can't wait!) The Dresden Christmas excitement is over (wahhwaaaah), but we're moving on towards the tunnel through which you can see signs of spring! We're not really in that tunnel just yet, but it's all about positive thinking, right?

The end of December was spent enjoying the holiday spirit with my teammates in our typical fashion: hangouts in the city with gluehwein and eierliqour! We also got tickets to a Christmas Circus, where Tesha, Nikki and I made friends with an elephant. We had a cute Secret Santa exchange before our trip to Sonthofen on the 21st, and after winning in 3 sets on the 22nd, we said goodbye for a little Christmas break....

Marco was there to pick me up (6 hour drive each way, what a trooper), and we pulled into Klagenfurt around 4AM on the 23rd. I got to have coffee with Sophie before she took off for home, and then we repeated "Pumpe Night" from Christmas Eve last year.The same traditional Austrian bar, the same crowd (Matthias & Flocki), the same amount of hilarity. I'm a fan of this Christmas Eve tradition!

On the 24th we fulfilled my xmas wish of building a snowman, but we decked it out as a pirate. In the afternoon we headed over to Marco's family's house, where his mom had prepared a meat fondue feast, complete with the special dipping sauces that make it extra super delicious. We ate until we couldn't eat anymore, and then it was time for gifts, because most Europeans open gifts on the 24th (great idea, right??). I was surprised with a package from Napa that was waiting under the tree for me, and brought me a little taste of home for the holidays :) Then we presented Marco's family with their requested gift, which was a self-written holiday-themed song. Marco and I performed a remix of "The 12 days of Christmas," while Marco's brother and his girlfriend performed "Silent Night" in sign language. Given that none of us are really musical talents, both performances were pretty funny, and I think everyone enjoyed it!

The 25th was a day of feast once again, but this time we ate the traditional Christmas meal of roast goose, along with an Austrian version of stuffing (just as delicious!). By this point I was having to loosen the button of my jeans, so we went home to watch a basketball game with some friends for my last evening in Klags...

The morning of the 26th came waay too quickly, and before I knew it I was on the train to Munich where I would catch a flight to Dresden. Sandra (our manager) picked me up just in time to make it to evening training, and all of a sudden it felt like I had never left!

We lost a heartbreaker in the semi-finals of Cup in Stuttgart on the 30th, which was definitely a bummer. Our New Years was pretty low-key, since we had practice on the 1st and a big home game against Schwerin on the 2nd, but a group of us gathered at Kiki's, where we definitely enjoyed some delicious food, champagne, and fireworks!

We went on to beat Schwerin at home, then lost at home in quick sets to our CEV Cup 2nd round opponent, the team from Krasnodar, Russia. The day wasn't totally ruined, however, because Dani, Tesha and I went out to dinner post-game with the American and Brazilian from the Russian team, and had a great time! That weekend we played a league match in Stuttgart, where we won in 4 sets, which made us all feel a little better about the fact that they eliminated us from Cup!

The following Tuesday we set out for Krasnodar, where we would play the Russian team again on the road. The trip there was fine, and we surprisingly all got into Russia OK. We played well against them on Wednesday, but lost in 4 sets, and set out early early Thursday morning on our way back to Dresden through Moscow and Berlin.

Apparently an easy trip home wasn't in our cards, because the day was fraught with errors, delays, and miscommunications! First, upon arrival at the airport at 4AM, we were told that the fog in Krasnodar was so heavy that our plane couldn't land, and our 6AM flight was delayed until 10:30 (or later). That meant that we wouldn't be able to make our connection in Moscow, so after 3 hours of sleeping on the marble floors, the airport director showed us toward a bus straight out of 1983, and already packed full of other people who were trying to catch flights. Fortunately we made our way to another bus (this on was from 1989), where we promptly stowed our baggage underneath and reserved seats for the entire team. We then sat for almost 4 hours in the 20 year old bus, constantly reminded of our whereabouts by a lingering smell of vomit and smoke, mixed with the smell of vodka coming from the back where some men with gold teeth were taking advantage of the 4 hour hangout session. When we stopped for breaks, said men would use the side of the bus as a urinal! It was unreal.

When we arrived at our destination, which was a secondary airport on the shores of the Black Sea, we were able to check in to a flight to Moscow, where we still weren't sure if we would catch a flight to Berlin. Fortunately we were able to take off, and ended up in Moscow around 6:30pm.

Once in Moscow, we had a delicious dinner at an Italian airport restaurant (sidenote: when I say it was "delicious," I'm not sure if it was really that good or if it was just the feeling of hunger being satiated AND comparison to the other food that we had been offered that day), and were able to organize a connection to Berlin. We fooled around and used the internet, but we were ready to get out of Russia and back to the big Germ ASAP...

As soon as we were called to board that connection, we all got excited: the end of our nightmare journey was near! The Aeroflot gods had other plans, however, and we sat on the ground for an hour and a half as they fixed something that they explained in Russian.

Finally, FINALLY we took off to Berlin, where our baggage came out unharmed, and our bus driver Mikey was waiting! Our new, clean, vodka-free bus had never looked so welcoming :) We made it back to Dresden around 2AM, which was the 24 hr mark from leaving the hotel in Krasnodar the morning prior. Ahhh nothing like 24 hours of travel!

Since that nightmare, we won a home game against Potsdam on Saturday, and then traveled to Vilsbiburg where we lost a close 5 set match last night. Today the weather is reflecting our moods post-loss... it's gray and beak once again! (After a December of blizzards, the last 2 weeks have been speckled with amazing spring-like weather, and we've all gotten used to it! But alas, Mother Nature has come to her senses...)

I hope you all had an awesome Christmas and an exciting New Years, and I hope that you don't have any nightmare travel stories to rival mine! (But if you do, it might make me laugh, so feel free to send me an email with the info :)

xoxox, lots of love from Dresden!

Anna

It's beginning to look a lot like Weihnachten!

2010-12-13T14:07:00.012+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

It's been over a month and the awesomeness of Christmas in Germany is in full effect! I don't know what it is about this country, but they know how to do the holiday season better than anyone else. I mean Rockefeller Center is great, as is Union Square in SF and Paradise Drive in Napa, but nothing I've seen can compare to the Dresdner Striezelmarkt, which is just a 5 minute walk away from my house.

They had a beautiful Christmas market in Klagenfurt last year, but the one in Dresden wins purely because it is absolutely ginormous! Set-up for this seasonal festival began in early November, and it officially opened on our Thanksgiving Day, so you can tell how serious these people are about making sure the holiday season lasts as long as it possibly can!

To give you an idea of what a Christmas market is, you have to picture a the downtown area of your nearest city. Now think about all open space in the downtown, perhaps the main large city square, or maybe just the areas between large buildings. Now picture 10'x10' wooden huts constructed side by side across these open spaces, until small wooden-hut villages have taken over the entire downtown area and you feel like you're hanging out in the North Pole for Christmas season... that's what a German Christmas market is like!

While these little Christmas villages are everywhere right now, "Striezelmarkt" is the biggest market that has taken over Dresden's main square. There are hundreds of vendor huts, selling Christmas gifts, ornaments, roasted nuts, bratwurst (and other delicious German foods), crepes, and of course GLUEHWEIN (hot spiced wine which is delicious but causes unexpectedly bad hangovers). A bunch of us met up for the Striezelmarkt back in November when all of you back home were sitting down to carve the turkey, and Tesha and I have been frequenting the place ever since!

There are a couple downsides to having an amazing Christmas market outside your door, the biggest being that there is traffic in Dresden ALL THE TIME. As in traffic that makes a 15 minute drive into a 45 minute drive, just to get across town! It's unreal. Plus, there's NO PARKING ANYWHERE. Ok, there are a couple spots here and there, but the snow-plows have used most of them as their dump sites, so unless you have a plow attached to the front of your car (I don't!) there's absolutely no hope for getting into them. Therefore, I've been relying on parking karma (it always comes through in the end), and I've been walking into the city in the bitter cold and 2 feet of snow even more frequently than I did when it was sunny and 70's out!

Despite these bummers, I wish Striezelmarkt would stay until March or April or whenever it gets warm again in this cold cold land! The snow makes everything harder: it's harder to drive, it's harder to walk, it's harder to use your hands in the morning, it's harder to get out of bed, you get the idea. But when there's a party going on 24/7 in downtown, under the guise of providing kitchy Christmas gifts for tourists in Dresden, it is so much easier to find motivation to leave the house!

For example, on any gray day when I would otherwise cuddle up with a movie in bed, Tesha and I find ways to lure each other out.. "Oh, Tesha, you need to go to the pharmacy? Let's stop and get a Gluehwein!" "Oh... great idea Lo! (have I mentioned that my team here calls me "Lo"? as in Cmay-Lo?) And then let's eat at Vapiano's, and for dessert lets get crepes! Sounds like a plan!" Basically, Striezelmarkt, Wintersdorf (a market strictly for alcoholic beverages and wurst) and the generally awesome holiday atmosphere that they have in Dresden makes these cold winter days so much easier to endure.

In other news, I'm living and learning, mostly with regards to driving in the Arctic. Here I'll share some of my latest lessons, in DOs and DON'Ts:

DO wipe that fresh layer of snow off the top of your driver side door before opening it. Otherwise, you might be sitting in a cold, wet seat all the way to practice. Not fun.
DON'T be over-confident in your ice scraper. It is not made of titanium, it is made of plastic, and plastic will break if you make too many violent attacks on the iceberg that has somehow attached itself to your side mirror. This could lead to shards of plastic coming dangerously close to your eyeballs, and your coach might get mad if you go blind during season.
DO splurge on a car with seat-warmers. Ahhhhhhh.
DON'T get all excited about the great parking options on the street where no one walks. It might look like prime real-estate, but once you get half into the spot and your tires are spinning out both forwards and backwards, you're going to need a nice passerby (or two) to help push your helpless self into (or out of) that spot you were just so excited to find.
DO try kaki (persimmon) if you haven't tried it before (I said it was mostly about driving!)
DON'T underestimate the importance of gloves. They can make the horrible job of digging your igloo car out of the snow so much more bearable. At the same time, a lack of gloves can render you too frozen and numb to even push the "unlock" button to open said car.
Finally, DO say a little thankful prayer every day for the person who thought of putting heated wires in a windshield. What a wonderfully life-saving little piece of technology right there!

Besides my world being turned into a total Winter Wonderland, life in Dresden is pretty normal! We started our German league (Bundesliga) matches at the end of November, but we also play in the German Cup (Pokal) and a European Cup (CEV Cup), which means that we're really busy with matches right now! So far, within Germany we've played matches in Suhl, Sinsheim, Berlin, Potsdam and Hamburg, and we've also traveled to St. Niklaas, Belgium for a match against Kieldrecht. We've been dealing with a couple unfortunate injuries and illnesses on the team, but despite those setbacks we've been playing well and are constantly working to keep a good rhythm.

We play again tomorrow at home against Aachen, and then in Sonthofen on Wednesday, which will be our last game before Christmas break for 3 days. I'm feeling pretty darn excited especially for the game in Sonthofen, because Marco will be picking me up after our game for a 3 day Christmas vacation in Klagenfurt! While it would be wonderful to spend time at home in the states for the holidays, I'm really looking forward to celebrating with Marco and his family, and spending a few days out of the volley routine.

Other fun things that I've done since my last post:

gotten kicked out of a club at 2AM because it was "Totensonntag," or "Dead Sunday," when apparently everything is supposed to be... well... dead....?

got an amazing visit from my long lost cousin Nina (Uncle Boris' side) at our game in Hamburg

tried eierlikoer, or the German version of eggnog, which I had also never tried.. verdict: yummy!
hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my house with some awesome friends! Wasn't quite the crazy ordeal as last year, in fact Tesha and I put it together in just an hour and a half after practice, but it was a blast! (Story of the night: the base fell out of the spring form that Tesha was using for baked mac-and-cheese right as she was putting it into the oven... that led to a total noodle, cheese, milk, cream, preheated oven hot mess. HA)

read "Wuthering Heights." LOVED IT!

Hope you are all having a wonderful pre-holiday week, and that you have fun and non-stressful plans for the upcoming week. Need a last-minute gift idea for that special someone who lives in a cold cold cold place? Nothing says love like a heating pad.

XOXOX

Anna

PS: If you want to see some funny volleyball pictures from some recent games, here is a link to a gallery from a volley photographer. My team is in black :)

Birth Month, time to celebrate!

2010-11-10T15:56:00.006+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

It’s now early November, and winter is most definitely coming to Dresden! Today is clear and chilly, about 9⁰C outside, and getting colder every day. Rumors are spreading about snow being spotted in the hills or in villages around the city, and I’m trying my best to look forward my favorite parts of winter (gluehwein in the city, Christmas Markets, pretty snow on trees, pretending I’m Queen Frostine) as opposed to focusing on my least favorite parts of the season (cold hands, cold feet, cracky skin, lack of motivation to get out of bed, did I mention cold hands?). Positive thoughts, positive thoughts!

This main pic is of a system of drains that runs down the back of a building in Neustadt, and I think it's pretty amazing!

Since my last update, life has been full of volley, traveling for volley, and trying to do fun things when we have a break from volley!

Possibly the most exciting event was the unexpected weekend off from Alex, which gave me the opportunity to make a quick trip to Klagenfurt for a chance to visit my much loved home-away-from-home. I made it there by 1pm on Saturday and left again at 5pm on Sunday, so it was a fast turnaround to say the least, but somehow everything worked out so that I was able to watch my old team play at home on Saturday night AND have lunch at Marco’s family’s house on Sunday before he had a home game that evening. The 28 hours flew by, but I made the most of it, and it was an awesome way to spend my weekend off!

The weekend after my trip to Klags, Nikki and I celebrated the end of October with my first gluewein of the season (again, winter is HERE), and we had a free weekend where we had a fun girls-night at a local club. We were in Czech Republic from Wednesday to Thursday for two scrimmages against the team from Prostejov, and on Friday we watched our local basketball team play. Over the weekend we played at home in the first rounds of the LigaCup, which is a preseason tournament with all of the teams from the German league. We won from the 4 teams playing in Dresden, which means that this weekend we’ll play in the final round in Suhl against the other finalist teams. Fingers crossed! (or in Europe, thumbs clenched into a fist, which means the same thing as fingers crossed :)

Hope you all enjoy the new pics, and I loved getting emails from those of you that sent me messages after the last update! (hint hint.. email me!)

XOXO

Anna

Ps. Almost forgot! It’s my birthday on Sunday! Hope you all are going to be celebrating with me (in spirit?)

2010-10-19T13:53:00.015+02:00

Hello Friends and Familia!

Yesterday my little brother and sister turned 9… THAT IS CRAZY! I swear they used to just be little babes that were the size of nerf footballs, and now they’re real functioning human beings who are smart and funny and entirely awesome 9 year-olds! Anyway, my head is spinning thinking that it’s been 9 years since Chase and the Lump of Love (Tyler, though that nickname was ixnayed by Mimi, who said that it would affect his self-confidence down the road) first entered the world as two peas in a pod (no really, they got out of the hospital and were “two peas in a pod” for Halloween!), and I’m happy to report that they’re getting cooler by the minute!

My last post went up before we took the road for a tournament in Wroclaw, Poland, which was a 3-day lesson in how to play volleyball as a team :) Before that weekend, we had yet to practice in a full 6 player rotation, so it was test that would reveal some of our strengths as well as many of our weaknesses!

As you can imagine, our performance reflected our lack of playing experience, as we lost to a team from Kieldrecht, Belgium, then beat a Champion’s League team from Czech, lost a close one to the home team from Wroclaw, and then lost another to Kieldrecht. In the end, the only match we won was against team that eventually won the tournament! Needless to say, it was a roller-coaster performance, and we returned after a long ride home knowing that we had our work cut out for us if we wanted to reach our team goal of becoming German Champion this season.

[sidenote: I don’t have many pictures from the Poland trip (ok fine, I have exactly 1 picture from the Poland trip), mostly because I didn’t have much to take pictures of! We drove between 45 min and an hour everyday between our hotel and our playing sites, with our bus crawling along bumpy one-lane roads that zig-zagged mostly through farmland dotted with tiny villages before we would reach the host city (village?) of Twardogora. We played in the city of Wroclaw in our match against the home team, in a gym that reminded me of the church-gyms from CYO league back in grade school. The sidelines pressed up against the bleachers, and there were several floors overhead with viewing decks for the fans. It was definitely a different feel from the openness of our Margon Arena in Dresden!)

(my one pic from Poland)

Back in Dresden, I was excited to find out that my new apartment was ready to move into! I am now feeling quite at home in my new place, and I’m trying to make it homey-er everyday.

The following Wednesday, we went to a charity Eisfussball (Icefootball, or ice-soccer for Americans!) event, which was pretty hilarious. Coaches and administrators from four of the pro teams in Dresden (the American football team, the soccer team, the hockey team and us) played against teams from the city of Dresden and the Deutsche Red Cross in mini-games of soccer on an ice rink while wearing running shoes and dressed in hockey and/or football gear… totally normal! The event benefited the Red Cross, but was also a good way to get the various teams together to mingle with the fans. We had a chance to cheer on the DSC team from the bench, and I think we all had a pretty good time.

Alex gave us that weekend off, so after a year of plans that have fallen-through, I was finally able to schedule a visit to my dear friend Jazmin who is living in Berlin! Dresden is only about 2 hours from the capital city, and I was able to spend 2 days in the alternate universe that is Jazmin’s life there.

I hadn’t seen her in over a year, but once we get together, it always feels like no time has passed. We started the reunion off right by cooking a breakfast feast of eggs with cilantro (the smell reminds Jazmin of home cookin) and “purple rain” (Jazmin has a thing for Prince) berry scones. Jazmin did her normal thing by introducing me to the music that she thinks is awesome at this very moment (she’s been doing that since we were 13 years old). We then went to rent a bike for me to use for the day, and set off on a tour of Kreuzberg, pedaling past the wall towards Mitte, and other parts of the city that Jazmin now calls home. We were able to stop at some various spots to meet some of the friends that Jazmin has met there, who come from all over the world and are doing lots of different things.

I had never been to Berlin before, but after my tour, I can definitely understand why Jazmin doesn’t want to leave… It’s a big beautiful city, full of young people who all seem to be doing cool stuff (or maybe those are just the young people that Jaz hangs out with?) and enjoying life. A repeated topic of conversation with Jaz and friends was the fact that an absurd amount of “hanging out” goes on in Berlin, because so many of the young people don’t have real strict schedules to keep and would frankly much rather spend the day sipping coffee outside a café or lounging by the river. In the words of Robyn Ah-Mow from our meeting in Switzerland 2 years ago, they “do what they want…”

I thought about my life in comparison: I have a strict schedule for training, physio, etc… I eat and sleep in pretty regular patters, and haven’t been out dancing til 6AM in quite a while, because I’m usually expected to sideout the next day. I mean I have willingly chosen a career in which a major part of my life is dictated by someone else: my coach. In other words, I do what I want in very small doses compared to Jazzy G and some of her friends in Berlin!

As you can see, I had a blast getting a peek into the new life of one of my oldest friends. I also had a blast stepping out of the monotony of my uber-volley life in Dresden into the life of my ridiculously insanely creative friend in Berlin. Definitely a successful weekend!

The last 2 weeks have been pretty standard. I took a break from hitting after getting back from Poland, in an attempt to kill any tendon inflammation that was starting to flare up. Over the weekends we had two tournaments nearby, first in Dippoldiswalde and then in Lichtenstein (town not country!). The girls played great and ended up winning both of them! I hated being out, but it was a learning experience to be on the sidelines as a towel/watergirl, because you can always get a different perspective as a spectator than you do as a player. At the same time, I am ready to start playing again, and I’m excited to start hitting again this week!

On a final note, fall is definitely showing it’s beautiful colors all over the place, and I’ve been trying to capture it on film. I hope you enjoy these totally autumn scenes as much as I do!

Xoxo

Anna

Ps: email me friends!!! acmaylo@gmail.com :)

Life in Dresden!

2010-09-23T20:05:00.013+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

I've been in Dresden for almost a month now, and it's almost starting to feel like it might maybe possibly one day feel like home!

Volleyball started almost immediately after arrival, which has been exciting and exhausting at the same time. I haven't experienced a rigorous schedule like this since double days at Santa Clara, so I definitely went through a period of adjustment during which I had to get used to 4-6 hours of training per day! But now it seems normal, and it's great to be back in team training mode. While off-season is always wonderfully relaxing, there's nothing like the feeling of getting back in the gym and actually playing volleyball again.

With all those hours spent in the gym, I'm feeling lucking that I have a nice group of teammates and trainers to spend my time with! There are 12 girls on the team, 9 German girls and 3 Americans (including myself!). I'm sure I'll introduce everyone in time, but for now I'll stick to my fellow yankees: Tesha is a middle blocker from New York who has been playing in Germany for 6 years, of which 2 have been in Dresden. Dani is an outside hitter from Nebraska who spent a couple seasons playing in Indonesia while bouncing back to the States to coach, and who also played in Dresden last year. Though I had never met them, the fact that two girls had chosen to play here for multiple years was a big part of my decision to come to Dresden, and I'm thankful that they're both here!

We have several girls who grew up in and around Dresden, so they've been playing for DSC (Dresdner Sport Club) for their whole careers, which is pretty awesome. It's great to be surrounded by girls who know Dresden as home, because they can help me with all the little things that can be confusing when moving to a new place.. Best cheap restaurants? Best grocery store? Best cellphone plans? Best parking lots where the man will give you a discount because you're a volleyballer? Just ask in the locker room and the team will come up with an answer!

Besides my time spent playing volleyball, I have gotten to do some pretty interesting stuff here already! On my first day, Alex (coach) brought me to my car, a stick-shift Ford Fiesta (super cute, I love it!) so I had no choice but to learn how to drive it! Anyway, cold-sweats while driving with a stick for the first time: CHECK.

During my second week in town we had our team photoshoot, which was several hours of primping and posing in our uniforms. The following week we had our calendar shoot, which was an intense process of make-up, hair and styling like I have never experienced before. It was a long night... we didn't finish my shoot until 3AM (!!!!) but it was just one of the many things the club does to help get exposure for the team and keep people interested! Photoshoots: CHECK.

The following weekend I had an entirely unexpected (but entirely welcome!) visit from Marco, who came to town from Friday night until Monday morning. We spent the weekend exploring Dresden, from the inner old city, to the new city, to the famous blue bridge (the "Blaues Wunder"), to the city's largest park (the "Grosse Garten"). It was great to show him around my new neighborhood, and a wonderful weekend surprise. Unexpected but entirely welcome visitors: CHECK.

Other than that, I spend most of my off-time with the girls, relaxing between practices or on off-days. Dani, Tesha and I had one day of adventure that brought us to NY Bagel Bar, Starbucks, and then Chemnitz (a neighboring city)....

...and yesterday several of us got together for a picnic next to the Elbe (the river that runs through Dresden), so we do find things to entertain us! Adventures and sunshine: CHECK CHECK.

Tomorrow we practice in the morning before leaving for Wroclaw, Poland, where we'll be playing in our first preseason tournament. We're dealing with some injuries right now, so our roster is a little thin, but hopefully we'll be able to make the most of it!

Hope all is well wherever you are, and as always, I'd love to hear from you! (acmaylo@gmail.com)

xoxox

anna

ps: Cobblestone streets are so cute right? yeah, I thought so too.. But until you live on a cobblestone street, you don't realize that those cobblestones are actually made to amplify the sound of any wheeled machine rolling over them.. seriously, they make a 2-door hatchback sound like an 18-wheeler! Anyway, it was worth capturing...

Holy Guacamole

2010-08-31T14:10:00.029+02:00

It's September 1st and I'm updating my blog from my apartment in Dresden, Germany. When I was younger I would laugh when adults would talk about time flying by, but man oh man they were right!

After nearly 3 months on hiatus, I'm now mentally preparing to recount the last 3 months of my crazy life. In fact, in order to open this post, I had to delete drafts of posts that I had started writing earlier in the summer and never actually finished! I'm determined not to let that happen again...

I set off for California in early June, after spending 3 weeks with the fam in New Jersey. I spent a week in Napa, where I got to hang out with my mom and Anthony and the best dog on earth (Tadgh, pronounced TY, it's Gaelic duh), which was a blast. Then I finagled my way into getting a ride to LA with Crystal, but making a stop over in Santa Clara for graduation weekend! It was really fun to see so many familiar faces after being away for so long, and we had a great time getting nostalgic together!

Mid-June saw the beginning of my time with Crystal in Redondo Beach, California, in a house only 2 blocks away from the house where my Uncle Dave once lived. (How bizarre is that?) I was hoping to find a temporary job of some sort, but life without a car in Los Angeles is difficult, and I ended up spending the summer sans employment. This can be seen as a terrible misfortune or a stroke of luck, depending on where you're sitting! The bad news was that I turned into a total tightwad, and my friends would laugh at my stinginess. The good news was that I was living completely without a schedule, and I found some cheap but fun ways to amuse myself!

My days were usually pretty lazy, often playing beach volleyball with Crystal or the other girls to whom she introduced me. I tried to touch the sand everyday based on the idea that I may never have a chance to live so close to the ocean, and I think I was successful! I got to visit with a lot of old friends who live in and around LA, which was wonderful, especially since I won't see them for at least another year now!

On the 4th of July, I got a visit from my awesome Canadian roommate in Austria: Kristina! She spent a week with me in LA, and I had a great time sharing part of my California life with her! We went to the Getty, did Hollywood with Crystal, ate with some celebs in Malibu, and did all the touristy stuff that we could find in the LA area. Of course her departure date came far too soon, but it was great just to have her around again for a little while!

The following week was great because it brought a trip to go see Talia in her awesome town of Springdale, Utah, home of Zion National Park! I spent 4 days there, in which I got to meet her friends at Zion Adventure Company, swim in rivers with said friends, hike in several canyons, eat fish tacos, and basically catch up with the sister who I so rarely get to see nowadays! I stole my/her/our car (the Silver Bullet!) from her, and drove it back to LA (8 hours! alone! in the desert! eek!) so that I could have it when Marco arrived :)

[Sidenote: Right before I left to see Talia, I had gotten a call from my agent about a first league team in Germany that was looking for a middle blocker. After spending all summer practically certain that I would be returning to my club in Klagenfurt, this threw me for a loop, but I told my agent to let me know if any great contracts were thrown on the table...]

Halfway through my stay in Zion, I opened my email to find an e-Ticket roundtrip from LAX to Dresden, Germany! Apparently I was going for a tryout, which was exciting! I spent the last week of July in Dresden, where I got to meet the team, meet the coaches, and obviously practice a bit. At the end of the week, I signed a contract to play with DSC (Dresdner Sport Club) for the 2010-2011 season! Then, I set on my way back to LAX for one final weekend before Marco came to the states!

That final weekend was a big one, because after arriving on Friday evening (and meeting Frankie in the airport before Kendall picked us up), we started a group celebration of 6man! We had dinner at the Union Cattle Company, Crystal's temporary employer and a delicious restaurant with an electric bull in the middle of the floor. Unlike in years past where our team had been comprised mostly of Santa Clara girls, this year we joined a team that was sponsored by Zico Coconut Water and had plans of actually winning the tournament! Due to extreme jetlag and an overwhelming number of girls on the team (40?!?!), I didn't end up playing on Saturday, but I loved watching Crystal and the other girls, and I loved seeing all the volleyball people that 6-man helps bring together for one weekend every year!

On Sunday I shook off the jetlag and played in a AA tournament with Kristen Luxton-Hinman. We had played in one tournament earlier in the summer in Long Beach, and we had so much fun hat we swore to play in at least one more! August 1st was our last possible weekend together, and we made the most of it! Despite a rough start, we ended up playing really well together, and we took second place (don't ask us who we lost to, they were born post-1995, I'm still feeling ashamed), which meant a big bag of random prizes: gift certificates to restaurants, a bathing suit top, a free massage, etc (a big consolation because the amateurs couldn't accept their first place prizes! HA!). Anyway, it was a perfect day of volley and we finished in time for me to get the sand out of my hair before picking Marco up at LAX!

So it's now September 1st. One month has passed since that awesome day. But somehow it seems like only 3 days.. MAYBE a week. Holy guacamole!

Marco's arrival marked the start of an unforgettable cross country trip that brought me to see a big chunk of my awesomely large and dispersed family, and a chance for Marco to see a lot of the US!

We spend 3 days in LA, full of beach runs, BBQs with the Hinmans, the Staples Center, Universal Studios, a tour of the Oakley Headquarters with Megan, a trip to Venice/Muscle Beach, and me dragging Marco around to introduce him to all of my friends :) We then took off on a road trip to Vegas, where we stayed in the Flamingo hotel/casino and spent the evening walking the strip before eating dinner at NewYorkNewYork. The following day we drove from Vegas to Talia, where we went on a hike in the Narrows, which is definitely one of my favorite parts of Zion!

After one night with Talia, we left the car with her and took off for Vegas on a shuttle that would bring us to our flight to San Francisco. My mom and Anthony picked us up from the airport, and we drove through the city on our way up to Napa where we had a feast at Fume, one of our family's favorite restaurants. After dinner, we went home to freshen up before heading up to the Lincoln Theater at the Veteran's Home in Yountville where we watched a spirited performance of "The Pirates of Penzance." Initially, I think Marco was a little unsure of whether he would enjoy this part of the trip, be the performance was wonderful, and we all had a great time.

The following days in Napa were somewhat relaxed, which was a welcome change from our daily schedule of travel! We ate delicious meals, worked out at the local club, went to the library for internet, shopped at the outlets, saw "Dinner for Schmucks" and got In 'n Out Burger, among other relaxing activities! I introduced Marco to pulled-pork sandwiches at the Golden Bagel Cafe (he is a FAN!) and we drove through the valley and over to Santa Rosa to find the nearest mall, which was a good bit of touring for both of us.

On Wednesday of that week, my mom and Anthony were awesome enough to book a room at the Hilton in Fisherman's Wharf for Marco and I, which gave us a chance to explore San Francisco! We stopped in the Marin Headlands on the way in for a foggy photoshoot, then walked halfway across the bridge for some more Kodak moments. We then spent the afternoon walking around the Wharf, Pier 39 etc, and had an unplanned marathon adventure down the Embarcadero to AT&T Park (whoops! Sorry Marco, it's further than I thought...) That night we had dinner with Koryn, an old friend from high school, at a small Italian place in North Beach. It was a perfect day in San Francisco!

The next morning we set off on Highway 1 South, which hugs the coast all the way down California. We drove through Pacifica, down to Half Moon Bay, and eventually got to Santa Cruz, where we met my Uncle Dave, Carolyn and Caleb for a walk around town and some pizza before heading up over Highway 17, which brought us to my old stomping grounds of Santa Clara University :) Once there, we walked around campus, got some new gear from the bookstore, and I got to practice with the girls!

Friday afternoon was wonderful because we spent it at the winery playing bocce and BBQing with my mom and Anthony. But alas, our week had to end, and on Saturday we piled into the truck once again en route to Oakland Airport and a redeye to JFK. We stopped for a delicious last meal of dimsum (why has no one ever told me that Peking Duck is SO YUMMY!?!?!), and then we said our last goodbyes for 2010 and jumped on our JetBlue flight east!

Our arrival Sunday morning is worth recounting because it was such a comedy of errors. The family was up in Cape Cod at the time, so my dad had left his car for us at the house, along with specific instructions on how to get to our house using the train. We had originally planned on spending the day touring around NYC, but a combo of sleep deprivation and gross weather quickly helped us change our minds to set off straight for home. We managed to make it on to the right train to Penn Station, where we were again successful at choosing the right train towards Madison. However, upon exiting the train, Marco's suitcase stopped cooperating (the handle broke off entirely), and it got pretty funny (for me!)!

The situation wasn't helped by the fact that we had a 2 mile walk home, uphill, on the streets of Chatham, NJ. Of course Marco had a nice rolly suitcase, but those suitcases aren't really made for adventures on asphalt/uneven pavement! Sans handle, he was using the strap from my purse to drag his suitcase behind him, when all of a sudden, the zipper broke completely and the whole thing popped open. Needless to say, he was a little bit frustrated (understatement of the century!), so I left him with the luggage on the side of the road while I ran home to get the car and make our lives a little bit easier!

Naps and food made us feel a little better, and we spent the afternoon at the Short Hills Mall, looking for a new suitcase for Marco. We weren't too excited about the idea of a "little investment" of $750.00 (!!!!) for a Tumi bag, so we left the mall empty handed and laughing about the Tumi saleswoman actually spending 10 minutes trying to pitch the sale to two twenty-somethings in jeans and t-shirts with flip flops and baseball caps.

We got dinner that night in Madison, where Marco experienced a FiveGuys Burger, which he gave a 9 out of 10 on the delicious scale. We also went to see "The Other Guys," which was pretty funny!

The next morning we took off for Verona, NY, where we would be visiting my Grandma Cmaylo! All was going well when the odometer hit 260,000 mi (those Toyota Landcruisers last a LONG TIME!), but at 260,002, the accelerator stopped working entirely and I had to pull over to the side of the road. I had never broken down before, so of course I was a little concerned about what to do, but with Marco by my side and a few calls to Dad, we got the State Trooper out to see us and a then a tow truck came to haul us to the Toyota dealership in Johnstown, NY. What a detour!

We were hoping that we could get in and out and back on the road, and tried to kill some time having lunch at Friendly's. However, when we got back to the dealership, the fix-it guys had decided that our alternator was shot, that they didn't have the part they needed, and that we wouldn't be leaving Johnstown that night. Fortunately, an Enterprise rental place was a couple towns over, and they came to pick us up for a one-day rental so that we could get to see Grandma!

Our night in Verona was pretty uneventful, besides the delicious burgers and apple pie that Grandma had waiting for us. The next morning we went on a run around Verona (no really, we ran AROUND Verona), and I got to show Marco some of the classic sights (the bull that has quarters coming out of it's nose, Uncle Joe's house, the fire station, etc). We then took off back to Johnstown to pick up the car which we were hoping would be finished by noon!

Of course, it wasn't ready 'til 5ish, which tested both Marco's and my patience! But at 5 we jumped back in the car and headed towards North Bennington to see my Grandpa Hewitt. Upon arrival, my Uncle Brian prepared a feast of ribs and corn on the cobb (so yummy!) and we watched the Red Sox game before going to bed. The next morning, we went on a run around the Harvest Hills Drive area, down to the old farm and back up the hill, starting our day of touring Bennington!

My Grandpa is basically the best tourguide, because he knows everything about everything in Bennington (possibly in general), and we stopped at the Bennington Monument, the Old First Church, and Bennington College before meeting June for lunch at Kevin's in downtown North Bennington. Then we stopped for some pictures by the pond before going back to Grandpa's to pack our stuff!

We said goodbye to my Grandpa and Uncle Brian and took off for Boston, where we would meet old roommate Jordan for the Red Sox game that evening! The game was great, and again I got to introduce an old awesome friend to a new awesome boyfriend, which never got old. Post-game, we took a night drive to Mimi's house in Cotuit, which would be the final stop on our cross-country adventure. Despite some driving confusion, we made it there by 1AM, and I fell asleep to the sound of the ocean :)

The next day was spent at the beach with Jack and the twins. We went kayaking to the spit, and BBQed that night with the Turnbull girls. Then Marco impressed the group with his Austrian army fire-starting skills when we went to the beach for a bonfire and s'mores. Marco roasted a marshmallow for the first time, and now he understands the delicate but wonderful balance of graham cracker, Hershey's chocolate, and roasted marshmallow deliciousness!

The following morning we woke up early for a round of golf with Jack. After our plans of a nicer club called Quashnet were squashnetted (ha), we settled for the 9 crossing fairways of Cotuit Highgrounds, and it was a BLAST! Of course the Austrian who had never played before beat both Jack and I by about 15 strokes, but we all had a good time and made it back to the beach by noon.

That night we had our last sunset in the states, and celebrated with a dinner at the Chart Room in Cataumet with Mimi, Aunt Marie, and the Moussa clan. It was a pretty funny night, as both Tyler and Chase ended up getting sick and later falling asleep at the table, but the ride home was probably one of the funniest parts!

The next morning we were up early to pack and head to Boston for our flights from Logan. Chase was still feeling a little under the weather, so the boys and I piled into the car for the last time! We dropped Marco off for his flight around 11, and then the rest of us went into Boston to walk around and have some lunch since my flight didn't leave til 8. It was a great end of my time with the family, and then I set off back to Euroland!

I spent 3 days in Austria with Marco, mostly helping him organize stuff for his new apartment. This meant several trips to IKEA, a trip to the paint store, and endless chatter about possibilities of seating arrangements in the living room :) I also got to spend some time with Sophie, one of my teammates from the Klagenfurt Widlkatzen. But Wednesday night brought my flight to Dresden, after which Alex picked me up and brought me to my new (temporary) apartment on Neubertstrasse, next to the Elbe and 2 kilometers away from downtown Dresden!

So far it's been pretty interesting, and I'm definitely still getting used to my life here. Practices are extremely challenging, and there are great expectations for everyone, individually and as a team! But the girls have been wonderful, and the city is beautiful, and I've learned to drive a stick shift, and I'm back to learning German, and... so, I can't really complain!

I had a wonderful summer, and hopefully this season will bring me as much fun and as many adventures as the last one did. Now I'm off to spinning, then practice, then home for some food and sleep before I wake up and do it all again tomorrow. Ahhh, volley life.

XOXO

Would love to hear from you! Email me!!! (acmaylo@gmail.com)

Anna

Whoops, sorry May!

2010-06-01T15:07:00.016+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Somehow the month of May has completely flown by, and I find myself writing this from my bed in Madison, NJ! I have been a bad blogger and missed an entire month! I'll try to summarize the month in Reader's Digest form...

The month started with a bang, as I had just finished saying goodbye to Kristina when it was time for me to say hello to Paris! Marco and I set out on our journey on Saturday, the 1st of May, and got to explore Munich a bit (including seeing the Bayern Munich stadium and eating some goulasch at Hofbrauhaus duh) before catching an evening flight to Charles de Gaulle. We felt pretty confident as we navigated our way from the airport to our neighborhood of Les Halles with relative ease, but were jerked back to harsh reality as we got lost in the maze of our destination metro stop (slash shopping mall) Chatelet! We finally used a map (imagine, a real, paper map, no GPS!) to find our way to the hotel, and got some pizza for dinner before settling in for the night.

Sunday morning brought an early alarm to get ready for our first stop: the Louvre! We made it there by 9:15, and while there was already a line stretching through the inner courtyard, it moved quickly and we were inside the museum by 9:30ish. We beelined to the Mona Lisa, paying our respects to the Nike of Samothrace in passing, and were then inundated with amazing views of the great works from too many genres to name!

I started having major flashbacks from slides in Art History classes through my Santa Clara years, and this caused frustration similar to that which I felt in Rome last year! Veroneses's Wedding at Cana, Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, David and his many celebrated history paintings... it was pretty mind-boggling, and those were just 3 rooms! Added to the fact that I was being constantly nudged by other eager visitors, and I had reached my limit after about 2 hours. We stopped being able to concentrate on one piece of art, much less be impressed by it (despite the fact that we were walking amongst some of the greatest works of all time!). Noon rolled around and we were outta there!

After a quick stroll to Notre Dame, we headed back to the Louvre to meet my friend Emily in front of the IM Pei pyramid for a Paris tour/lunch date. We walked along the Seine towards the Latin Quarter, tourguide extraordinaire Emily narrating all the while (there are some major perks to having history buffs as friends!), then stopped at a cafe for some foot rest and sustenance. Emily guided us towards the Jardins de Luxembourg and the Catacombs, but rain kept us from the gardens, and lines kept us from the Catacombs, so we ended up rewriting our afternoon plans. We said goodbye to Emily (who surely had something amazing to do that afternoon, like meet with the Mayor to discuss her newest Saint Chapelle research, because Emily does stuff like that!), and headed off on the Metro towards Champs Elysees.

When we surfaced at the 7-lane roundabout in the Place Charles de Gaulle, we had a hard time doing anything but just watching the chaos of traffic in front of us! Rumor has it that no car insurance company in the world that will insure you in an accident in that intersection (12 roads coming together in one circle, can that be called an intersection???), and I'm sure the Arc de Triomphe witnesses countless fender-benders each year. We sat on a bench for a while just imagining how anyone drives in such a mess!

While watching the madness in front of us, we also tried to locate the hotel where Marco's grandpa stayed back in 1944, the "Hotel d'Europe." He had given us some vague instructions on where to find this gem ("next to the Champs Elysees" haha), but for some reason we couldn't find it... Therefore, onward and upward to the top of the Arc, where we found ourselves with momentarily amazing weather, and what we've decided is quite possibly the best view of Paris!

From the top of the Arc, it seemed like the Eiffel Tower was pretty close, so we mapped out our route from our aerial position and set off down the 284 steps down on our way to the next destination. Our eyes seemed to have tricked us, however, because the Tower was not nearly as close as we had imagined! We got there by around 6 PM, and while it was remarkably beautiful, we didn't have the energy to wait an hour in line to go to the top, so we took a gazillion pictures and headed back to our hotel for some dinner. All in all, a pretty amazing day!

Sunday brought us a failed attempt to get into Saint Chapelle, then some Metro confusion on the way to the Jardins de Luxembourg. But we tried to keep our spirits high, and by the time we got to the gardens, we were excited enough to take a few customary jump shots. We then went to Napoleon's Tomb (closed, duh, first Monday of every month!), and then to the Moulin Rouge, where we sipped some much-needed hot chocolate. Next was Sacre Coeur, where our hammies, sore from the 568 steps in the Arc de Triomphe, got another painful workout. We stopped shortly on the way down the hill to pick up some souvenirs, then off towards Cemetiere Pere Lachaise to see Emily Guerry once more and pay our respects to Jim Morrison!

All in all, it was an amazing trip, and definitely a reminder of why I am so lucky to be living this life! A short plane flight brought us back to Munich, where we remarkably found our car in the garage (we weren't really that sure we would ever find it again), and set off back to Klagenfurt. I still haven't gotten over the fact that I went to Paris for a weekend!

The next two weeks practically vanished into thin air. Kristina was gone, so my days were sometimes lonely and boring, but that led to some great concentration, and I was able to pack up the apartment and get it clean without too much procrastination. Sophie and I were able to spend some time together, most memorably on a failed expedition to Pyramidenkogel, the mountain next to the Worthersee. We had a last team dinner of pizza and cake, which was absolutely perfect. Next thing you know, it was May 14th, and I was on a flight from Vienna to JFK!

Being home has been wonderful, and I've gotten to spend a good amount of time hanging out with my brothers and sister that I see so rarely! We went camping with the Boy Scouts the weekend after I arrived, which was a blast. I got to visit the twins' school to watch them make a diorama presentation, something that I otherwise would never be able to see! I helped Jack make a cake for his French monument presentation, and have nothing but respect for the Cake Boss after trying to sculpt the IM Pei pyramid out of vanilla cake and frosting. Over the weekend, we got to see the O'Neill clan in NYC before watching Jordan's soccer game at Rutgers! Then we headed up to Verona to spend a couple days getting spoiled by Grandma. It has been a great visit!

I'm headed back to the Golden State on Thursday, where I'll be excited to see my California family and friends! I've somehow managed to land with my bum in the butter once again, as I'm moving down to Redondo Beach for the summer to live with Crystal, who might be one of the funniest people alive. I might come back with 6-pack abs just from laughing so much!

Love,

Anna

Now it's Leaving like a Lamb!

2010-04-26T16:17:00.017+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

The month of April has flown by, and I find myself facing the scary thought that my time in Klagenfurt is coming to an end! Phil (the American basketballer in town) went home last week, and some of the volleyball guys are filing out as well! In fact, Kristina and I spend this afternoon (of amazingly beautiful awesomely Californian weather) at Pumpe with Ryan in celebration of his departure tomorrow morning. When Kristina leaves on Friday, it'll just be Sophie and I left in our Kinoplatz Granny mansion!

That being said, I'm doing the best I can to maximize my time in Kfurt. Since my last update, after 40 days of mono death (I gave up doing anything besides sleeping for Lent), I was cleared to play once again, and I got to play in our last two matches of the season. After losing to Linz, our team was knocked out of the championship, and we were set to play against the team from Hartburg for 3rd/4th place. After beating them 4 sets at home, we played them for the second time last Saturday on the road, where we won again in 5 hard-fought sets! It was bittersweet to be at the end of our season, but we were all excited to go out on a high note!

After we won at Hartburg, Kristina and I were set on making a year-end trip to Rome with Ryan, but mother nature apparently wasn't in on these plans! With most European flights grounded after the volcano craziness, we found that all the trains from Kfurt to the Eternal City were booked for the dates that we were planning on going! In a last-ditch effort to salvage the trip, we decided to book tickets to Munich instead, and we took off last Monday morning for a 2-day field trip to the capital of Bavaria.

The trip to Munich was anything but well-planned, and when we got off the train in the early afternoon, we looked to each other while asking "Whelp, what now?" Fortunately, we were able to find our hostel pretty easily (a nice change from the experience in Venice), and after dropping off our bags, we took off on foot to see the city! Randomly, OP (from the men's team) and his brother Phil, who were also in Munich that day, were able to spot us during our first trek across the city to the Hofbrauhaus, and we had a little reunion! We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking the famous beer (or Radler for me: half beer, half sprite!) and chowing down on yummy pretzels. We then toured the BMW museum and also the Olympic Stadium, which were both pretty awesome.

After dropping the Kjos' off at their train to Salzburg, the three of us went to another beer hall at the fairgrounds where the world-famous Oktoberfest is held each year, and we then spent the evening walking around town and enjoying the beautiful night. To finish the night, we ended up at the Hofbrauhaus once again, and shared a lively conversation with two British Airways pilots who were stuck in Munich til the ash cleared, and we had a great time!

The next day brought us to the Englischer Garten, which is basically like Central Park, only it's bigger, has a safer reputation, and there is a section for nudists between the several beer garden areas. We saw the spot where brave city surfers ride on a continuous wave, and reluctantly walked through an area where some people (one old man in particular) were enjoying the freedom to wear their birthday suits!

We then attempted to tour the rest of the city on foot before heading back to the train station to catch an evening train. We had a great time during our short stay in Munich, and it was a great way to celebrate the end of the year all together!

Since getting back from Munich, Kristina has started packing in earnest, and we are trying to finish all our Klagenfurt bucket-list. She celebrated her 24th birthday last Thursday, which was extremely fun, and we spend Saturday evening at Rosa's house, where her mom cooked us delicious Dutch pancakes and we played "Activity," which is kind of like charades. We all had a great time, and I think it's one of my favorite memories of the year!

Yesterday we played knockout (bucket list item) and at at Nordsee (another bucket list item). Tonight is Kristina's real going-away party at our coach's house, and it'll be really fun to get all of the girls together one last time.

In other news, Saturday afternoon was spent at "the ranch" with Marco's family, and it was entirely entertaining. After catching two huge trout from the pond the day before, his dad soaked them in salt overnight and smoked them for lunch! His mom is apparently an expert fish dissector (is that a word?) and we all feasted on smoked trout sandwiches. I then got to watch in awe as the Breithuber men took on a variety of challenges for their own entertainment, from shooting arrows, to walking across slacklines to climbing trees (grandpa!?). The afternoon ended with the entire group working together to hoist Marco's dad up in climbing gear, which was absolutely comedic! I had a great time as always, and I'm laughing just thinking about the hilarity of the afternoon.

Trying to soak up the last little bit of Kristina's time here, then I'm off to Paris on Saturday til Monday evening! I'm excited to see the City of Light for the first time, and with any luck I'll be able to rendez-vous with Emily, my kindred spirit from my club volleyball days so long ago! She's studying some crazy art history stuff at Cambridge (a little over a year ago I visited her there!), but spending several months in Paris doing research and having a grand old time. Can't wait to reunite once again!

Love and miss you all!

XOX

Anna

Birthday dinner, Salzburg, Futball, Frohe Ostern!

2010-04-05T17:41:00.012+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Last year at this time, I was laying in bed at home in Madison, New Jersey, trying to digest all of the food I had consumed on Easter Sunday with the family back east. I had dyed eggs with Talia, Jack, Chase and Tyler a couple days before, and we were all probably still grazing on the chocolate eggs that Grandma Cmaylo had supplied! Somehow I would roll myself out of bed within the next few hours, when Cath and the kids would drop Grandma and I off at the train to Penn Station, where she would head for Rome, NY and I would head to JFK airport on the way back to CA.

In the blink of an eye, it's been a year, and I find myself grazing on chocolate eggs once again! Now I know that New Years is usually the time to get sentimental about time passing, but for whatever reason, Easter is bringing on the coup de nostalgie... Maybe it's because that was the last time I got to spend a good amount of time with the fam on the east coast? Anyway, Easter this year was a little different, but awesome nonetheless!

Before I get to Easter funfest, I need to rewind to last Saturday, when we celebrated Marco's mom's birthday at a beautiful restaurant on the Worthersee. Dinner was entertaining as always, as the whole family tries to make up for my limited German skills and we play a fun game of lost in translation. The waiter wasn't in on this game, and when he spewed off the day's special menu and asked me what I wanted, I was left awkwardly sitting, mouth agape, waiting for some kind soul to step in and translate for me... One of my random reminders that I live in Austria, not the States!

Sunday brought an expedition to Salzburg with the awesome Fabris clan. Kristina's parents had been in Klagenfurt for several days earlier in the week, and then returned on Saturday evening after spending several days with the family in Italy. The Sunday morning train got us into Salzburg just before noon, and while we were greeted by threatening clouds and some sprinkles, it turned into a beautiful afternoon!

Kristina had been there several weeks before with some of the guys from the mens volley team, so she knew her way around well enough to serve as an awesome tour guide to the city's sights. After enjoying a McCafe warm beverage and walking through the downtown area, we climbed the mountain to the Hohensalzburg Castle. After acquainting ourselves with the workings of a medieval fortress (though we never found out what that shaft down the side of the mountain was for!?!?), we crossed town to find ourselves at the Augustiner Brewery, where we shared some delicious pretzels and beer to finish off the wonderful day as tourists in Mozart's hometown!

After navigating our way back to the train station, Kristina and saw her parents off on their way to the airport in Wien, then hopped on our train back to Klagenfurt. It was definitely a fun-filled day, and I think we both slept 90% of the way home, besides the time spent chatting with an energetic drama student from Vienna :)

This week was pretty standard, though I did get one surprise when I was CLEARED TO PLAY on Wednesday morning! That's right, folks.. After 5 weeks of being a lazy mono-infected bum, I'm off the DL, and ready to start volleying once again. My first practice was on Wednesday evening, and while I'm more than a little rusty ("come ON hand!!!"), it was exciting to get to play, and I'm looking forward to getting back in shape oh so much... (just kidding. getting back in shape is going to be rough!)

Heli gave us Thursday and Friday off in anticipation of Easter, and on Thursday evening Sophie, Matthias, Kristina and I went to watch our friend Flocki's soccer game. Despite having spring-esque weather earlier in the week, Thursday evening brought us back to mid-January, starting with cold rain and wind, and later followed by SNOW (on April 1st?). Needless to say, it's times like those that I'm kind of happy that I play a climate-controlled indoor sport.

Saturday was the Breithuber family Easter lunch, which began with some awesome gifts from the Osterhase (the Austrian Easter bunny who knows I only like nut-free candy!) and followed with a traditional Easter meal of sliced ham, sausage, and cow tongue. (yeah, cow tongue... no big deal!!!) We ate these yummy meats (I only tried one piece of tongue, then stuck to the ham and sausage) on delicious sweet bread, accompanied by the traditional Kaerntner Reindling, a cake made with sugar, cinnamon, rasins, butter, and sometimes walnuts. We also had krenn (horseradish) in many forms, included mixed in with chopped up eggs. Needless to say, I had a full stomach and clear nostrils by the end of the meal!

Marco and his brother had to leave the marathon lunch/dinner a little early to head to pre-game warmup for their basketball game that night. I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with the Breithuber clan, including an adorable little cousin Leonora, til we left to watch the game. It was definitely a different experience than the usual Easter brunch at Brix in Yountville or hanging out at Aunt Cathy's in Sparta, but an awesome experience in its own right!

Yesterday and today have been recovery-from-Easter days, and we start regular schedule again tomorrow. In other news, our team manager booked my flight back to the states, and I'm leaving from Vienna on May 14. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post, and how fast time has flown by! I'll be trying hard to make the most of my last couple weeks of the 2009-2010 season, and I'm sure there will be pictures to chronicle the adventures...

Love you guys, hope the Easter bunny was good to you too!

xoxo

Anna

Comes like a lion, leaves like a lamb

2010-03-25T14:59:00.007+01:00

Hello fam and friends!

Spring has sprung, and Klagenfurt is bathing in sunlight! March has been somewhat low-key for me, with mono keeping me sidelined from normal daily adventures, but the month is coming to a close and I'm ready to get back in the game... Sunshine and blue skies are signs to me that the universe is ready too.. Sub one!!!

Something that I'm really appreciating about my awesome town is their dedication to promoting a communal sense of holiday spirit. Many people have heard about the Christmas markets that go up in December (selling all sorts of random Christmas gifts, sweets, spiced wine and baked goods), but did you guys know that there are Easter markets too? Yup. These Austrians seem to take any excuse to set up outdoor alcohol and pretzel vendors. But hey, it's fine by me, and the city looks wonderful with Easter-eggs adorning the trees and people lounging in the sun while enjoying a beer with friends at 1 PM on a weekday. (I know. Do they ever work?? That's the eternal mystery...)

Besides becoming evermore enamored with the Klagenfurter's idea of how to stretch holidays to cover basically a month of celebration, life is slowly getting back to normal.

The last month has been somewhat disappointing on the volleyball spectrum; after several years of playing in the finals of the Austrian championship, we lost last week against Linz in the semifinals, leading to elimination from the championship chase. We'll be playing against the team from Hartberg for 3rd place, which will be our last series of the season. It's crazy, season passed in the blink of an eye (even those marathon road trips to the armpit of Slovakia!), and we're all hoping we can end the season on a high note. My fingers are crossed that my well-intentioned doctor will clear me to play before our first match on April 10th!

Kristina's parents arrived last week from Canada for a 10 day European adventure. They spent several days touring around Vienna, then joined us in Klagenfurt for a couple days of familiarizing themselves with our home. We had a great time enjoying Pumpe with them, and I think Kristina's dad tried every beer on the menu! They took off for Italy yesterday morning, but will be coming back this weekend, and we might head to Salzburg with them on Sunday before they head back over the Atlantic.

On a last note, almost weekly dinners at Marco's family's house have led me to be introduced to some more random but delicious Austrian dishes:

1) Chibabchichi: a sausage-esque cylindrical meat yummyness
2) Schtrankalan: kind of like spinach, also delicious, but nearly impossible for me to pronounce correctly... "Can I have some more of the green stuff???"

They're kind enough to have invited me to their Easter celebration, which I hear traditionally involves a meal of cow-tongue (???) along with sweet breads, sausage, and many desserts.. I'm trying to go into it with an open mind, and I'm sure I'll be reporting back on the experience!

I hope all is well back home and that spring is coming to wherever you are... Vitamin D, I love you!

xoxo

Anna

ps... ooooh almost forgot. Yesterday, Kristina and I dyed eggs with Sophie and Ryan (men's volleyer), and it was a BLAST! We are pretty much amazing at dying eggs. Some people may not believe that we made these with our own hands. (Please note Ryan's "self-portrait" egg, as well as Sophie's "Volleyball" egg. Pure art!) Haha...

It's March 9 and it's SNOWING in Klagenfurt!

2010-03-09T17:33:00.003+01:00

Hello Friends and Familia!

This morning greeted me with a lovely surprise when I looked out the window to find a fresh layer of snow covering the streets, despite a calendar that said March 9! I'm told this isn't normal. Which is normal, because wherever I go, it seems that it's always "the longest winter ever," or "the coldest day of the year." Ha. What doesn't kill ya, right?

The last few weeks have been the opposite of exciting, because I've been kind of sick with a flu-ey type illness that turned out to be a textbook case of mononucleosis. Yep! Lymph nodes hanging out, and I'm sleeping about 20 hours a day. I compare it to the life of a lazy cat, who sleeps in a cozy little ball all day, and wakes up only to stretch and meow and eat some Fancy Feast.

Mono has been interrupting my daily life, in that I can't really play volley, and in fact I can barely ride a stationary bike at the moment (I call myself an athlete!??!?!?). Therefore, I'm struggling to find other things to take up my time, and I've been relying on a steady stream of movies and some pbs.com programs (Antiques Roadshow! woohoo!) to keep me busy.

I know this is probably not what anyone wants to read about, so I'll lie in this last part, just to satiate anyone's hunger to live vicariously through a gal in Europe who doesn't let mono run her life:

Today I'm going to eat a baguette with cheese for a late breakfast in a quaint cafe, then I'm going to walk up a narrow cobblestone street lined with skinny colorful apartment buildings, and I'll round out the afternoon by playing chess with an old Italian man (he's going to win). I'll have a dinner of goulash and knoedel, and then I'll fall asleep to the sound of a man playing Mozart in the apartment next door.

That sounds like a great day!

Love you guys, miss you!

XOXO

Anna

Fasching and Fishing!

2010-02-22T13:41:00.009+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

It's nearing the end of February, and the weather in Klagenfurt is showing signs of spring! It's sunny and beautiful outside, and while there's still some snow on the ground, I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel!

The last few weeks brought several important events. Firstly, last Tuesday was "Faschingsdienstag," Austria's equivalent of Mardi Gras or Carnivale. People of all ages get in the festive spirit, and Kristina, Sophie and I didn't want to get left behind! Kristina and I chose to use the Halloween costumes that never made it out the door (it was too cold to be ballerinas on Halloween!), and Sophie went as a what she hopes to be when she grows up: a vampire. Kristina and I walked around down doing plies and Sophie snuck up on some unassuming gals at a bus stop, ending up at the Lindwurm for some Kodak moments. We also documented a couple at the parade who must have been 85+ (note the canes) and had better costumes and makeup than us!

Secondly, Wednesday brought our last MEVZA match of the year against Kamnik of Slovenia. Our team is struggling with a few key injuries (it's been the story of the season), so our numbers are dwindling and we sometimes struggle to keep our heads above the water! Nevertheless, we did an OK job against Kamnik, taking the first set but then losing the following 3. With that match behind us, we're moving onward and upward to the Austrian Championship, which we're joining for playoffs. We had our fist match at home against VC Tirol from Innsbruck on Saturday, and we won in 3 sets, which was a good confidence booster. We travel to Innsbruck this Saturday to continue the best-of-three series, and we're hoping to have a repeat performance!

With the beautiful weather motivating us to get out of the house and be somewhat productive with our lives, yesterday was an awesome day of adventure! Marco and I met his brother Martin, Martin's girlfriend Sabrina, and their father for a morning of trout fishing at their family's pond. (Sidenote: When I say we went "fishing," I'm not really lying, because we were trying to get fish out of the pond with a fishing pole. However, this "fishing" isn't exactly that hard, because the fish are so excited to eat the canned corn we were using as bait that they practically jump onto the hook! The most trying part of the whole experience was the attempt to get the unweighted hook into the right part of the pond, which took a whole 4 minutes!) Martin was in charge of teaching Sabrina, Marco and I the tricks to casting the perfect line, and we all ended up catching some beautiful fish that seemed more than happy to leap out of the pond and come home with us. (Thank you fish gods!)

After feasting on trout that Marco's mom was able to transform from something that resembled that singing fish from that one teacher's office into delicious fillets of seasoned goodness, I spent the rest of the beautiful afternoon attempting to study some German (that's my Lenten goal, to study German for an hour every day!) and then watching Bode kick butt on the slalom part of the Super-Combi for another gold medal for the US! Way to go Bode, you're a baller!

I hope spring is around the corner for all of you as well, and please send some emails my way! (acmaylo@gmail.com) I miss ya like crazy, and happy end of Feb!

xox

anna

Exploring Austria: Vienna and Graz!! (and beautiful sunsets)

2010-02-08T20:34:00.013+01:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

This is the scene from out of my bedroom window, at around 5pm, when the sunset was making the clouds look like tufts of cotton candy. Pictures never really capture the full pink effect, but it was breathtaking!

Last weekend brought Kristina and I (along with the rest of the Wildkatzen) to Vienna where we were to face the Vienna Post team. The team from Post is the only other Austrian team that also plays in the MEVZA, and historically our team often plays them late in the Austrian playoffs, so there is a pretty intense rivalry going on... After a 4 hour van ride (and the ritualistic stop at an "Old Timer" gas station/ play place/ restaurant/ greenhouse/ what?), we arrived in the small town of Krems (outside Vienna) for pass-around, after which we headed to our cozy romantic-getaway hotel.

That evening's game didn't really go our way, we ended up losing 0-3 in what we hope is our last disappointing loss of the season. Kristina and I did have fun in our cozy hotel however, making full use of the 12 hours in which we were allowed to pass out in the comfy beds.

The next day, our girls faced the Vienna girls in an Austrians-only Cup match at a gym in Vienna instead of Krems. We arrived at the gym around noon for a 2:00 match, so Kristina and I decided to take a tram into downtown to explore a bit before first serve. Awesome amazing find #1: Bagel Shop! Awesome amazing find #2: outdoor market by City Hall, where they serve hot chocolate for chocoholics like me! Awesome amazing find #3: tram back to the gym, which got us back just in time! So, despite the fact that we lost in Vienna, we tried to make the most of it and ended up having a great time!

Tuesday brought us on an adventure to Graz with Matthias, where he had a last exam before winter term break. We walked all around the beautiful city (and hiked up a hill to see a beautiful clock tower), then had an amazing lunch at Subway (yes! There's on in Graz!!) before coming back to Klagenfurt that evening.

We had this weekend off, and it was really refreshing to have no volleyball for a little bit. We head back into the gym tomorrow, and I think we're all excited to play together again. We play the team from Maribor this weekend, and start playing in Austrian playoff matches next weekend!

Hope all is well stateside. I hear there are some crazy snowstorms on the East Coast, I feel for you guys!

Love xoxo

Anna

CA Visitors, Volley Pics, Tiramisoup, and Maple Syrup!

2010-01-27T16:33:00.011+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

January is cold! I'm starting to be done with the whole bundle-up-anytime-you-go-outside thing, but I am excited for the OLYMPICS to start! Vancouver 2010! Woohoo!

Life here is as awesome as usual. Last week brought two somewhat random American visitors to our humble abode in Klagenfurt. In late November, I got an email from my aunt telling me about a friend of hers who might be headed in my direction on a trip.. Fast-forward a couple couple months, and I came to meet Mark and Victor, who decided to make K-furt their last stop before heading back to the states from Vienna! We had a great couple days with these two random and awesome Californians, and we took a family portrait just before they took off for the train station!

I've recently had some extra time on my hands, so I was finally able to download some of the pictures from our games. Here are some shots of the Wildcats 2009-2010, proof that I do actually do more than just travel around and eat and act like a kid with Kristina!

In other news, I was in a Rachel Ray mood the other day, and decided to try my luck at preparing one of my favorite desserts: tiramisu! I was super stoked about it, and looked up the best recipe I could find. On my grocery run, however, I couldn't find some of the key ingredients (i.e. mascarpone cheese!! key ingredient numero uno!), but I thought I could consult my inner Rachel and MacGyver some substitutions. Whelp, after a somewhat impatient attempt, I ended up with something that resembled tiramisu and had all of the key tastes of tiramisu, but was actually more like tirami-soup.... as in almost entirely liquid. Ha! Fortunately for me, my friends are amazing, and laughed it off while choking it down. Thanks Kristina and Marco!

It's almost February, but yesterday brought a fun late Christmas present from one of Kristina's Canadian compatriots, Ryan, the setter on the men's volley team. He had a chance to go home over the holidays, and brought us some priceless North American goodies: for Kristina, Stride gum, and for me, a big bottle of Aunt Jemima maple syrup! So excited to drizzle that goodness on some of Kristina's amazing pancakes!

That's all from this end. Headed to the men's volleyball game in a bit, then off to evening practice! Hope all is well at home!

xoxox

anna

Belgrade and Snow!

2010-01-12T18:37:00.007+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Since my last update, I've spent 20 hours on a bus, tasted several examples of Serbian cuisine, witnessed 40 hours of constant snowfall, and lived to tell the tale!

Last Monday morning, our team took off for a 10 hour trip to Belgrade, Serbia for a Tuesday night EuroCup match against Pancevo. After winning the first set, we struggled throughout the rest of the match, and ended up losing in 4. (Fortunately, we play them again at home this Thursday, and we have a chance to redeem ourselves with a win to continue in the EuroCup...) We endured a 10 hour return journey to Klagenfurt on Wednesday, and upon arrival Kristina and I decided to spend the evening chowing down on some Klagenfurt style Asian yumminess with our friends Marco and Matthias. Chinese buffet?? OK!!!

The weekend brought a MEVSA match against the team from Split, who we lost to in 3 when we played them in Croatia. It was exciting to get a win, and hopefully it'll boost our confidence going up against Pancevo again!

Off to practice in a bit, but thought I should update with some pictures of the winter wonderland of Klagenfurt. It's beautiful, and besides the cold toes, I love it!

Hope all is well at home!

xoxox

Anna

Venice, Vienna, and Silvester!

2010-01-02T11:33:00.013+01:00

Hello Family and Friends!

Happy 2010! Can you believe it? I entered this decade as a tall, awkward, brace-faced middle-schooler, and while I'm still pretty tall and still somewhat awkward, 2010 brings me brace-free teeth and a life sans sock-hops and PE class. Whew. I like this decade already!

My life has been pretty standardly awesome as of late, and I'll try to catch you up on all of the December excitement. After our trip to Portugal, our team played one more league match in Lubljana on the 19th (we won in 3 sets, yay!) before 8 days of volleyball-free vacation! After grappling with the decision on where we should go for a short trip prior to Christmas festivities, Kristina and I had decided that we would go to Venice for a night, and we embarked on our journey early Monday morning.

We're pretty spoiled, because there is a double-decker bus that goes straight from the Klagenfurt train station (5 minute walk from our house) to the Venice bus station, which is about a 4 hour ride. So despite an early wake-up, we were able to rest up on the bus before arriving in Venice around 11am on Monday! We were both pretty excited to be there, but the minute that we stepped off the bus, we realized that we might not have been entirely realistic about our expectations for the weather in the City of Bridges, seeing as it was frigid ice-box cold, and we were expecting something less bone-chilling. Oops...

We stumbled around the city trying to find our sketchy hostel (thankfully nothing too gruesome like in the movie though), and at one point we were so cold that we debated walking back to the bus to get on the next train back to Klagenfurt! But thankfully our little hostel woman came and found us, and we took it as a sign that we should tough it out and take advantage of a night in Venice!

The weather made being outside somewhat unpleasant (to say the least!), so all of our Venetian explorations were interspersed with stops at cafes for warm and delicious coffee beverages. This kept us in a pattern of perpetual deep-freeze to slight thawing, which made it manageable. We ended up seeing Piazza San Marco, walking around to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (closed, obviously, because we were cold and looking for a warm haven), and exploring all of the labyrinth-esque streets of the beautiful city! After spending the day on our feet and enjoying some veggie foccacia delight for dinner, we retired to our bare-as-bones hostel room, where Kristina and I indulged in some cheap red wine and saltine crackers and spent the night laughing at our amazing lives!

The next morning came quickly, and after we wandered around a little more, we met Kristina's amazing Italian cousins Roberto and Francesca back at the bus station. Along with their friend Luca, they picked us up for a day of touring around Padova (Padua), an amazingly pretty city home to some ridiculous churches as well as some awesome academic history, and it's also the setting for The Taming of the Shrew!

Roberto and Francesca played hosts extraordinaire, making sure that we not only got to see all the sights, but that we got to see them on full stomachs! We spent the day seeing Padova, and then hopped back into the car to head to their home in Pordenone, where they invited me to stay for a super Italian feast of pizza with panettone for dessert! It was amazing, and I was really happy to be a part of it.

The next morning I said goodbye to Kristina to embark on the journey back to Klagenfurt. When I arrived, I had been in my apartment for only an hour or so when I realized it was time to meet my local friends for their Christmas eve (they do xmas on the 24th, so the 23rd is kind of like their Christmas eve!) celebrations at a local pub called "Pumpe." Matthias, Marco, Florian and I spent the evening in a place that could have been out of an Oktoberfest poster, and it was definitely an experience I'll never forget!

Thursday morning brought an early train to Vienna, where I was meeting my mom and Anthony for a couple days of sightseeing in Austria's capital city! It was surreal to see them in my new home-country, and the next few days were really special. I think we did almost everything a good tourist in Vienna is supposed to do, including seeing all the old palaces, eating lots of traditional food, and watching some white horses dance. Yep, Christmas 2009 was pretty amazing!

On Monday morning the three of us took the train to Klagenfurt, and Mom and Anthony watched as my team struggled through our first practice back after Christmas holidays. We then headed to lunch at Pumpe with Kristina, Marco and Matthias (Mom and Anthony got to enjoy a beer and Karntner Nudel!) and spent the afternoon walking around town. I had a great time showing them exactly why I love it here so much!

Mom and Anthony took off that night, and things went back to normal for a few days until we headed up to Matthias' cabin in Falkertsee to celebrate the new year! His parents were pretty awesome to let a bunch of twenty-somethings crash at their house for the night, but it was a great group of around 20 people, a mix between basketball guys, some volleyball girls, and other people who I met for the first time that night. We rang in 2010 with fireworks over a postcard-like scene of Austrian mountains, and a great time was had by all.

The first adventure of the new year came yesterday, as the team took off for a practice tournament in San Dona di Piave, Italy. We were definitely a bit rusty coming off of practically 2 weeks break, but it was probably what we needed to jerk us back into the mindset of always striving to get better! We take off tomorrow for the second round of CEV Cup in Belgrade, Serbia, so hopefully this practice tournament was what we needed to motivate going into this important match!

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays as much as I did, and that 2010 is looking great so far!

xoxo

Anna

EuroCup in the Azores!

2009-12-14T11:50:00.014+01:00

Hello Friends and Familien!

It's Monday morning in Klagenfurt, and I'm looking out the window at a light but constant snowfall, which is coating our streets with a layer of white that is pretty but sure to be the cause of many wipe-outs (on bike, on foot!) for my Californian self. While biking home from the gym yesterday evening, I experienced a burning sensation in the back of my throat, which I attributed to the action of breathing in such cold cold air. Yep, breathing causes pain... Winter has arrived!

Last week was an exciting one, as it brought the second match of our first round in the CEV EuroCup, against Club Desportivo Ribeirense of Portugal. We lost in 4 sets when we played them at home 2 weeks ago, and on Sunday night we left on a midnight bus to begin our journey to play them again on the island of Pico, in the Azores chain, 1,000 miles off the coast of Portugal.

While traveling is never exactly fun, it was easy to keep a smile on our faces during this trip, because we knew that we were headed to an island paradise! The island of Pico is remote enough that there weren't any direct flights from Klagenfurt, so our itinerary was pretty crazy. Midnight bus from Klagenfurt to Munich for a 6am flight, flight from Munich to Lisbon (the city was beautiful as we flew over!!), a couple hours layover, flight from Lisbon to the island of Horta, a couple hours layover, ferry from Horta to Pico. When we finally arrived at our destination, we were welcomed by a chilly rain spitting in our faces, but it was still warmer than when we had left Klagenfurt!

That evening's itinerary included a pre-game practice in the Ribeirense gym, which turned out to be more exciting than we had imagined! After a 5-minute warm up with Luca, our trainer, all the lights in the gym turned off, and we were left in total darkness aside from the exit signs above the doors. Luca decided to ditch any ideas he might have had for a real practice, and we basically ended up doing some Pilates in a dark gym on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. Apparently, there is a first time for everything!

The next day flew by, with a serve and pass practice in the morning, and an afternoon of exploring the island with some of the girls. At 6:30 that night, we headed back to the gym to warm-up for our 8:00 match.

Due to the fact that we lost to this team in 4 sets at home the week before, we knew that we had to either beat them in 3 sets or beat them in 4 and win a tie-breaking "Golden Set" to 15 points in order to advance in the Cup. After winning the first two sets pretty handily, they came back to win the third set, and made it a really tight match in the fourth. Fortunately we came out on too, and it came down to the Golden Set to determine our fates!

After trading points to 10, a couple of critical points went our way, and we won the set 15-12! It was an awesome total team victory, and we were all jumping around as if we had won the World Championships. It sounds really corny, but it was totally one of those moments where we were all reminded why we play!

Tuesday night we celebrated in the hotel, and left early Wednesday morning on our reverse journey: by boat to Horta, plane to Lisbon (we got a lovely stopover on another island to refuel before making it to Lisbon), then an overnight layover in Lisbon (no hotel room, we went karaoke-ing and made labyrinths in the airport to pass the time), plane to Munich, then bus to Klagenfurt. All in all, it was an amazing trip, but by Thursday evening, we were super excited to be home!

This weekend was relatively uneventful, we played a team from Bratislava on Saturday night, but everyone could tell that we were a little wiped from the week of travel. We lost 0-3, which was kind of sobering after our inspired play in Portugal, but we're all hoping that we can pull it together by Saturday when we play in Lubljiana.

This week is bringing some fun Austrian Christmas shopping trips (schnitzel anyone?) and cookie-baking for our Austrian Grandma and German teacher. Perhaps we'll be doing some Christmas crafts.. anything to pass the time while the snow is making outdoor excursions difficult!

I hope all is well back home. Miss you all like crazy, someone needs to invent floo-powder or make portkeys accessible to the general public...

XOXOXO

Anna

Klagenfurt Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-30T18:43:00.018+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

So I've fallen into the no-update-for-weeks rut, but my lack of timeliness has left me with a bunch of fun events to chronicle!

Firstly, since the end of October, the lovely Klagenfurtians have been adorning our downtown area with Christmas spirit, culminating in the "Chriskindlmarkt" that has taken over the square where the Lindwurm (dragony thing in the center) resides. The square is full of adorable little log huts, selling anything that your Christmas heart could desire. This also adds a fun night-life factor, because from the early evening to 11 or midnight, the vendors offer yummy hot spiced wine, beer and ciders! Lina introduced Kristina and I to the cider, and we warmed ourselves after an evening practice.

Last weekend we played a match in Zilina, Slovakia, which is a lovely 8-hour bus ride away from Klagenfurt. After an unfortunate block move, Kristina ended up with a sprained ankle before warm-ups even ended, so we didn't really start the match out on a good note. We took the first set but dropped the next 3, and got back on the bus for a somber post-loss ride home.

Last week flew by, and we had some great weather that I tried to capture in pictures of downtown. Klagenfurt is a beautiful city as-is, but the Christmas lights and the smell of roasted chestnuts make it even more picturesque!

Friday brought a surprise in the form of Lauren, Kristina's friend from Canada who has been Euro-tripping for the last 3 weeks. She's come into our lives as a third roommate, and we're loving it!

On Saturday we played the team from Zilina again, at home this time. After a morning serve and pass practice, we enjoyed a delicious meal of Kärntner Nudel with our local friend Matthias, who helped us pick the best flavors at the market downtown. The pregame meal set us up for success, because with Kristina playing again and an awesome team effort, we managed to pull out our first win in 7 weeks, and we beat Zilina 3-0!

Saturday night we met the volleyball boys downtown for the parade of Krampus (scary devil people that come after the bad children at Christmas time in Austria), and Lauren and I took the opportunity to grab a few snapshots with them...

After a fun night of dancing on Saturday, Lauren, Kristina and I woke up early to start cooking our Thanksgiving feast. This picture captures how great we were feeling on such little sleep while chopping onions, and I hope everyone appreciated the pain we were in while preparing the food that was consumed so rapidly later that night...

We had invited over the 7 other North Americans in town (one American on the basketball team, 5 Canadians and an American on the men's volleyball team) and had put out an open invite to some other friends in town, so we knew that we were cooking for a crowd. Add that to the fact that our kitchen is just big enough for 2 miniature people to squeeze in, and also that the Billa does not offer the 17 options for every item like the neighborhood Safeway does, and we were definitely facing a challenge.. Fortunately, the three of us combined to work some magic, and everything turned out great!

On the menu: Mashed potatoes, rosemary roasted potatoes, sweet potato casserole (do we like potatoes much??), stuffing, macaroni and cheese, gravy, pork chops, salad, sweet potato pie and apple crumble with ice cream. We ate ourselves silly (at one point I had to go lie down for fear that I might explode) and thoroughly enjoyed Thanksgiving Klagenfurt style!

We spent Monday recovering from the feast, and Tuesday brought another eventful German lesson. Today we had a Euro-Cup match against a team from the Azores (island chain off the coast of Portugal), and ended up losing in 4 sets. The exciting part is that we are headed to play them at their home next Tuesday! We leave on Sunday night for Munich, head from there to Lisbon, then take a boat a third of the way to the East Coast to arrive at the tiny island where we're playing!

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving back home, and that you all felt just as gluttonous as I did! I miss you all and would love to hear updates :) (acmaylo@gmail.com!)

XOXO

Anna

Pretty Sunsets = Delicate Shades of Pink and Blue

2009-11-12T19:18:00.008+01:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

The past week and a half has brought some beautiful weather to Klagenfurt, with blue skies in the day and cloudy evenings, the perfect recipe for spectacular sunsets. Kristina and I ventured out one afternoon to find a sunset lookout point, but somehow managed to miss the sunset during our adventure. We documented our pretty town anyway, and we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for the lookout..

Last week's match in Rijeka was a difficult one, they're a strong team and we're playing with somewhat reduced numbers. (I hate that excuse, but it's difficult to look across the net at a stacked starting lineup and 7 gals on the bench, then to turn around to our own bench and see one lonely ranger holding it down! Fortunately three of our girls returned to action early in the week, and hopefully we'll be staying healthy this time around :) We ended up losing 0-3 (boo, hiss), but Kristina, Rosa and I took our chance to jump-photo in the gym prior to our departure from Croatia post-match.

The week was pretty low-key, we learned lots of German (ok, maybe not "lots," but enough to make my brain hurt) and cooked some fanatastic meals, which are the main non-volleyball activities that keep us busy nowadays. We also had some craft-time fun with printing out a bunch of pictures that have been accumulated on my computer, it was really fun sorting through memories going back to senior year at Santa Clara through my adventures in Switzerland, this summer in Santa Clara, and now in K-furt!

Saturday was pretty monumental, namely because it marked the 23rd anniversary of my arrival on this planet! I woke up to find that Kristina had put little birthday messages up all over the house, from one on the microwave celebrating birthday oatmeal to one on the bathroom mirror reassuring me of my birthday beauty... it was adorable!

After our pregame serve and pass practice that morning, Birgit, Sophie, Ellie and Samira came over to deliver a large pile of presents wrapped in tin-foil, which turned out to be individually wrapped ankle socks (they hate the way Americans wear tube socks!). Then they presented me with an awesome poem, which I tried hard to read accurately. Samira documented it, and here's a little intro to my painstaking attempts to learn German:

As you can see, I'm majorly struggling, but the poem was really cute and they definitely made it a special birthday afternoon.

We played the team from Vienna that night, and ended up losing a tight match in 5 games. The team from Vienna is our biggest rival in Austria, mostly because they also play in MEVSA (the international league we're playing in now) and because we often lose to them in the Austrian Championship finals match. After a poor showing in the first 2 sets, we came back in the 3rd and 4th, and it was really frustrating to let it slip through our fingers in the 5th! Next time..

After the match, I didn't have much time to feel sorry for myself, because several of the club's representatives came up to give me a bouquet of flowers, and the crowd proceeded to sing "Happy Birthday" to me! It was really cute, and by the time we got to the locker room, I was smiling again..

After feasting with the girls post-match, where they sang "Happy Birthday" one more time, I came home to commence birthday celebration evening. All of our teammates were playing in an Austrian Cup match the next day, which mean that they couldn't come out to celebrate. Therefore we spent most of the night hanging out at home with a couple of them, which was fine by me! When we finally did make it to the town, we ended up meeting some of the volley guys, who capped off the birthday celebration evening by helping us hold down the dance floor at a local bar. We danced until the wee hours of the morning, and I think I could almost see the sun coming up as I got ready for bed..

My last birthday wish was fulfilled on Sunday morning, when Kristina made a delicious batch of banana pancakes (has anyone ever shared that hangover cure with you? Try it!!). All in all, it was a wonderful birthday weekend, and I feel really lucky to be surrounded by people who helped make my dreiundzwansig-rd? (23rd) so special!!

I hope you all had a wonderful my-birthday weekend too!

xoxo

Anna

Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän

2009-11-06T12:18:00.004+01:00

Dearest friends and family,

Yep, that's a real word in German! During our lesson yesterday, Julia explained to Kristina and I how the German language is unique in that one can string together nouns and verbs in one word. In this case, it's a word that means the captain of a steam-ship on the Danube River. Obvious, isn't it?

This last week has flown by! We lost a heartbreaker in 5 sets last Saturday, which put somewhat of a damper on our Halloween plans. Kristina and I had planned to be ballerinas, but the loss combined with the cold weather was enough to extinguish any flames of motivation! We went into town anyway, to find out that Halloween isn't celebrated nearly as widely here as it is in the states.. No trick or treating (I know, what's up with that??), very few people were dressed up, and no Jaime Lee Curtis screaming on ABC Family. Dang.

Nichole arrived on Monday night for the last leg of her European journey, and it was awesome to have her in town for a couple days! After so much traveling, I think she was OK with laying low while she was here, so we spent many hours hanging out reading (I'm on to the last Harry Potter, she was finishing A Thousand Splendid Suns) and attempting to watch movies online (I don't think I'm meant to do things that are illegal, it never works for me!!). I got word that she got home OK yesterday, and Klagenfurt misses her already!

One of our fun projects this week was to bake bananen brot (banana bread) and "American cookies" (chocolate chip, obvi) with Rosa, our adorable 16-year-old teammate. On Tuesday I got to watch as Kristina taught Rosa how to smush up bananas and wait patiently as the bread smells take over the kitchen far before it's ready to eat, and Wednesday brought chocolate chip cookie deliciousness. Rosa is on her way to becoming a regular Martha Stewart!

The weather here is becoming more and more winter-y. No snow yet, but I'm waiting to wake up to blankets of white covering Klagenfurt's rooftops. It's going to happen soon!

We're off to Rijeka, Croatia for a match tonight. They're one of the better teams in our league, which should make it interesting!

Love you and miss you! And here's our team's site if you're interested: http://atsc.at

XOX

Anna

Oh the Foliage!!

2009-10-28T14:19:00.007+01:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

Since as long as I can remember, it's been a family joke that my mom will brake for pretty foliage.. As in, when passing a beautiful hillside or perhaps a reddish-orange tree on a the way to the grocery store, Talia and I would find ourselves being hurdled towards the front seat of the Trooper, only to hear Mom say "Girls, look at the pretty tree!!" We would look at the tree, then at each other, rolling our eyes and chalking it up to our mother's perma-Vermont nostalgia, a condition that affects VT transplants, only treatable by copious amounts of maple syrup, Cabot extra-sharp cheddar, and the occasional Mary-Lou Donut..

Well I know everyone says that you turn into your parents, so I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise... but man oh man the FOLIAGE!! I'm so turning into my mom, filling up my camera's memory card with pictures of LEAVES. I'm falling in love with fall! (Kristina and I are trying to come up with a way to make pumpkin-spice lattes to enhance the experience. Yum...)

Besides watching the leaves change colors (totally worthwhile way to spend the afternoon), life has been busy with a long trip to Croatia followed by an active long weekend. Last Friday morning, we met the team on the bus at 9 am, embarking on a 8-ish hour journey to Split, Croatia. Fortunately, Lina brought a season of Sex and the City to help pass the time, and we broke up the trip with a stop for lunch and some rest-stop agility again. We got to the gym around 6:30 for an 8:00 match, and while I would have loved to go explore Split, we were there to play a game, so eploring wasn't in the cards for the evening.. I did manage to snap a pic of the gym, but that's about it!

We played OK but couldn't manage to take a set, and ended up losing 0-3. I think we're all getting somewhat tired of the losing streak, and realizing that we had an 8 hour trip home was kind of like pouring salt in the proverbial wound. Thankfully, Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte entertained us on the way home, and we rolled into Klagenfurt at 6:30 on Saturday morning.

We spent the day relaxing around the house, recovering from the 18 hours on the road, but that night Kristina decided to try a new dessert experiment, making a chocolate-chip cookie pizza (brings me back to pizookies at BJ's) and it turned out to be dessert heaven. Later we went to watch our guys volley team play, and then met up with some teammates to celebrate Lina's birthday (it was a while ago, so we were celebrating birthweek? birthmonth?).

Sunday was lazy, so we decided that Monday should be adventure-filled. We decided to hop on our bikes and head on the path around the Worthersee, a 50 km ride in total! We packed our ipods, a lunch, made many stops along the way for photo opps, and had an awesome time!

Yesterday brought another German lesson, and we're on to talking about months and seasons. Yep, go ahead and ask me what "autumn" is in German? I so know it: Herbst. (Pat on the back for me!) Post-German lesson, I got to chat with my Mom and Anthony, interrupting breakfast to wish Mom a HAPPY HAPPY Birthday! Wish I could've been there to celebrate!

Off to practice in a bit, hope all is well back home!

XOX

Anna

Richard, hardest name EVER

2009-10-21T16:30:00.007+02:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

Es ist vier Uhr neunundreizig (It's 4:39), and I'm sitting down to update the blog before tonight's evening practice. Yup, that's right, I just spelled out the time in German, and yes, that's about all I've got in me so far!

Last week marked the start of German lessons for Kristina and I, and stumbling through each 90 minute session leads to a lot of laughs! For example, on Tuesday we learned the German alphabet, and our teacher Julia (Yoo-lee-uh) gave us a copy of the "Buchstabier-Alphabet" to help in us in our learning process. This is basically a list of words associated with each letter to help differentiate between letters that sounds similar, like "A for Apple, B for Banana, C for Cat," etc etc. In German, most of the letters are associated with common first names: A wie Anton, B wie Berta, Ce wie Casar... Simple right?

WRONG! We were doing OK all through the list, until we got to the letter R. "eR wie Richard," said Yooleeuh, waiting for Kristina and I to repeat. For whatever reason, trying to say the name "Richard" in German made us sound like we were choking on 10 marbles while drowning in a tub of pudding (I know, that doesn't make sense, but I'm trying to think of the right way to describe the strange sounds that came out of our mouths). Poor Julia, with so much energy and patience, kept repeating, waiting for us to come up with the right string of sounds.. Alas, after about 5 tries, we moved on to "eS wie Siegfried," and Kristina and I vowed to avoid saying "Richard" EVER again.

While we're struggling somewhat (to say the least!) it is pretty fun to be learning a new language, and having class together with Kristina makes it all worthwhile. We can't say "Richard," but we can say all the numbers, days of the week, tell time, talk about ourselves a little bit ("I'm Anna, I'm from California, I'm a volleyball player") and we know the capital of Austria is Vienna. Baby steps :)

Besides German classes, last week was pretty busy with matches and the end of visits from Nichole and Jason. Wednesday we came out with a win in three sets against the team from Lubljana, which felt pretty good after our sobering loss in Bratislava. Nichole and Jason were slotted to depart on Thursday morning, so after the match we decided to go out to celebrate a little before they took off! I watched my worlds collide (literally and figuratively!) as Jason, Nichole, Kristina, and our awesome volley-guy friends broke out some timeless moves on the dance floor... I think we all had a great time!

Saturday brought us to Maribor, Slovenia, for a league match against the same team we had played in the friendly tournament last month. It was Lina's 21st birthday, so at our pre-game meal some of the girls broke out gifts, and they posed for a "Happy Birthday" picture on the walk back to the gym. I love my teammates!

As for the match, we came out playing really well, but as soon as the score got to 20, we couldn't seem to hang on, and ended up losing in three sets. It was encouraging to see us playing well against a strong team, but losing is NOT FUN, and I think we're all ready to play well and win.

We didn't have any time to feel sorry for ourselves though, because the next day our girls played in an Austrian Cup match against the team from Melk. Austrian Cup matches allow Austrian players only, so Kristina and I used our off day to make post-match brownies for Lina's birthday, and went to the match as cheerleaders (we were supposed to learn a routine from High School Musical, but somehow didn't end up getting around to it... We'll keep that in our back pocket for the next Austrian Cup match...). They ended up winning in five sets, and the brownies were a big hit :)

After a morning workout on Monday, Kristina spent the afternoon working on a paper for Masters stuff, and I watched one of my favorite movies courtesy of Mme Brown back at VHS: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain! I first watched movie in French 2, sophomore year of high school, and I think it might get better everytime I see it! I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a somewhat random, funny, feel-good story..

Post-Amelie, Kristina and I had an off-day culinary adventure feast of rosemary chicken and roasted butternut squash. It wasn't like Mom's, but still pretty delicious, and definitely left us satisfied. Success!

Tuesday morning brought a mailbox surprise in the form of a package of five CDs worth of new music from my favorite eldest Luxton! (Getting packages never loses its magic!) Thanks a million Pux, Guetta is on repeat and I like Anne Walsh, even if she's not exactly Feist :)

After too many hours staring at her computer, Kristina joined me on an afternoon bike ride yesterday, and we managed to get some awesome shots of our awesomely beautiful town. Its super autumn-y here, and I'm starting to see why my dad doesn't want to leave the East Coast with all of it's beautiful seasons. Kids are crunching through leaf piles, the air is crisp, and it's always tea time at our house...

Today was pretty awesome because Kristina and I ventured to Ikea once again, this time in search of cozy blankets to help us get through chilly winter nights with bodies that are too long for our euro-quilts. We picked up several fleecy blankets each, and tonight we'll work mummify-ing ourselves into the bedtime routine. Welcome to winter in Klagenfurt!

On Friday we're headed to Split, Croatia for a match against one of the better teams in our league. It should be a crazy 24 hours, because we leave Friday morning on a 7-9 hour bus ride, play on Friday evening, and hop right back onto the bus post-match to come back! Kristina and I are currently brainstorming ways to pass upwards of 14 hours (I KNOW!) of time on the bus, and if you have any grand ideas, please send them my way! (acmaylo@gmail.com!!!)

xoxo

Anna

Nichole arrives, Bratislava, and Canadian Thanksgiving!

2009-10-14T15:15:00.009+02:00

Hello all!

I'm currently sitting in my kitchen, nursing my 3rd giant mug of tea for the day. It's cold here! For whatever reason, Mother Nature in Klagenfurt likes to turn on a dime... It was warm and sunny on Sunday, but when Kristina and I got up to go to the gym on Monday morning, we had to break out our winter coats! Everyday we're modifying our winter-weather routine, but it's currently heavily reliant on yummy tea in new Ikea mugs that are constantly in use..

Life since my last post has been awesomely fun. There was some mis (or lack of) communication between Nichole and I, so I wasn't sure when she was supposed to be showing up in Klagenfurt, or exactly how she was going to get a hold of me! I thought she had mentioned that she would be getting here on October 8th, but she was actually taking off on October 8th, and arriving on October 9th! Anyway, after she didn't show up on Thursday afternoon, I kept my fingers crossed that I would get a call from the Vienna airport sometime during the next day...

Friday morning was spent picking berries at a U-Pick farm with Lina and Kristina (ouch, I had forgotten how prickly berry bushes were! Miss ya Grandpa Cmaylo :) after which Kristina and I decided that we should explore the bus routes a little more to find the bus to Ikea to decorate her room.

Before taking off on this adventure, I decided that I should just try to call Nichole's Santa Clara phone, in the unlikely circumstance that maybe her flight had been cancelled or she had decided not to get on the plane or something like that.. Way to go gut feeling! After a couple rings, a tired sounding voice answered, and Nichole informed me that she was on the train from Vienna, and that she would be arriving within 10 minutes!

I went to grab Nic from the train station, and we persuaded her to join us on an Ikea outing (who doesn't love Ikea outings??). Kristina made some amazing purchases (coffee mugs amongst them), and then we left Nichole at home for a few hours of showering, napping, and calling home while we went to practice.

We had Saturday off, so after coming home from practice, the three of us headed over to Lina's house, where we were meeting up with some of our teammates before going to the Oktoberfest party at the university here in Klagenfurt. Starting at around midnight, Lina, Rosa, Anna, Kristina, Nichole and I spent the night dancing to some crazy euro-mixes (anything from David Guetta to Journey to German rap to who knows what), and we had a great time!

On Saturday the three of us used our two bikes (tandem anyone??) en route to watch our men's basketball team play a home game. We almost crashed several times, but made it there alive, and it was fun to watch our new basketball neighbor friends play.

Sunday was somewhat of a blur, because we spent 85% of the day driving to and from Bratislava, Slovakia. Helli showed up at 8:45 that morning to pick us up, and after a couple hours of driving, we stopped somewhere past Graz for some agility exercises on a narrow starway and a delicious pre-game meal. Another couple hours whizzed by (no, not really, in fact they seemed to pass in slow motion), and we found ourselves at the gym around 2pm. We had a litte time to kill, so we hung out in the gym's cafe/restaurant, and some of the girls got yummy hot chocolates.

We had somewhat of a rough game, losing in 3 sets is never fun... The first and third sets were pretty close, we lost each by only 2 points, and we had a ridiculous amount of unforced errors in each. Needless to say, we were pretty bummed after the game, and the last thing we wanted to do was get back into the car for another 4+ hour ride! But alas, the highway was calling..

We got home around 11pm on Sunday night, and Nichole told us all about her day of exploring around the Klagenfurt and the lake. A combo of Nichole and Twix bars were able to cheer us up, and we fell asleep that night laughing about our rest-stop agility and Nichole's solo adventures.

As I mentioned earlier, Monday brought us our first taste of winter, and after a morning workout at Atlantis, we all curled up at home (me with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire... so good, even the 4th time around!) in an attempt to avoid the cold weather. I think our lazy day inspired us to make it an exciting evening, because we decided that we should make a feast that night in celebration of Kristina's first missed holiday, Canadian Thanksgiving!

The meal of choice was a traditional Canadian Thanksgiving dish... Fajitas! (who knew?? just kidding, I think we started our own tradition with that one) After a really yummy dinner, Kristina wowed all of us (I think she even wowed herself) with delicious banana bread for dessert. We invited a couple of our basketball friends over to share in the yumminess, and by the end of the night, the entire loaf was gone. Happy Thanksgiving! Haha...

Yesterday was spent hanging around the house, and after some amazing naps, Nichole and I went downtown for a little afternoon shopping. Around 5pm, I got a call from Jason, who is back in Klagenfurt for a couple nights before he and Nichole take off on some euro-tripping together!

We had a late practice last night, so the the three of us (Nichole came to practice with my team!) left Jason alone for a couple of hours while we were training. It was really fun to look across the net with my new Austrian teammates and see them giving Nichole high-fives!

Kristina is making stir-fry for pre-game meal, we're playing the team from Lublijana tonight at home. We have another match in Maribor this Saturday, so hopefully I'll be writing with good news next week!

Love and miss you all!

XOXO

Anna

PS: Jason just showed me the clip of Jim and Pam's wedding on The Office. I love them!

Newest Teammate/ Partner in Crime!

2009-10-08T14:52:00.007+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

I'm listening to the newest Norah Jones album right now, and I think it's probably the 10th time it's been played this week. 17 thumbs up for anyone who likes amazing piano-and-guitar-playing jazzy singer-songwriters!

Besides listening to Norah Jones on repeat, life since my last post has been pretty awesome! After our brief introduction to the fun of cooking, Birgit went on a short cooking rampage at the end of last week by picking several recipes that she wanted to make for Sophie and I between practices. On Thursday, we feasted on stuffed zucchini, and Friday brought cous-cous salad and tiramisu (prepared by her equally inspired boyfriend who was in town visiting). While we all enjoyed the meals, I think that several days of toiling over confusing recipes (she added too much vinegar to something, didn't have the right mixer for something else) and several days of cleaning up after those confusing recipes was enough to snap her out of her Rachel Ray mood, and by Monday morning it was back to lunches of bread and Nutella for Birgit and Sophie :)

On Friday evening, Sophie, Birgit, Birgit's boyfriend and I met some of our teammates downtown for drinks at the local Mexican restaurant. We didn't have practice on Saturday, so we took our chance to have a night out! I'm pleased to report that Mojitos in Klagenfurt are just as delicious as Mojitos in Santa Cruz. Yum!

Saturday morning was really exciting, because it meant the arrival of our newest teammate, and my new roommate! Her name is Kristina, and she's an outside hitter from Sudbury, Ontario. She went to college in Florida, and played last season in Finland. We're the same age, and due to the fact that the volleyball world is super small, we have a handful of mutual friends. We even figured it out that she was in San Antonio for the Final Four in 2005, and was watching as we played against Nebraska and her friend Sarah!

Anyway, Kristina got in on Saturday morning, and in an attempt to jerk herself onto Austrian time, she decided to forego a nap and spend the day touring the city and watching our club's 2nd team play on Saturday evening. We were both pretty wiped that night, so decided to make it an early night be ready for our match the next morning.

Sunday brought a match against Tyrol, the team from Innsbruck that we had played in Maribor the week before. I had a lot of fun watching Kristina coming into the gym, shaking hands with everyone, then jumping right into our warmup! It was a pretty whirlwind team integration for her, but she did great and now it seems like she's been here the whole time!

After the match, our team changed uniforms and re-did our hair for team pictures: first we took a bunch in the gym with our 27 different sponsors, and then we headed to the lake for cute team shots. (If you want to see all the pictures, you can go to http://www.qspictures.net/, and if you want to download them, the username is "wildcats2" and the password is "maja") It was a beatiful afternoon, and Kristina and I stayed after our photoshoot was over to have lunch with Lina at the restaurant on the lake!

Monday was a day off, and after a morning at Atlantis (the fitness center), Kristina and I spent the day walking around the city and hanging out with some of the guys from the men's volleyball team. It's nice to have other friends that share our same random schedule, where we're ridiculously busy some of the day and have entirely not enough to do for long stretches of time (we exchange pointers on which shows we should watch, season by season, between practices, rough life I know!!).

That night, Crystal and I Skyped with our coaches at Santa Clara, and we got the lowdown on their first conference matches and what's been going on with the team. Crystal is playing in the Canary Islands this year, and while we're much further apart than we were last year, we still manage to talk two or three times a day! Somehow the topic of how much we miss our team and coaches at Santa Clara always comes up, so it was fun to chat with Jon like we were back in the offices at SCU. We're pulling for the Broncos, they're playing Saint Mary's today and at San Diego on Saturday, so we'll be cheering from overseas!

This weekend we head to Bratislava, Slovakia for our first league match. It'll be our first real test to see how we're going to stack up against other teams in our league, and I'm excited!

One last fun point is that a former Bronco teammate is supposed to be arriving in Austria today! Nichole Clark is embarking on an amazing euro-journey, and her first stop is Klagenfurt. I'll be really excited to see her and get to share my awesome life here with another friend from home. Updates on Nichole's trip to follow!

I hope all is well at home, and that you are all getting warm breezes through your windows during afternoon naps too :)

LOVE,

Anna

Maribor and Pumpkin Soup!

2009-09-30T23:09:00.010+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Tomorrow is the four-week anniversary of my departure from the US of A, and I'm happy to report that it's with nostalgia but not too much homesickness that I think back to that last day at JFK! I'm still pinching myself often, wondering when this honeymoon phase might end, but I'm hoping that I've really just found myself in a honeymoon-ish life!

Since my last post, after spending one last day tourning around Klagenfurt, Jason took off, heading first for Vienna, then on towards Italy. With the help of facebook and Skype, I hear from him rather often, and I get to keep updated on his crazy Euro-trip stories. It was great to have a friend in town for a couple days, and there's a chance that he might stop back through here before he heads home in early December!

On Thursday, my friend Britanny came back from several weeks in Germany, where she had tried out for another team there. Unfortunately, she's struggling to get back from a knee injury, and ended up deciding that maybe she should head home to the states for rehab before possibly trying to find a team in January. Anyway, she came to spend a last weekend in Klagenfurt, and we spent Friday morning at the lake, laying on a dock with our feet in the water.

Later, on our way home, we realized that there was a festival of some kind going on in downtown Klagenfurt, and we took a short video to document the fun!

That afternoon, Helli came by the flat to pick the "Rupees" up for our first team trip to Maribor, Slovenia (our apartment is on St. Ruprechter Strass, so Sophie, Birgit, Ellie and I call ourselves the "Rupee Gang"). From Klagenfurt to Maribor it is approximately a 2.5 hour drive, but it was through some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen! We arrived at our hotel on Friday evening, and left soon thereafter for a scrimmage with the team from Maribor. It was difficult to be playing so late and after a long day of travel, but we played well at times and ended up taking a set off of them, which was encouraging. We got back to our hotel close to midnight, and it was the start of a long volleyball weekend!

The next morning, Helli allowed us to sleep in a bit, but we met in the late morning for a team hike up the mountain next to the hotel. At the top of this mountain, we there was a large ropes course, and more importantly, a huge alpine slide! It reminded me of summers in Vermont where my Grandma and Grandpa would take me, Talia, and our cousins to ride the alpine slide at Bromley mountain, only this slide was a little more sketchy and made me fear death by bob-malfunction a little more than I did back in VT. Fortunately, the slide was better constructed than I had imagined, and we all made it down alive!

That night, we played the team from Maribor again, and it was good to see that we're showing improvement. We're playing with a strange rotation right now, several girls are injured, and we're still waiting for our second foreigner (an outside from Canada) to arrive (this Saturday! YAY!), so we're somewhat incomplete. But we did well with the personnel that we have, and we're getting better!

Sunday morning we played the team from Innsbruck, Austria, who are also in our league. We took them to 5 sets with our incomplete roster (the middles were playing backrow some of the time!) but ended up losing a tight game in the 5th. That concluded our weekend of volleying in Slovenia!

Helli gave us Monday and Tuesday off from practice, but surprised us on Monday with a team cooking class with a nutritionist. The 9 of us divided 5 recipes amongst ourselves, all meals that were designed to be quick, healthy, and practical for athlete's schedules (I know, what schedule is that, you ask? Lay by the lake between practices? I could probably cook a 7-course meal every day! But I think my teammates do have real lives that are busy though, so maybe the recipes were more designed for them..)

I was paired with "Anna Kleine" ("little Anna," because there are two of us, and they distinguish between us with the vast differences in size. I'm "Anna Grosse," haha) and we were assigned the pumpkin soup. I had never made pumpkin soup before, but as the weather starts getting colder, I'm realizing that it may be a go-to recipe for yummy fall comfort food! The other gals made such recipes as millet (?) with apples and cinnamon as a breakfast food, sesame seed and cornflake crusted chicken, and DELICIOUS potato pancakes. Everything was really really good, but the soup was pretty legendary, so I'll share the recipe:

Take a small pumpkin, and after cutting off the stem and taking the seeds out, cut it two inch cubes (the recipe says 400g of pumpkin, but we grams are hard for Americans, and I really have no idea what a gram is... except a singing gram that I was always hoping to get around Valentines day in middle school..)

In your favorite stew pot, saute a diced onion in a couple tablespoons of olive oil

When the onions are soft and almost transparent, add the many grams of pumpkin, as well as a liter (a 4 or 5 cups ish? Again, a standard of measure that means nothing to me) of vegetable stock. Simmer for 20 minutes, or until pumpkin is soft.

After 20 minutes, puree the pumpkin in the pot, until the soup becomes an evenly smooth consistency

At the same time, add a cup of milk, a cup of cream, a teaspoon of salt, and two tablespoons of soy sauce

Puree until all ingredients are mixed

Prepare to be amazed with your own chef mastry, and maybe steal a bit of soup for yourself before everyone realizes how good it is and gobbles it down!

Throughout this cooking session, I honestly felt like I was back in home ec. in 7th grade... Did I mention it was at the local high school with the cooking teacher? Yeah. I forgot what it was like to be constantly trying to follow the rules, especially rules in German! Don't sit on the counter! Don't add the cream too quickly! Warm the bowls before serving the soup! Can someone translate for me??

After we were all done with our recipes, we sat down to taste our culinary experiments. The nutritionist explained (in German) the importance of fueling our bodies correctly, and how we can all find time to prepare good food for ourselves blah blah blah. Wait, what was that last part?? Oh yeah, I only heard part of it because I was too busy scarfing the deliciousness!

Yesterday and today were pretty low-key, because my body is just so darned tired from volleyball! I did, however, manage to find time to finished my latest read, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I LOVED this book! It was a really quick read, which I like (of course, until the end, when I wanted it to keep going!!) and basically a great work of fiction. I have a copy if you want to come borrow it! :)

I miss you all and hope all is well in your neck of the woods! Remember, send updates to acmaylo@gmail.com, I love hearing from you!

LOVE,

Anna

The Worthersee

2009-09-23T08:30:00.010+02:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Since my last update, the city of Klagenfurt has been bathing in California-esque sunshine almost everyday! It's not super-hot, but it gets to be in the high 70s, which is perfectly perfect for me. I'm all for avoiding the fact that someday the sidewalks might be covered in a thin sheet of back-breaking ice, and when that sun hits my skin everyday, I almost convince myself that this weather will hold 'til March...

Last week was my first time going through the regular schedule of practice and weights, and it's looking to keep me far more busy than I was in Switzerland. Our gym is a pretty awesome facillity across town, and we have practice 5-7 times per week, which means that we have double days on Tuesdays and Thursdays (usually). On the other days we have weights in the morning at a local fitness center called Atlantis (which is an amazing multi-colored, prayer-flag adorned, environmentally friendy hippie version of a 24-hour fitness) and then practice in the evening.

If practicing twice a day has been good for one thing, it's been helping me get over my illogical fear of public transportation! (Anyone who knows me knows that I stress out major over pubilic transportation. I'm always afraid that I'm going the wrong way, going to miss my connection, going to somehow die on board, etc. I think I was traumatized once while taking NJ Transit from Penn Station back to Madison and I ended up going to the wrong town an hour away. Oops?) Anyway, Sophie, Birgit and I take the bus to practice everyday (twice a day!) and I can say that I now saunter onboard with confidence, I know how to buy a ticket, and I have even explored some of the other bus lines around town. Baby steps!!

We had a scrimmage against a team from Slovenia (Kamnik) last Wednesday, and it was definitely fun to play against another team for a change. One of Kamnik's foreigners is a gal named Emilie Toone, who was a standout middle for the University of Utah for the last five years, and who I've been playing against since our days in club volleyball! I know that I'm a pretty nostalgic person, but I don't I'll ever get over the weird feeling of seeing people that I know from home while I'm all the way over here.

After a long week of practice, we had an unexpected day off on Saturday, and Sophie helped me take full advantage of it. Her sister Lena and her fiance Claus came by our apartment in the morning to start us off on a fun day of simple pleasures:

Pleasure 1: IKEA :) With the expert help of Sophie, I invested in some throroughly mass-produced artwork that has helped me cover my walls and create my own home space in Klagenfurt. Martha Stewart and Mr. Feng Shui would be proud. Woot!

Pleasure 2: ICE CREAM :) Has anyone here ever tried poppyseed ice cream? I mean they're good on bagels, so maybe they're good in ice cream too?? Welp, check that off my bucket list!

Pleasure 3: THE WORTHERSEE :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rthersee

Due to the clouds and gray of the week, I had yet to see the huge lake that was rumored to be beautiful and nearby. After finishing errands at Ikea, Lena and Claus brought us on tour of the Worthersee, starting with the shores on the eastern Klagenfurt side, and continuing with a trip to Velden, a pretty cute town on the western shores of the lake. In Velden, Lena and Claus decided to treat us to a touristy boat ride around the lake, and I couldn't seem to capture the amazing beauty in pictures!

On Sunday we played several matches against another Austrian team from the first league, and it was good to get some experience playing in a match-situation. We're all still getting used to playing with one another, but we seem to be making strides towards getting better, which is all I can ask for!

On Monday morning, I woke to a surprise when I realized that I had a visitor! As some of you may know, one of my best friends from school (Brody) is playing professional basketball in Poland this season. Brody is one of the friendliest guys I've ever met, and his network of friends is making the world smaller every day! Case in point: One of his best friends from his hometown of Redding is on this side of the Atlantic for a couple months of Euro-tripping. When I heard that Jason was on this continent, I extended the invitation to stop by Klagenfurt if he was interested! Well, after two days of debauchery at Oktoberfest in Munich over the weekend, Jason hopped on a train to Klagenfurt on Sunday night (forgetting the small detail of notifying me), and arrived early on Monday morning! When I rolled over to check the time on Monday, my lovely phone was blinking with several new messages saying "I'm in Klagenfurt! Where should I go!??" and "I'm at an internet cafe near the train station, how do I get to your house!!??" Ha.

After we played the "where in Klagenfurt is Jason?" game for a little while, we met up at the train station and started the visit off right! I had a day off on Monday, so we spent the morning walking around downtown before hopping on a bus toward the lake! After my adventure there on Saturday, I felt like I was practically a local, and I was excited to share the awesome beauty with Jason!

We walked around the lake for a while, and later in the afternoon Sophie and Birgit joined us for some hangout-with-feet-in-water time. It was PERFECT weather (as you can see, I'm wearing shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt!!!) and I was on cloud 9.

That night, Sophie and Birgit had the great idea of trying out Klagenfurt's Mexican restaurant, and I was in full support. I hate to say that I was expecting the worst, but I was definitely not expecting it to be as yummy as it turned out to be! Jason and I had chicken fajitas (yum!) and we came home entirely satisfied by Klagenfurt's version of Chevy's (but no big hats for fake birthdays. dang!!).

Yesterday was busy for me, so I wasn't able to do too much with Jason, but fortunately he's a really easy guest and didn't complain about settling for a long walk through downtown. It's really nice to have a visitor around, and I'll be bummed when he takes off for Vienna later today.

OK, I'm headed off to Atlantis for a morning lift. Love you all and talk to you soon!

xox

Anna

Back from Hochkar!

2009-09-15T14:43:00.007+02:00

Hello Everyone!

It's finally sunny after 2 days of gray here in Klagenfurt, and I'm loving it! I have a little time before our evening practice, so I thought I should update the blog!

We left for training camp last Sunday, and after a 4 hour bus ride, arrived in the mountain town of Hochkar, which we would call home for a week. We stayed at a mountain sports training facility, which was comprised of a huge dorm building that was connected to several gyms, a bowling alley and a fitness center through a series of confusing tunnels. There were also tennis courts and a track outside, as well as rock walls and a ropes course. Apparently Hochkar is a popular ski resort in the winter months, but it was sunny and green while we were there, and it was pretty ridiculously stereotypical Austrian mountain scenery-esque..

Our days at training camp were pretty funny and brought me back to double days at Santa Clara. We would wake up at 7:45 to go to breakfast in the cafeteria at 8, and then we would have weights and/or practice at 9. Following weights or practice, we would have some sort of agility training outside, and then we would head to lunch at noon. Helli tried to organize some fun team-bonding events for the afternoons, one day we had a team-building activity and we had a mountain hike on another day.. We would fill any unused time with naps, so we were always pretty well-rested :) In the evenings we would practice for a couple hours and then head to dinner, sometimes following dinner with a sauna session. Basically, it was a schedule of sleep, eat, volley, eat, sleep, volley, eat, repeat! (Anyone who has gone through double days or perhaps the Volleyball Festival definitely knows how this feels!!)

I loved our time at Hochkar, because it really gave me a chance to get to know my new team at warp-speed. I met them on Sunday afternoon, and by that evening we were all living together, sharing almost every hour together... My roommate was a gal named Sophie, who also lives in the same flat here in Klagenfurt, and we had a great time hanging out between sessions.. I'm one of the oldest people on the team, so we're pretty young, but all of the girls speak nearly perfect english (which is amazingly awesome!) and are super welcoming and friendly. By the end of the week, I felt like I had known them all for a lot longer than just 7 days!

One of the funnier stories of the week came on Friday, when Helli had scheduled a "team challenge" between sessions. While the first 4 days in Hochkar were sunny and beautiful, Friday was foggy (as in couldn't see more than 20 feet ahead) and gray, with spurts of rain throughout the day. Helli sat us down to explain our challenge (by the way, I should note that he speaks in German all the time in the hopes that I'm going to just pick it up day by day. It's kind of working, but really???) and he stops to translate every 17th sentence into english.. I get the gist of what an "initiation course" is (it's a scavenger hunt!) and basically we each have a child's map of the area and 11 stations to hit (the station clues are "insect mound" for ant hill, or "rope garden" for the ropes course.. awesome :).. each station has 2 letters in/around it, and one of those letters is for an english word while the other is for a german word. After finishing the hunt and collecting all the letters, we can unscramble them to solve a puzzle.

Anyway, back to the less-than-desirable weather conditions, when we get outside, someone comes up with the brilliant idea of divying up the stations and meeting at the end (CHEATING!!!) so that we wouldn't have to spend 2 hours scavenging through the rain and fog. This plan is going swimmingly, until we get stuck at the last station, completely unable to unscramble the letters that we have already collected.. Finally, we hear Helli through the fog yelling "Stop," and telling us to come inside.. He tells us that we have 17 minutes to take hot showers, and to meet him back outside in sport-clothes. (Ahh.. the feeling of getting caught cheating by your coach. Stomach drops, and you immediately look for ways to hurt yourself so that you could maybe weasel yourself out of whatever punishment is coming your way.. Throw yourself down the stairs?? Too obvious... Out a window?? Ok maybe that's too drastic.. Shoot....)

Anyway, Helli was pretty angry that we cheated his initiation course, so he invented a new challenge involving a run up a mountain to a lake.. We had 12 minutes to reach the lake, and anyone who didn't make it would have to practice that night, while the rest of the team would have it off. We had hiked to this lake several days prior, but no one knew how long it had taken us, so we didn't exactly know how to pace ourselves. And if you don't know how long you have, but you know you have to make it in a certain time, the only thing to do is run as hard as you can for as long as you can and hope you make it! We did just that, but at altitude and running up a mountain, you can really only run hard for a couple hundred yards before you feel like your lungs might come out through your nostrils and you have to walk...

Fortunately for us, Helli had miscalculated how long he thought it was going to take us, and we all made it with time to spare! But let's just say that I'm EXTREMELY happy that I spent so many mornings running the Los Gatos Dam this summer! It was a definite bonding moment for the team, and I think Helli got over it and was really happy that we all made it up the mountain.

We drove back on Saturday morning, and made it back to Klagenfurt that afternoon. Unfortunately, upon our arrival, Brittany got word that the club wouldn't be offering her a contract for this season, which sent her back to square-one in terms of finding a team over here. Weridly enough, she got a call almost immediately about a team in Germany that had an open spot, and she took off yesterday afternoon after spending one last weekend in town!

We made the most of that last weekend here, spending Saturday night on the town with a couple of the girls, and watching movies together Sunday afternoon. I'm bummed to be living alone again, but I'm really happy to have Sophie and Birgit (another teammate who lives upstairs) in the same apartment building, because I'm able to hang out with them during our down-time.

I went to practice at our home gym for the first time this morning, and it's a really nice facility just a little ways across town. Most days our schedule will involve something in the morning and something at night, sometimes fitness, sometimes practice, sometimes matches, etc, but I'm still figuring it out. I'm loving the girls, the coach seems pretty awesome, and I feel like Klagenfurt is slowly feeling more like home. Cherry on top: I found CHEDDAR cheese in the store today! Can life get any better????

Hope all is well wherever you are, and if you feel so inclined to download Skype, my username is annacmaylo (difficult, I know) and I love having people to chat with!

Love, Anna

Klagenfurt, Austria

2009-09-05T15:02:00.000+02:00

It's been 6 months, and I'm finally back in Europe! I had an AMAZING summer back in the states: I got to live with one of my best friends from college, I had a great job at a fun fitness center, and my days/nights/weekends were filled with fun Californified activities. But in about mid-July, I started to get anxious about getting my life figured out, and I was ready to hit the road again! It all worked out in the end, and I signed a contract to play for the Klagenfurt Wildcats this year, in Klagenfurt, Austria!

I'm still getting settled in here, but a gal who I played with at Santa Clara (Brittany Lowe) is on the team here already and has been in Klagenfurt for 3 weeks, so she's helping me get all set up. I went to the grocery store this morning (where I had to leave my groceries on the counter while I ran 3 blocks up the street to a bankomat to get cash because they don't take Visa ("Weesa") and then come back, beet red, to pay for my things!) and I got a phone this afternoon and picked up some post cards, so I'm feeling kind of on top of things! Most importantly, I met the Klagenfurt "Lindwurm" (a flying worm-like dragon thing, in the picture to the left) that's in the center of town. Exciting stuff!

As I type, the sounds from a nearby street fair are coming through my window.. sounds like accordions and songs in German, and smells like cheese.. Mmm...

Tomorrow afternoon my coach (Hellie) is coming to pick me up for a week of "Training Camp" in the mountains... "What does that mean??" you ask? Good question! According to Hellie and Horst (the team manager, great name!): "We spend week in the mountains, we bring things for outdoor and indoor." Soooo I'm in for a surprise, but all I know is that I won't be back until next Saturday!

Love from the land of von Trapps,

Anna

End of Season parties, and then off to the South of France!

2009-03-21T16:18:00.005+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

This last week has been filled with end-of-season team parties, and we've been having a lot of fun!

On Wednesday, we all went to Aline (our capitan)'s house, and feasted on a dinner of raclette. After the delicious dinner, we played a game of Taboo, which , for anyone who doesn't know, is kind of a mixture between charades, pictionary, and some sort of miming-using-puppets game. In English, Talia and I tend to rock at this game, but then again, we haven't played it together since age 14, so some things might have changed. But in French, it's an entirely different story! I was having so much fun, I decided to take a video of our game, just to show the craziness of Taboo in French!

On Thursday I had a chance to go to Geneva to fill in for Jac, coaching at the International School in Geneva. I got there a bit early and explored the Red Cross/Red Crescent Museum, and poked around the United Nations. As I walked along the street, where there would normally be driveways, there were elaborately decorated gates for various embassies, in every language possible. It was crazy to be in the middle of such an international hub!

Then, upon entering the school, it was like I stepped through a wormhole (or used some floo-powder!) to get back to the US for 2 hours. I had a group of about 14 students, between the ages of 11 and 15. In that group, probably 12-13 different countries were represented, because all of their parents work in amazingly international jobs (diplomats, international stock brokers, etc). So not only was I working with a group of kids straight from a United Colors of Benetton ad (Brazil, England, India, Ethiopia, Australia, Sweden, etc), but they all spoke English flawlessly, as if they grew up in Akron, Ohio (minus the kids from England and Australia; they still had cute accents).

Then, class is over, and I walk out of the school, my ears inundated with sounds of languages from every corner of the earth as the parents come to pick their kids up, and I resume my life in Swis-Romande (the French-speaking area of Switzerland). Needless to say, it was a really fun and interesting experience!

Last night the team got together once more for a meal at a Mexican restaurant in Lausanne, where we dined on delicious fajitas before heading out for a soiree in Lausanne. It was fun to spend some time with the whole team at once, and I'm starting to realize that the season really is over!

Today has been a lazy day so far, because tomorrow I'm coaching from 9 AM to 4 PM in Valais with my juniors team. Then, on Monday morning, Lizelle, Jac and I take off on our road trip to the South of France, where we'll be scanning for George Clooney around every corner :)

Love you and miss you all!

Anna

Offseason!

2009-03-17T12:26:00.004+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

As of now, I am officially in my first offseason overseas!

After our series of matches against Jac's team in the second round of playoffs, we played the team from Wattwill for the third round. Wattwill is located in Toggenburg, which is a region located directly across the country from Cheseaux. We played them at home this past Saturday, and then at Wattwill (a 4 hr. drive, each way!) on Sunday. Thankfully we ended up winning 3-2 on Saturday, and swept them 3-0 on Sunday, ending our season on a high note!

There are several girls from my team who aren't playing again next year, so this week we have several year-end nostalgia dinners and team hang-outs. I really enjoyed this group of girls, so I'm going to try to take advantage of being with them for the last time!

After my last coaching session this Sunday, I leave on Monday for the South of France, where Lizelle, Jac and I will be spending next week! My club president and his wife offered to let us stay in their villa in Provence, so we're road-tripping down Monday morning, and staying until Friday. According to Genevieve, their town is within an hour of all the cool things in the south of France: Nice, Marseilles, Cannes, St. Tropez, etc. It's starting to be warm even here (I wore a t-shirt yesterday!) so I'm excited that it might even be beach weather by the time we head south next week!

Othere than season being over, I don't have anything spectacular to report! I can't believe that I'm leaving in 3 weeks, so I'm trying to cram a lot of adventuring into what time I have left.. Then it's back to JFK on April 8, and trying to figure out my plans for summer!

I hope all is well back home!

Love, Anna

Carnivale, Puxy & John visit, and Geneva

2009-03-08T11:52:00.006+01:00

Hello friends and family!

It's Sunday afternoon here, and I'm watching outside as the snow clouds loom in the distance. Mother Nature in Switzerland is a tease, because she gives me 3 days of warm(ish) sunshiny weather, then takes it away overnight, and replaces it with gloomy snowy weather. Oh well. Little flowers are starting to pop up, so I know that real spring will be here soon!

Since getting back from Rome, I've had 2 weeks of fun hangouts with my good friend Puxy (Kristen Luxton, a setter from Santa Clara) and her fiancee John (whose Dad, weirdly enough, was friends with my Dad back at Dartmouth. Ha..) We started their time off right by heading to Carnivale in Fribourg with Jac last Tuesday night. In case you don't know, Carnivale is the festival season before Lent, and many European cities celebrate it in some way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival). Some productions are bigger than others, but in general it involves masks/costumes, music, parties in the streets, and very late nights/early mornings.

After realizing that we didn't exactly have access to the same costume boxes that we kept in Santa Clara, Crystal and I were able to use some of Jac's old Halloween costumes to fit in with the Carnivale crowd. I was a Raphael, the ninja-turtle (along with John, who was Leonardo), Crystal was a ladybug, and Puxy and Jac were blue and pink-haired people who wore weird clothes that would keep them warm (is that even a costume??) We had a fun night in the streets of Fribourg, taking in the Euro-style Carnivale atmosphere!

Last Saturday we played Jac's team in the first match of the second round of playoffs. It was really strange to be on the same court as Jac once again, and we were able to talk to each other every once in a while through the net. After the game, Jac headed back to Fribourg, while Puxy, John and I went to a local Cheseaux pub for dinner before heading back to my house for bed.

On Sunday I went to Valais to coach, and met up with Puxy and John in time to go back to my house and share a lovely dinner of Swiss raclette with Louis. I know that I've been here for 2 months now, and that the whole eat-cheese-for-dinner thing should be getting old, but it's not! It was delicious, and we all fell asleep feeling really satisfied!

Monday morning brought drizzly rainclouds, and we weren't sure what to do with our day. We all hopped into the blueberry, and headed first towards a special bakery where Puxy wanted to get a chocolate croissant. However, after 3 failed attempts to get to this bakery, we found ourselves on the way to Geneva, and decided to keep going! We arrived in Geneva in the early afternoon, and waked around the downtown area for several hours. We went to the top of the tower of the Cathedrale St.Pierre, which brought us amazing views of the city. We also found a chocolate shop that sells Toblerone bars that are the size of small children..

My favorite part of Geneva was driving past intersections whose signs said "centre-ville, right. France, left." Puxy had forgotten her passport, so we couldn't turn left, but it was still a cool idea that I could just pop on over to France!

On Monday night we went back to Fribourg to spend the night at Jac's. After an almost perfect night of sleep, sans anything crazy on my part, I ended up waking Puxy up in the morning by rolling over, calling her "Snoop," and whapping her on the back. Oops.. Sorry to anyone who has to share a bed with me!

Wednesday night, Jac and her boyfriend Alex invited me back to their place for a delicious farewell "souper" (in Switzerland, "diner" is lunch, and "souper" is dinner) for Puxy and John, a souper from which I have just barely recovered. Alex, the master chef, brought out a raclette machine, bread, cheese, delicious home-made sauces, and meat, from which we made the most awesome sandwiches ever! I drove home late that night, and woke on Thursday morning thinking about those sandwiches!

On Friday, Kristel from my team invited me to her house in Fribourg for a dinner with her family. Her brother, Eric was there (who had been in Loeche-les-Bains with us a month ago), and I met her Mom and Dad for the first time. It was so fun to see Kristel's home and hang out with her family, because they are so amazingly nice and welcoming!

Yesterday brought me back to Fribourg for our second match against Jac's team. After a 5 game thriller, my team managed to pull out a W, and we were all somewhat relieved that we wouldn't have to play the tiebreak match today. I got to skype with my east-coast fam after getting home, and it was fun to hear about 70-degree weather and a lemonade stand for the twins. Hopefully that weather will head east towards me!

Today will be the definition of a lazy-Sunday for me, and I'm enjoying every minute of it! I hope all is well back home and I'll talk to you soon!

xoxo

Anna

ROMA ROMA ROMA

2009-02-24T10:40:00.021+01:00

Hello everyone!

I just got back from spending an amazing weekend in ROME! This past weekend was reserved for the championship of the Swiss Cup, which my team wasn't playing in, so we had it off from practices and games. We wanted to make use of a communal off weekend, so Crystal and I, along with another American friend playing over here named Lizelle, decided to take an EasyJet flight down to Rome for the weekend!

(Now, as you're reading this, you have to promise not to judge based on the amount of times I talk about going to a gelateria or getting hot chocolate, because all of us acted like kids when it came to those two things this weekend, and I realize it sounds like that's practically all we ate. It's kind of true, but we ate some pizza and some pasta too!)

We got there on Friday afternoon, after a lovely wait in the Geneva airport, filled with airport food and people-watching. After getting into our hotel near the Ciampino Airport, we decided to brave the train system (Lizelle went to school in Long Island, so for her it was no big deal, but for me it would have been terrifying!) to make our way into the city. After surveying the train schedules and metro maps, we decided to get out at the Colloseo stop.. Little did we know that as you surface from the metro, you can literally see the Colliseum while going through the turnstyles to get out!

We were starving, so we got snacks from a vendor truck before touring the Colliseum and Roman Forum after hours. We walked around until about 8 pm, and then decided it was time to sit down, as our feet were already getting sore. We stopped at a cute cafe, where I got my first taste of Italian hot chocolate, which is more like a melted hershey's bar in a cup with whipped cream on top than what we think of when we make hot chocolate. I was in heaven!

After our time at the cafe, we walked around a little more before stopping at a crepe place for an actual meal before heading back to our hotel. We had run into a couple other Americans on the street, so we all sat together eating crepes and listening to (and sometimes joining in to sing)random songs like Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," which was hilarious. We ended up back at the hotel around 1 or 2 in the morning, determined to make it out for more tourist things the next day.

After a good start at the hotel's free breakfast (hard pastries and biscuits with tang) on Saturday we took ourselves back to the Colliseum to get a real tour guide to actually show us what we were looking at the day before. Like everyone else around us, we were floored by the history behind the structures we were looking at, because it's pretty crazy to be standing next to, in, around, or on top of things that are 2000+ years old. Our guide took us around the Colliseum and then we headed up towards Palatin Hill to see all the good stuff up there before leaving through the Forum ruins.

We stopped at another small cafe/Gelateria to satiate our cravings for, in the case of Crystal and Lizelle, gelato, or in my case, melted hershey's goodness in a cup, and planned out our late afternoon and evening. We had loved going on the tour with the guide, only because he told all the interesting stories that we never would have thought of, but we had to decide which sites were worth shelling out for a guide and which we could do by ourselves. After some discussion, we decided to hit up the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and the Piazza Navona that night, without having to pay a guide.

While we didn't always know the significance of what we were seeing, we had a great time exploring the streets of Rome and seeing the amazing sights. The evening ended after a delicious meal of pizza and calazones in a small restaurant near the Piazza Navona, and we headed back towards the Colliseum to check out the nightlife in the area. We had a great time with some other Americans that we met along the way, and ended up back in Ciampino after a great day of sightseeing and a great night of dancing!

Sunday morning we decided to make our way out towards St. Peters to see the Vatican and try to hang out with the Pope. We walked around in St. Peter's for a while, saw the tombs of the Popes (which I thought was kind of creepy, but maybe that was just me) and tried to go to the Vatican Museum, but we had missed the 4th Sunday of the month closing time of 12:30 pm. We settled for gelato and hot chocolate instead of the Sistine Chapel, and decided that we would try to do it on Monday morning before our flight.

After missing the Vatican museum, we made up for it by walking probably 20 km throughout the rest of the day. From the Vatican we walked down an awesome touristy street called Via Coia di Rienzo, admiring the shops and stopping at vendor booths to look at souvenir merchandise. We made it to the Castel Sant'Angelo, decided that it was pretty enough from the outside not to pay the entry fee, and then walked down the river to the outdoor skating rink Carnivale events that were going on. After Lizelle danced with a guy on stilts and Crystal high-fived a man on a unicycle, we continued our walk down the river until we crossed at Cavour to end up near the Mausoleo di Augusto.

We walked up what we had nicknamed "Laser Street," (Via del Corso, the one that ends at the beautiful Piazza Venezia) to the Piazza del Popolo, before our pace started slowing and we realized that we were starving/sore/tired/overwhelmed and needed to stop for dinner. We made it to the Spanish Steps (which, unfortunately we were too tired and hungry to really appreciate at the time) and then found ourselves in an amazing little restaurant near the Trevi. We dined on delicious pasta and then had dessert of tiramisu and cheesecake, all while chatting with a stereotypical italian man that was doing his best to hit on us throughout dinner.

With our bellies full, we decided to walk a little more before going back to Ciampino. By night, we saw the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica from the outside only, walked past some funny looking guards at the Quirinale, and probably passed some structures that I studied in Art History before making it back to the Cavour area and the same crepe place from the first night to have (what we thought was) our last gelato.

Monday morning we got our earliest start of the trip in an attempt to squeeze the amazingness of the Vatican Museum into a short morning before our flight. Fortunately we weren't tricked by the tourguides that told us it would take at least 3 hours to get into the Sistine Chapel, and we made it in in 30 minutes! The Chapel was amazing, and while we would have loved to have more time to explore and really appreciate what we were seeing, we had to make our way back to Ciampino before our flight at 3 pm. But don't worry, we made it to one more gelateria for some gelato and hot chocolate before we took off...

Despite my anxiety that we would miss our flight, Lizelle and Crystal stayed confident that it would all work out, and fortunately we made it with time to spare! We arrived back into Geneva around 5 pm, and made it to Neuchatel by 8 ish after it was all said and done. It was an amazing trip, and I had so much fun!

Tonight I might be headed to Fribourg to celebrate Carnivale with Jac and friends, and this weekend we play Jac's team for the first match of the second round of playoffs. It will be funny for me to be playing against my old teammate, but I'm excited to have another match soon. After spending the weekend in relative warmth, it's a bummer to be back in the chilly freezer of Cheseaux, but coming back really was like coming home, and I was happy to sleep in my own bed again last night.

I hope it's warmer wherever you are, and I'll talk to you all soon!

Love, Anna

Playoffs, Loeche, and friends that speak english!

2009-02-14T12:38:00.006+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

I just got home from our pre-game morning practice, and I have about 4 hours until I head back to the gym for tonight's match. We play against Volero again, (we lost 1-3 last time in Zurich, and it's a best of 3 match series) but this time we're at home, which will hopefully give us some sort of advantage. Playing on the same court as Robyn ah-Mow was unreal, but I could definitely see why she is a volleyball legend. She is super super competitive, and if the ball is within 5 feet of her, it'll never go down!

After my last post, I spent the weekend in Loeche-les-Bains at the chalet of my teammate Kristel. She brought another friend up, and we met her brother there with his 2 friends. The group was pretty funny, because every person there spoke at least 2 languages, but not always the same ones. 3 of us spoke only French and English, 1 spoke only German and French, 1 spoke German and English, and 1 spoke German, French, and English. The dinner conversations were hilarious as we tried to translate between all 3 languages!

At the chatet I tried raclette for the first time.. For any of you who don't know, raclette is basically a meal of cheese and potatoes (I'm ok with that!!) but it's special because each person melts their own cheese prior to putting it on the potatoes. It was really really good, and I think that the Swiss are on to something by openly accepting the custom of eating melted cheese as a meal!

The next day we had plans to go skiing (or if you're me, plans to sit in the lodge reading all day out of fear that you might kill yourself or someone else if you strap on skis or a snowboard), but we ended up waking up late and not wanting to pay for a lift ticket for only a few hours. This meant that I would not be hanging out by myself all day, so I was happy! We decided to go sledding instead, and spent the afternoon with a group of kids (probably under the age of 12) who had the same idea as us...

Monday night one of the boys convinced us that we should go down to "Tom's," the local bar. As I walked in, I was greeted by a sign that read "Tom's Saloon, Western Bar," and I knew it was going to be a crazy place! The walls were decorated in the style of John Wayne movies, and even the doors between rooms were those kind that people walk out of in the movies when they have to duel on the abandoned street with tumbleweeds. So there I was, sitting in a John Wayne movie, with my tri-lingual friends, and Gangsta's Paradise came on the radio. It was too much!

On Tuesday the ski runs were closed due to heavy snow and risks of avalanches.. So our group packed up the car and headed to the thermal baths, where we spent the morning lounging in huge pools with seemingly every other person in Loeche. They also had an area of waterslides, etc for the kids, but of course our group jumped at the idea of waterslides! We had a great afternoon and headed back towards Lausanne for practice that evening.

On Wednesday morning, 3 friends from the US arrived to spend some time in Switzerland. My friends Kevin and Brett from Napa and their friend Morgan are on a Euro-trip, and randomly I had talked to one of the boys prior to their departure at the end of January, so they managed to make it to Cheseaux for a couple days.

After lounging on Wednesday, we decided to go to Chateau-de-Chillon for a tourist day on Thursday. The Chateau is one of the most famous in Switzerland, due to it's picturesque location on the shores of Lake Geneva. We had an amazing time touring the Chateau, and by the time we left, the morning snow clouds had disappeared and we had an amazing blue-sky afternoon to enjoy! After my practice that night, we made fondue and declared it a perfect day in Switzerland!

Yesterday I took them to Les Paccots, where Louis had taken me snowshoeing during my first few weeks here. I am definitely not as expert as Louis when it comes to the trails there, but we made it pretty far and ended up at an amazing lookout where the boys had a snowball fight as Morgan and I tried to stay out of the crossfire.

The Americans took off early this morning to continue their travels in Italy, but it was definitely nice to have some visitors for a few days!

I'm off to take a pre-game nap, but I hope all is well with everyone and I hope to talk to you soon!

Love,

Anna

Telecabins and Body Pump

2009-02-06T11:36:00.008+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

It's Friday morning here, and warm enough to be drizzling instead of snowing. I usually would be really bummed by the clouds, but the warmth makes me excited to maybe even go for a run outside! AMAZING!

We played a match last Saturday against Zeiler Koeniz, the #1 team in our league. They have 2 Americans from the University of Washington, and it was fun to chat with them after the game. We lost in 3 pretty badly, but fortunately we had already locked in our spot for playoffs, and the loss didn't really count too much against us. While I don't like losing, it was interesting to see what the top level of competition looks like in Switzerland, and some of their girls were amazing to watch!

I spent Sunday coaching in a small town called Fully, with the same group of girls. After a full day, I went to the chalet of our club's president and his wife, who put together a delicious meal of Fondue Chinoise (Chinese Fondue) for our group on Sunday night. Their chalet is in Nendaz, a beautiful ski town in the alps, from which you can ski in 4 different valleys of ski runs.

On Monday, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and set off for the telecabin, en route to which I saw license plates from basically every country in Europe. After buying lift tickets, we headed up the mountain with a small group of skiers/ snowboarders, and watched as we got higher and higher up the mountain. I was amazed to see some chalets in the middle of the forest beneath us, where the people can take the lift and ski down to their house!

Due to my inability to ski (or snowboard, or do anything that involves balance and coordination and slippery surfaces), Genevieve and I took off hiking which Georges decided to spend the day skiing. Upon reaching the station at the top of the first telecabin, one can choose to ski down multiple runs, some which lead you to different lifts up different mountains. It's like a maze of mountainy snowy heaven for all the snow sports people out there!

Genevieve and I hiked to another lift, and ended up at the top of the mountain, from which we could see the peak of Mont-Blanc not to far away. There is a restaurant at the top, and Georges met us for some hot chocolates and a meal of soup! It was an amazing day and my pictures don't even begin to capture the beauty of the area!

After practice on Tuesday, I went to Neuchatel to visit Crystal, and we spent the evening making videos for our friends on Facebook (we are indeed 13 years old sometimes). On Wednesday morning, we woke up to head to her fitness center, where we would try a fitness class called "Body Pump." We were possibly the youngest people in the class, but everyone around us was using more weight than us and not sweating nearly as much!! After an hour of hell, we left the gym feeling like we had definitely put in our day's work!

On Wednesday, the girls reminded me that there was a men's game after our practice. The men's team plays in Lausanne, at the gym where I go to do fitness. Watching the guys play is almost like watching an entirely different sport, because they are so much more powerful than women. Our team won against the team from Geneva, and it was a fun time!

Yesterday I gave an English lesson to a woman from Cheseaux who is looking to improve her conversation skills. It was fun for me to be on the other side of a lesson for once, and definitely fun to be able to switch back and forth between languages. When she couldn't think of the right word, all I could think was "THAT IS MY LIFE," not being able to think of silly things like "car" or "banana." We're going to be meeting once a week, so I'm excited to help her improve her English!

Tomorrow is our first match of playoffs, against Volero from Zurich. Their setter is Robyn Ah-Mow Santos, who was the setter for our US National Team for a long time. We lost last time we played them, but we took a set off of them, so we know it can be done. Hopefully we can find a way tomorrow!

This weekend I'm headed to Loeche, another ski town in the Alps. I'm going with Kristel (our setter) to her grandma's chalet, where there is not only skiing but also thermal baths. I think I might invest in a good book I can lose myself in while the others go skiing, and I'll get myself ready for the thermal baths!

Hope all is well at home. I miss you all!

Love, Anna

Why would there be a bottle of spider spray here?

2009-01-27T13:53:00.013+01:00

Hello friends and family!

After the excitement of last weekend, I didn't have much to write about during the week. I've been here for a month now, and every little thing that used to be new and exciting (taking trains, going to the grocery store, etc) is now just a part of regular life. I am really happy to be feeling so at home here, but it can lead to some boring blogs.. Therefore, no updates for last week, but this weekend definitely brought some fun stories!

On Saturday night, my team played the team from Franche-Montagne (a mountainous region on the border of France) at home. Their team has 3 Americans and several Brazilians, and they definitely gave us a run for our money. After winning the first set, we lost the second and third, won the fourth 26-24 (during which I managed to get elbowed in the eye and ended up with a black eye... who says volleyball is for wimps??), and had to play a tie-break which ended with us winning 20-18. It was fun to play such a competitive match at home, and I was happy to come out with a win!

After the match, I was approached by both a radio and TV reporter, who were asked to interview me as a highlight on the "new American." One can imagine that I get nervous enough in interview in the US, but trying to say the right things in French was even more nerve-wracking! My french teacher was looking on, and I managed to make it out alive, without too many mess-ups..

That night, Francine invited me to her house for dinner with her family. Pascal ordered pizza, and as always it was a really fun night of great food, great company, and great conversation!

A perfectly fun night ended when I returned to my apartment a little after midnight. I was innocently walking into my bathroom to brush my teeth when I saw an uninvited guest waiting on my bathmat. Charlotte, the biggest grandmother of all spiders, decided that she wanted to hang out that night, and I was not having it.. (literally, this spider reminded me of that pet spider Hagrid had in Harry Potter. Only not very endearing, and no Hagrid around to take care of her)

In case you didn't know, I am absolutely terrified of spiders. My family used to get annoyed at me, because I would cry when I spotted a spider in my room until someone killed it for me (mind you this is not at age 9, this is at age 19).. Needless to say, I was completely terrified, and I had to find a way to get Charlotte gone.

After asking her politely to stay put, I returned to my bedroom where I scanned for possible weapons. Using shoes would bring me too close to the possibility of a spider crawling up my leg, and if I were to throw a book, I would almost certainly miss and just anger the spider. I remembered a can of Raid-esque spray that I had spotted my first day here. It had a picture of a spider on the front, and I remembered thinking "Hmm.. I wonder why they would give me a bottle of spider spray? I hope they don't have a spider problem here.." Hah. Now I know!

After making sure that the grandmother of all spiders would not be joining me in bed that night, I brushed my teeth in the kitchen (I was being slowly asphyxiated in the Raid-ed bathroom) and dreamt of spiders. Now, I can't help myself from thinking about the spider family that will probably try to seek revenge on me someday..

After that lovely bedtime adventure, I woke up early on Sunday to coach my team of juniors in Vieges/Visp.

(Side-note: Have I explained yet how many towns in Switzerland have 2 names? Well many towns have names in both French and German, and sometimes in Italian or Romanche. And no, it's not like the difference between calling a town Bostonia and Bostonio. It's like entirely different names. For example, where Jac plays, the town is called "Dudingen" in German. In French, it's called "Guin". Dudingen and Guin are the same town... How much more confusing can it get?)

Anyway, I spent Sunday in Vieges/Visp coaching. We play the same games as I used with my teams at Vision, only we use a mix of French, German, and English to communicate, and we play in a gym in the Alps. It's the funniest thing for me, but the girls are adorable and I'm enjoying getting back into coaching!

Sunday evening I met with a reporter from the Lausanne newspaper who was also asked to do a piece on Cheseaux's new American. Again, I had to summon all my French skills to find answers to seemingly easy questions such as "What did you think about last night's match?" but I finished the interview feeling pretty satisfied.

After my meeting with the reporter, I waited in Lausanne for the arrival of my friend Taylor, who is the newest member of Crystal's team in Neuchatel. Taylor is a middle who played at the University of Wisconsin, and she arrived almost 2 weeks ago, so I had met her during my weekend in Neuchatel. Crystal and Jeff were spending the weekend in Paris, so I invited Taylor to spend the weekend with me so that she could get out of Neuchatel and we could find something fun to do together! After her train got in, we waited for Jac to get in from her evening class in Geneva, and then the three of us set off in my car to stay at Jac's in Fribourg.

We were all pretty tired after getting to Fribourg, so Taylor and I watched an episode of "Gossip Girl" on Jac's American channel before falling asleep. On Monday morning, we had a delicious breakfast a la Jac's boyfriend Alex, and we set off for nearby Chateaux-d'Oex where Jac had mentioned a hot-air balloon festival.

On the way to Chateaux-d'Oex, we saw the balloons that had already made their way down the valley, and started to get excited for the touristy excitement that awaited us. We arrived in the small town and poked around the shops, trying to find information about the schedule of the festival. At the tourist office, the man behind the counter told us that if we made friends with one of the pilots, we could probably find ourselves in a hot air-balloon! We laughed, but little did we know what the afternoon would bring!

We headed down to the launching field, where all sorts of balloons were taking off. We watched as a gal in a Super-woman type suit got onto one of the balloons, and listened as the announcer said that she would, in fact, be jumping out of that balloon... I tried to capture the craziness in a video, and I hope you can all see it!

Later, a nice group of hot air-ballooners from France approached the three of us, and we started chatting about their hobby of flying balloons. After several minutes, they mentioned that they had an extra spot in their basket, and that they would love to take one of us! Jac, Taylor and I looked at one another, and after a brief debate, we decided that Taylor should have the chance to go up (partially because Jac and I were freezing, and while the idea of flying in a balloon was fun, we weren't ready to get even colder!).

After watching them prepare the balloon, we watched as Taylor and the two pilots took off skyward! The other three men from their company told Jac and I that we would join them on their "retrouving" (fren-glish word similar to "retrieving") job, in the car that follows the balloon and picks it up at the landing zone. After walkie-talkie-ing the pilots, we realized that the wind at the moment wasn't too strong, and that they would probably be landing within an hour an a half, near the spot where they had taken off. With our retrouving duties on hold, our group headed to the "Cafe des Alps" for some coffees and hot chocolates.

We spent the next couple hours chatting and warming up while watching the balloons, and by 4:30 we got word that the balloon was ready to land. We piled into a land cruiser, and set off to pick the pilots and Taylor up from a farm where they had landed. After folding up the balloon and fitting it into it's stuff-sack (kind of like with a sleeping bag, only exponentially bigger, heavier, and generally harder), the group of guys took us back to our car and we set off for Fribourg where Jac had practice that evening.

During Jac's practice, Taylor and I went to dinner at a local cafe where we dined on delicious fondue. It was Taylor's first time eating fondue here, and I was more than happy to share in her experience!

After dinner, I dropped Taylor off at the train station and navigated myself back to Jac and Alex's apartment. Alex prepared a banana flambe for dessert (I know, how lucky am I?) and it was DELISH!!! We all went to bed close to midnight, and that was the end of my awesome weekend!

This morning I woke up to another of Alex's delicious breakfasts, and came back to Cheseaux for my french lesson at 10. I'll probably head to the fitness center at some point, and we have practice late tonight. Besides the situation with the spider, I had an amazing weekend and my time here is getting better and better!

Hope all is well!

Love, Anna

First home match and Bronco reunion weekend!

2009-01-19T21:20:00.010+01:00

Hello Friends and Family!

It's Monday evening and I'm back in Cheseaux to relax after a fun-filled weekend!

The excitement started after practice on Thursday evening, when one of our setters (Kristel) invited me to her apartment for a dinner of chicken fajitas. Several of our teammates joined us, including Nadege (an outside), Aida (an opposite), Joelle (an outside), and Laila (our other setter). The six of us chowed down on Swiss-style Mexican food, and it was delicious!

After a great dinner, the girls decided that I should see a little more of the town. We ended up at a local club, where we listened to music that ranged from American hip-hop to old French movie theme songs. It was pretty amusing!

Nadege and I spent the night at Kristel's in Lausanne, and woke up early to set out on an adventure. I wasn't sure what we were doing, but I had heard Nadege mention ice skating and an apple pie. I wasn't about to complain!

After a short trip in the car, we ended up in the Valais de Joux, next to the Lac de Joux. This is a large lake, but due to the unusually cold winter, the entire surface is frozen solid this year! Apparently on the weekends the lake gets crowded with skaters, ice fishermen, and people who do something similar to wind-surfing, but on the ice. Since we were there on a Friday afternoon, the lake wasn't too crowded, so we walked around on the ice for a little less than an hour.

Throughout our walk, we kept hearing various creaking noises, which scared the wits out of me. Apparently that is normal, because the ice expands and contracts with any shifts in temperature. I wasn't too fond of the sounds, though, which led to us turning around towards shore.

After reaching solid non ice ground, Kristel, Nadege and I went to a tea room where I had THE BEST HOT CHOCOLATE OF MY LIFE. Really, it tasted like delicious chocolate ice cream, only in hot liquid form. It was perfect!

Saturday morning and afternoon were consumed with match preparation. Pre-game practice, video, and then I ate at Francine's parents' house nearby. That evening we played the team from Luzern, and ended up winning in 3 sets. It was my first match at home, and it was really fun to play in front of the Cheseaux crowd!

After the match I left Cheseaux to head toward Neuchatel where I was planning to meet Crystal, Jeff, Brody and his sister Robyn. Despite heavy fog on the autoroute, I made it to Neuchatel by 9ish, and met Crystal at the house of her friend Cameo, who plays on the Neuchatel professional basketball team. We had a big group of Americans and Canadians together, and it was refreshing to be speaking only one language for a change! (Don't get me wrong, I love speaking French, but it does get tiring, and it was nice not to have to guess whether I'm answering the right question!)

Sunday we went to Crystal's match in Neuchatel. Her team plays in a larger arena in Neuchatel, and they have a Brazilian band that plays flight songs in between points. It was fun to see her playing again, and her team won in 3 sets. We made a delicious dinner after the match, and hung out watching CNN and the pre-inauguration coverage.

This morning I came back to Cheseaux and met Francine for another day of adventure! It has been raining here, which is both good and bad. Good because it melts the ice that I tend to slip on every chance I get, and bad because it means that we can't go outside. Francine planned for us to go to the thermal baths nearby, but rainy weather killed that idea. Therefore, we chose the alternative plan, and went to Bern to walk around the covered downtown area.

The city itself is beautiful, especially the ancient-looking architecture. We stopped for tea in a small bistro, and I realized once again how difficult is is to be unable to communicate in German. I think I'm going to need to learn that language...

Tomorrow it's back to regular life, which a trip to the fitness center and then practice. I'm loving it here more and more every day!

Love, Anna

Lausanne sans GPS

2009-01-15T16:18:00.006+01:00

Hello Everyone!

Over the last few days, I've been talking with people in California who have seemingly nothing to report except for how beautiful the weather is.... "Yeah, Anna, it's the middle of January and I'm wearing shorts and a tank top!!" and "Anna, I'm going home to LA for the weekend to lay on the beach! It's January 15th!! Can you believe it??"

Frankly, yes I can believe it, because every time I tell someone here that I'm from California, they say "Ohhhh, the sunshine and beaches!!" But until moving to this small Arctic region called Cheseaux, I hadn't really appreciated said sunshine as much as do now...

I think someone else must have feeling jealous of California, because today we in Switzerland bathed in sunshine as well! Sure, maybe it was still only about 35 degrees, but there was SUN, and that makes me happy!

Yesterday I had an amazing day of adventure in Lausanne. I had arranged to meet Crystal and Jeff at the train station in Lausanne, after I worked out and did some errands in Cheseaux. An unanticipated problem arose when my frozen GPS failed to turn on (yesterday it was still snowing...) So, how to navigate from Cheseaux to the train station in Lausanne sans GPS? I was in a bit of a predicament...

In a moment of Megan Pura-esque innovation, I decided to follow the train tracks that I knew took you towards the station. After 20 minutes of nerves whether I was headed the right way, I ended smack-dab in the center of Lausanne, with random signs pointed up and down different Euro alleys, telling me the direction to the station. Next thing I know, I had found a parking garage, and ran into Crystal and Jeff on the sidewalk outside the station!

We had a delicious lunch at an Italian restaurant, where our nice Swiss-German waiter recounted his stories about living in Minneapolis for several years. He was excited to practice his English with us, and was again somewhat surprised when we told him that we had left California to try life in Switz. "But don't you miss the palm trees??" Haha...

We spent the afternoon exploring the city on foot, finding a beautiful cathedral that was built in the 1200s and many cute boutiques. Jeff is somewhat obsessed with Starbucks, so we managed to find 2 of the American chains to satisfy his cravings. When Crystal and I got a sweet tooth, we went into a chocolaterie and the nice lady behind the counter gave me a free piece (duh, favorite part of the day!)

Inevitably I got lost on the way home, but I made it in time for practice, which is all that really matters. Kristel, one of our setters, and Nadege, an outside hitter, invited me to hang out with them after practice tonight and tomorrow, so we'll see what adventures that will bring. They've mentioned Mexican food and a hike to a frozen lake, so I'm sure it will be a fun time!

Talk to you all soon! All of you in California, please sit an extra minute in the warm sun for me!

Love, Anna

Snowshoe-ing in Les Paccots

2009-01-13T18:29:00.005+01:00

Hello Everyone!

Right now I'm sitting in my bedroom eating the risotto that I got for lunch and talking to a friend from Santa Clara online. We have practice in a bit, but I thought I should recount my fun adventure yesterday before I forget!

After the long day of coaching on Sunday, I had almost forgotten that I had made plans with Louis to go snowshoe-ing! Thankfully he reminded me, and we left at around noon on Monday for a day in the mountains.

We had been driving for only 10 minutes or so when I noticed blue sky all around me. As I looked back, Cheseaux seemed to be engulfed by a thick bubble of fog, while the rest of the area was bathed with sunshine! I asked Louis why we were so lucky to be the ones in the fog all the time, and he explained that when it gets warmer at higher elevations, the fog sinks to the lower areas and stays there. Apparently Cheseaux is a "lower area," therefore we get the fog...

After parking the car in the lot of a closed ski shop, we strapped on our raquettes (snowshoes) and hit the trail. While Louis is old enough to be my dad, he is still in really good shape and apparently does these things often to where I was the one slowing our pace!

We took a trail from the base of a mountain around the back and up a ski area to the top, where we had an amazing view of Lake Geneva. Along the way we saw many old old old Chalets, and Louis told me how people often leave them unlocked for tired walkers to rest.. All I could imagine was people in Lake Tahoe keeping their cabins unlocked for tired people to rest! Haha... definitely a different culture here!

The way down was probably the most challenging, because you have to lean towards the mountain to balance down. People were skiing past us, and we decided that we should have brought skis on our backs for the way down! (I didn't admit that I would have been too chicken to ski down such a steep mountain anyway!)

After reaching the car, I looked at my watch, and it had been 4 hours since we had set out on the hike. My legs were tired and sore, but it was a great day!

This morning I had a French lesson with Genevieve, and I spend the afternoon at the fitness center where I ran into Fanny. Tomorrow I might be going to Bern with Crystal and Jeff to see the sights, but we still have to do some planning...

Hope all is well!

Love, Anna

I think I see an outline of a shadow....

2009-01-11T20:54:00.007+01:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

It's Sunday night and I'm finally sitting down to record a whirlwind week. I can't believe I've been here for 2 weeks already, and at the same time, I can't believe I was in Boston only 2 weeks ago! I sometimes feel like I'm living in a time warp..

As I had predicted in my last post, Thursday ended up being a very exciting day! After a french lesson and a fondue lunch (ps. for future reference, fondue should probably not be eaten for lunch if you have practice later) I went to the fitness center at the University of Lausanne for the first time with my teammate Fanny. After our lift, Fanny took me on a short tour of downtown Lausanne, and the city is even more gorgeous than I had imagined! We returned to Cheseaux after less than an hour, however, for that evening's practice.

Friday I decided that I would try to find the fitness center myself. Surprisingly enough, I made it there in one piece, and was happily greeted by the outlines of my shadow as I crossed the soccer field outside the fitness center. SUNSHINE! It felt amazing to have some Vitamin D in my life again..

After practice that night, Francine invited me to her house for a "special dinner" with her husband and some friends. Little did I know that this dinner would consist of an appetizer of foie gras and toasted bread, an entree of hunt meat with delicious sauces, and a homemade apple tart for dessert. Needless to say, it was delicious! (I haven't exactly made up my mind on foie gras yet.. but I guess it's good to have tried it once!) We stayed up late enjoying the company and cleaning up after the feast, and I had a hard time sleeping due to excitement about our match the following day.

Saturday was consumed by match preparation (much like back at Santa Clara!). We met at the gym in the early afternoon to get on the team bus, and started on the 2.5hr trip toward Zurich where we were scheduled to play Volero. We stopped en route for a pre game meal of pasta and chicken, and we got to the gym at close to 6 pm for a match at 7.

It was really fun to play in a match again, and aside from the 5 different languages that are spoken on the court at any given time and the random 6'7" Belarussian outside hitter that can crush any spot on the court, it was just like any other game I've played in! We ended up losing in 4 sets, but we gave them a pretty good run for their money, and they're one of the top 3 teams in our league, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

After the match, Francine and I met some of the girls in Lausanne for some off-the-court hangout time. It was fun to finally spend some time with my teammates without a net between us!

Today I left at 6:30 am for a day of coaching in Valais. The town we were in is in the German side of the canton, therefore, out of my group of 13 girls, only 2 understood my French. Fortunately I had another coach named Martin helping me translate into German, but you can imagine how challenging a demo can be without being able to narrate what you want the girls to do! The upside of the day was that I got to see a beautiful sunrise and sunset above the Alps on my way to and from Valais.

Tomorrow I have plans to go to the fitness center in the morning, go snowshoe-ing with Louis in the afternoon, and hopefully hang out with the Swiss Broncos (Jac, Crystal and Jeff) in the evening. Every day here is easier and easier, and I realized on my way home from Valais that:

a) I'm somewhat starting to kind of know my general way around

b) I'm starting to be able to speak French without thinking my way into being tongue-tied all the time

c) I'm going to have to get used to smelling like cigarette smoke unless I want to dry clean my clothes and wash my hair after every time I walk into a restaurant, bar, train station, market, etc.

Hope all is well!

Love, Anna

Scuttle the Seagull...

2009-01-07T21:57:00.004+01:00

Hello everyone!

I must start today's post with an obituary for the first victim of my driving in Switzerland. As I pulled off the highway next to Lake Neuchatel today, a group of seagulls chose the wrong time to fly within 2 meters of the ground. Therefore, Scuttle, may you rest in peace, and find your snarfblatts and dinglehoppers up in heaven.

While Scuttle's death was an unpleasant experience, the last few days on the whole have been pretty good! Monday morning I met Louis, the man whose house I am living under, for the first time in person. He's really nice (like apparently everyone else in Switzerland!) and he reiterated the idea that I can come up to the main house whenever. He's really fatherly, trying to help me figure out my cell phone situation, advising me to not use the ramp down to my apartment when it's icy, etc. I like him a lot!

Also on Monday, I was introduced to the restaurant where I will be receiving 5 hot meals per week, as outlined in my contract. I have this cool stack able lunch box thing, that has 4 separate interlocking bowls that carry different lunch items. For example, on Monday I got a baguette, carved ham, green beans, scalloped potatoes, and pea soup. It's delicious, and I can usually save half the meal for dinner and cut some costs!

Monday afternoon was spent coaching at a community rec center in Valais. It was a long afternoon, but a good experience. Until Monday, I had forgotten how much easier it is to coach in English! In order to communicate with the girls (who were mostly too young to have taken any English classes yet), I had to speak part French, part mime. At least the girls found me somewhat amusing...

Yesterday I had my first French lesson with the wife of the president of our club. Her name is Genevieve, and, like Louis, she is really nice. She gave me some lessons to do at home, which will hopefully help me improve my French rapidly so that I feel more confident speaking here!

Today I went and visited Crystal and Jeff in Neuchatel. The town itself is beautiful, and located right on Lake Neuchatel. It was nice to see some familiar faces again, but I only spent a couple hours there before returning for practice.

Tomorrow I have a fun day planned. French lesson in the morning, trying out the fitness center in Lausanne with a teammate at 2 pm, and I'm going to attempt to find a museum or something amusing to explore before practice tomorrow evening. I need to explore Lausanne a little more so that I can find things to occupy my time!

Love you all!

Anna

In Switzerland, you weigh your own produce...

2009-01-04T23:18:00.009+01:00

Hello Friends and Fam!

I have now survived 1 week of life in Switzerland. Woohoo!

On Saturday, I had my first double day with the team. We had practice early in the morning, consisting of fitness, ball controll drills, and finally some playing. It is so funny how no matter what language they are speaking, every team does basically the same thing. We played a game of what literally translates to "drill of cleaning," which is exactly the same as the "wash" games I've played since my time at Empire! It's always comforting to find some common thread between here and home, and I find myself thinking of my coaches and teammates at Santa Clara as we play the same game across the globe!

After practice, we had a delicious pre-game meal at the same restaurant that I went for dinner last Sunday. We got mushroom raviolis, and they were SO GOOD (Mom, you would have loved them!). Definitely not a Steve and Kelby approved pre-game meal (or really anytime meal), but apparently that's how they do it here! The girls drank Coke with their food and had espressos after lunch, so one can imagine how different it is from the nutrition guidelines that we tried to follow at Santa Clara!

I had a little while between our meal and the time I had to be back at the gym for warm-up, so I decided to go to the grocery store while I could. Unlike the 24 hour Safeways in California, it seems like stores here are closed more often than they are open! That means that when you're starving at 10 PM (or even 5 PM!), if you forgot to go to the grocery store, you're entirely out of luck. Therefore, I jumped at the chance to get my meals for the rest of the weekend taken care of!

I grabbed everything I needed, including a bunch of things from the produce section. Onions, lettuce, broccoli, oranges, apples, carrots, you name it, I got it! When I got to the checkout stand (mind you there is only one!) the woman asked me if I had forgotton to weigh my carrots. Um.. yeah. I forgot? aka I thought you would just put it on the little scale and punch in the numbers like they usually do at Safeway? WRONG!!

To my utter and complete embarassment, the entire store waited as my really nice teammates went to the other side of the store with my bags of produce to weigh and price them all for me. There was a line of about 7 people waiting patiently, as Francine explained that this was only my 6th day in Switzerland. I was mortified! But everyone was nice enough about it, and I made it home with all my veggies and fruits in tow. You live, you learn!!

After that awesome experience, we had a friendly match against the team from Geneva. They were pretty good, and it was good experience for our team. We ended up winning in 5, and that concluded our long day of volley!

After the match, Francine invited me to go bowling. Cheseaux is so small that I feel like I'm lost in the middle of nowhere sometimes, but I forget that we are less than 10 minutes away from the 3rd largest city in Switzerland! So of course there are things like bowling alleys close by! Francine and I met 2 of her friends there for a meal and 2 fun games of bowling (it was a combo bowling alley, restaurant, arcade, and bar, and it was crawling with people on this particular night! oh. and did I mention that one of her friends is a former Swiss champion bowler, and he bowled a 253 in the first game alone, while I didn't break 100 until halfway through the second game???!!) We called it a night after my last ball ended in the gutter, and she gave me a quick tour of the area on the way home.

This morning, I decided that I wanted to brave the roundabouts once again to see the towns that I had seen in the dark last night! I jumped into the bloob and got on the road towards Geneva. I realized that I was having trouble with directions because the names of strees are never displayed, instead just the direction in which that street will take you is displayed (therefore, someone new who has no idea where they are or where everything is in relation to anything else obviously cannot make their way anywhere!! Totally logical...). I tried to follow the quick directions that Francine had given me, and I ended up making it to my destination, the town of Morges!

Morges is a small town right on Lake Geneva. It has a lakefront walking path that kind of reminds me of the Strand in Manhattan Beach. Theoretically, on a warm summery day (as opposed to a COLD WINDY AM-I-IN-A-REFRIDGERATOR?? DAY) there would be people out walking, biking, roller-skating, etc. Also, the lake is lined with beautiful mansion-style houses, with a really eclectic mix of architecture!

I walked around for a while and took some pictures until my fingers became numb and I was longing for the bloob's heater. So I hopped back onto the road, followed the signs, and made it back to my house! It felt so good to know how to get somewhere and back!

Later, I went to Valais with Francine and her husband Pascal for his rec-league hockey game. After dropping him off for warm-ups, Francine took me on a short trip to see the Alps. On the way up, she described the ski resort at the top called "Portes du Soleil" where one can take a lift up the mountain, and depending on which slope you choose, you ski down to Switzerland, Italy, or France! I took some quick pictures of the mountains and the chalets that are dotted along the hillsides before we had to return to the rink for the match. Hopefully this was only my brief introduction to the beauty that the Alps have to offer!

After the hockey game and dinner, Francine dropped me back off at home to relax and prepare for a long day tomorrow. I am scheduled to begin coaching tomorrow alongside my coach (Florian) and we are running 2 clinics tomorow afternoon from 3-6 and then from 7-10. (What could you possibly talk about for 2 sessions of 3 hours? I have no idea!!) The twist is that half of the lessons will be in French, while the other half are in German. The other twist is that I have no idea where this place is, and I'll be driving myself! Should be exciting.. am I getting any gray hairs yet??

Hope all is well and I'll talk to you soon!

Love, Anna

Happy 2009!!

2009-01-02T20:56:00.007+01:00

Bonne annee!!

I'm sitting here with "Sleepless in Seattle" in French playing in the background. It's at the part where Meg Ryan is deciding whether she should go to Seattle or not. So good, even in French!

After my first 2 days in Cheseaux, I decided to brave the trip by train to Jac's in Fribourg. For any of you who don't know, I get a little anxious when faced with anything that has to do with public transportation (ex: I got lost while taking a NJ transit train over X-mas break and ended up on the wrong line and had to retrace my steps and start over... a journey of only a couple miles took me about 4 hours :), and this trip was no different.

I got off at the wrong station in Lausanne (at Lausanne-Chaderon instead of Lausanne-Flon, what was I thinking??) and I didn't know how to get to the main station (Lausanne gare) where I was meeting my train to Fribourg. In my moment of absolute oh-my-gosh-i-don't-even-know-where-I-am panic, I asked a passerby for directions to Lausanne gare. He told me that he was on his way somewhere and was going to go right by the station, so he offered to give me a ride. He ended up dropping me off right in front, after giving me a short list of what i should do during my time in Switzerland. Thank you Cedric!!! I made my train, and got to Fribourg at around 5:30 pm.

When I arrived in Fribourg, I jumped with excitement upon seeing Crystal and Bard. We made our way out to parking lot where there were supposed to be taxis, and ended up waiting for about half an hour in the snow. We were all so excited to see one another though, that it seemed like only a couple minutes! After several failed attempts in which people jumped into our cabs before we could make it to the door on the thick ice, we finally got one nice driver who ended up bringing us to Jac's.

Upon arriving at her appartment, Jac and her boyfriend Alex took out their new Christmas present: a Wii Fit! While Alex prepared the rest of the Tapas and poured champagne, we all tried downhill skiing, slalom skiiing (how do you even spell that??) and then settled on games of tennis and bowling. As some of Alex and Jac's friends arrived, Crystal, Jeff and I felt more and more like the children in the corner of the party, so we decided to open the game up to everyone and attempt to socialize like adults.. But then we found a stack of sunglasses and settled on having a photo shoot on the couch as all of the real adults socialized...

After ringing in the new year, Crystal had a brilliant beyond brilliant idea. No really, she is an absolute genius!! (Parent Trap anyone??) We decided to bundle up and go outside to sled down Jac's hill! It was a funny sight to see, and I wish I had taken pictures, but my camera had run out of batteries. Just picture a bunch of people in New Years party clothes and hats thrown on trying to sled down a hill with the steepness that would only allow us to go around 15 feet before grinding to a stop.. So maybe it wasn't a genius idea, at least it was entertaining!

The next day we stayed at Jac's until around 4 pm, when Crysal and Bard and I went our separate ways. On the train back to Lausanne, it was early enough for me to see the countryside approaching the city, which was absolutely breathtaking. Lausanne sits on the hill right on the edge of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). The hillsides are covered in vineyards, stretching as far as the eye can see. Soon after passing the beautiful vineyards, I arrived in the station at Lausanne and succesfully navigated my way to the metro station, where I almost lost an arm in the quickly-closing doors, but managed to get out with all of my limbs intact.

After the short trip back to Cheseaux, I walked back to my apartment feeling very accomplished! I couldn't believe that I had navigated my way to and from Fribourg, and I feel like that maiden voyage has opened the door to exploring Switzerland beyond the reaches of my little blue car!

Today we had a full practice, so I met the rest of the team as well as the head coach. The girls are all really nice, and I explained that I want them to speak french to me so that I can improve. As soon as I work up the courage to interject into a conversation at full speed, I'm sure that I will make some good friends! For the meantime, I got to talk to some of my best friends from home tonight, and I was happy to hear their words of encouragement about breaking into the social scene here!

Tomorrow we have a practice match against a team from Geneva, which should be exciting. I will be happy to get on a more regular schedule again and start playing volley for real!

Talk to you all soon, and HAPPY 2009!!

Love,

Anna

Friends, Fondue and Fribourg!

2008-12-30T17:37:00.011+01:00

Salut!

Upon leaving my apartment yesterday, I spent 3+ hours driving around... Yes, that means I could have made it to France and back, but I probably drove the same 40 km 3 or 4 times... it was laughable the trouble I was having with directions! I must say, signage in the United States is waaaay better... Sometimes the signs only face one direction, so you have to pass them, look in the rearview, and pull a U turn, which is somewhat disconcerting after the 10th time!! Plus there are roundabouts everywhere. I am no good with them in Massachusetts, and I'm no good with them here!

Anyway, I made it to a "Migros" mall (I know Mom, Dad, I confused it with Micros too) which is essentially a big Target fused with a big Safeway (great combo).. I bought a SIM card and some groceries, and on the way out, attempted to buy some stamps from an ATM looking machine. I couldnt figure out how in the heck I was supposed to use it, because all the directions were in German.. Nina, I attempted to channel my German roots as your cousin, but my ancestral history failed me...

So I asked some nice people, and they explained that you put in coins, press the number of how many stamps you want, and out they come... Well I thought this was a grand idea, and put in all the Swiss coins that I had.. almost 7 francs worth. While I was attempting to figure out how to press the numbers to correspond with wanting 7 stamps, a big package sticker worth 6.90 popped out. Oops.. I decided that I should just go to the post office next time.

After lunching on a meal from home (pasta with red sauce, yum!) I mentally prepared for the ensuing practice. I got super nervous, and I tried to pretend it was just like going to prac at Santa Clara. I showed up 30 minutes early, thinking about times where I showed up 1 hr + early to the Leavey, but there was no one there and the doors were locked. I panicked for a sec, wondering if I had royally screwed up the whole 24-hour clock thing (18:30= 6:30 pm?? wtf mate??) but soon enough people arrived..

Practice was pretty good, and I wasn't as rusty as I could have been. Some of the girls are still abroad for vacation, so it was a pretty small group, but still pretty fun. While I was really unsure of what to expect, once we started playing volley I calmed down a bit. Santa Clara girls, you'll never believe it, but we did the 10 and 10 drills (front back, side to side, digging, but alas no fists) and Eva/ Kelby exercises to start off, then continued with Serve/Pass and a competitive game of deep court. So fun!

After practice, our libero, Francine, invited me to her house for a fondue dinner. She is a couple years older than me, and she has a husband and 2 children, so our worlds are a little different, but she is super cool.. She played at American University in DC in the 90's and has kind of taken me under her wing. Her husband, Pascal, is a ridiculously good cook, and we dined on delicious fondue and drank swiss wine and had a dessert of apple tart and cheese and green beans (random, I know, but so good!!). Then she revealed that she had a jacuzzi outside under the stars, and we sat in the hot tub for an hour or so chatting...

I returned to my apartment (Chemin de Petrovray 1)at almost 1 in the morning, which seems extremely late for a couple with a 3 year old to be hanging out.. But apparently stuff goes late around here, and anything before midnight is early!!

We had no practice today, so I experienced my first taste of boredom.. I decided it would be a great time to explore Cheseaux by foot, so I walked for around 2 hours, taking pictures of everything worthwhile. The most popular Christmas decoration was a Santa clinging to a ladder. On my way home I stopped at Francine's house, where we had tea and the rest of last night's pie. I asked about the Santa/ladder thing, and she explained that tradition says that instead of coming down the chimbey, Pere Noel climbs a ladder to deliver presents! That explains the decorations, and I realized I'm really lucky to have found a friend so quickly!

Tomorrow Crystal and Jeff arrive from the states and we're planning on organizing some sort of adventure for New Years. Jac is having a soiree at her house in Fribourg tomorrow, so she invited us over for Tapas and drinks before the New Years celebrations. We might stay around there or possibly venture over to Lausanne to find some bigger New Years festivities. Should be exciting either way!

Boredom is making me miss home and everyone there a little more, but I'm still feeling very good about my chances to make this a really fun experience. Plus, I'm eating delicious Swiss chocolate with tiny bits of grilled cocoa beans in it, which gives it a little toffee-like crunch. Let's just say I'm most often content with chocolate nearby!

(I'm sure this blog thing will get old for everyone soon, but I'm using it as a way to help myself remember, so bear with me and my wordiness for the moment :)

LOVE LOVE LOVE, Anna

Cheseaux, CH

2008-12-29T12:05:00.000+01:00

Hello friends and family! I'm writing this from my desk in my new apartment in Cheseaux, Switzerland. I arrived yesterday after a long day of travel, accompanied by seemingly endless nerves about what to expect in Geneva. When I passed customs, however, all of my anxiety was relieved!

The general secretary of our team (Bernard) came to pick me up at the airport, and taught me that in Switzerland, its customary to exchange 3 kisses on the cheek (instead of 2 like in France, duh Anna!!). He was pretty quiet because I think he is somewhat self-concious about his English, so our ride to Cheseaux was dotted with random topics like whether I've ever studied winemaking (this is a big winemaking region, the hills are covered with vineyards!!) and my opinions about Obama's election...

It took us about 35 minutes to get from Geneva to Lausanne, and another 10 to get from Lausanne to Cheseaux. Lausanne is a pretty large city with a university and "beaucoup des jeunes personnes" (lots of young people) according to Bernard. Cheseaux is a very small suburb to Lausanne, and it is laid out almost entirely surrounding one street.

Bernard first took me to the gym, where several of my teammates were just leaving that evening's practice. All three were very very nice, and I'm excited to meet the rest of them tonight! The gym is a little different than the hardwood courts of Leavey, but Bernard said they have a great fan following here in Cheseaux and it gets packed for matches!

We then went to pick up the president of the club, whose name is Georges. His wife will be giving me french lessons, and they both seem really nice. They brought me to my apartment, where I was introduced to my new blue hatchback car (automatic!! yes!!!!!!) and my home for the next few months.

I was scheduled to live with another american on the team, but she got sick and is returning to the states, so for now I'm living by myself! I have a bathroom, laundry room, and full kitchen, and it's all under the house of a nice couple named Erica and Louis, who said I could come and hang out with them whenever I want!

After putting my bags away, the Mr. Pres and Bernard took me to dinner at a local Italian restaurant, where the cook took me into the kitchen to introduce me to his mother and the rest of the family that works there! The food was delicious, and I was excited to find a delicous restaurant so close to my home!

After a really whirlwind day, I returned home and slept for almost 12 hours. I woke up, found out that the shower does use hot water (yes!!!, again, because I was afraid it would be cold!) and munched on some Special K red berries for breakfast. Today I'll adventure out in my little blueberry car and find a phone store so that I can recieve and make local calls. Then I have practice at 6:30 pm, which should be verry intersting!

OK, I wanted to get my blog set up, and let you all know that I've arrived safely and am so far enjoying my time here! I hope you're all doing well and that I'll talk to you soon!

Love, Anna