EuroCup in the Azores!

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

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

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

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!!

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

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!

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!

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!

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