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