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 :)