ArOuNDtH3WorLd...

I’ve been living a bit of the nomad life this season, I am on my second apartment and have been in and out of the hotel randomly, it’s been quite hectic. But I am finally settled in to the final apartment and oh was it worth the wait or whatttt! I am in love.

It is very big, older apartment, recently remodeled. My absolute favorite part about it is the high high ceilings and huge tall doors, which remind me of my home :)

I am living with one of my teammates who I was in the other apartment with, Ursa one of our setters, we get along so great and I couldn’t ask for a better roommate! 

Another one of my favorite parts about this apartment is the living room. Not only is it huge with a great L shaped couch, (a staple in every home if you ask me :)) , it is nice not to have to be in your bedroom all the time and a great place to have our friends over to hang out and watch movies.

The only hiccups we have experienced with the place is for the first few weeks the hot water was sketchy, one week we would have it and the next we wouldn’t. We couldn’t figure it out. It was a good thing we showered at our gym all the time so that wasn’t the issue but having to wash your face and dishes in cold water wasn’t exactly ideal. 

We kept pestering our owner about it and he kept calling the owner and finally we got someone over here. Come to find out the hot water is turned on and off by a light switch in Ursa’s room. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me and we always thought that was the light for the bathroom so when it was switched on we would have hot water but most of the time it was off so we weren’t getting any. haha  quite comical and now we have tape over the switch to make sure we don’t accidentally flip it!

Also this past weekend we had some of the girls over to make enchiladas!!! Mmmm mexican food! If I have to say one thing that I miss the most from America it has got to be the mexican food. I am a mexican food addict and after being over here for 7 months you could say I am going through a bit of a withdrawal at this point!

Luckily I have found a greattt enchilada recipe, and a store that sells all the needed ingredients, including avocados!! It is a bit out of town but totally worth the trip.

So we made this delicious dinner and feasted, the girls loved it.. almost as much as me I think :)

As we were sitting fat and happy on the couch after dinner watching TV, Ursa yells from the bathroom! She was standing an inch of water!!

Our kitchen and bathroom our back to back and the drain was flooding! So for about a half hour we were on our knees soaking up water on the bathroom floor! 

Thankfully we were able to get maintenance over to the apartment the next morning to fix the drain, I was impressed with their promptness, you would think we would’ve waited for a week the way things tend to work over here. haha

So now everything is perfect, running hot water, and a drain that works. A few added perks to this apartment that I haven’t had the luxury of having are a clothes dryer (usually we hang dry everything) and a dishwasher! 

I have gotten in the habit of not using either I forget that we have them, but it is nice!! 

We also won this past weekend in our MEVZA match against a team from Vukovar, Croatia at home in 3. This is a big week for us, we have 3 games in 5 days and all important ones! Excited to grind out some W’s :)

Adio ;) 

xoxo

Well my last update was over a month ago which is unacceptable! Why have none of you scolded me for neglecting my blog?? :)

I honestly cannot believe how fast time is going over here, we are in the countdown days now, and only have TWO months left!!! We just found out our season will be shortened due to the Junior National team qualifying this year for World Championships. So that pushes our final match date from what was going to be the end of April/beginning of May all the way up until at the earliest March 30th, and if need be beginning of April!

Also in the short month of February we will be playing 10 games!! So if I think time is going by quickly now, put 2 games every week, the season is going to be over in the blink of an eye!

To get you up to date on what has been going on around here:

December: This month was not quite so nice to our team, I was out for most of the month with an inflamed disc in my back, one of our middles had knee surgery and the flu was running rampant through everyone. Needless to say we were happy to see a new year :)

January: We kicked the New Year off with the Slovenian Cup! This is THE most important game of the year, and most important for the club, sponsors and so on..basically a must win!

The finals was a rematch of last year’s Cup, against Kamnik. And played out to be very similar, a 5 set thriller. We went down 0 sets to 2 to start off the match and had to fight our way back to clench the championship. Which in the end made it that much sweeter. We always get a great crowd when we play in the Cup and the National Championship, so it was a great atmosphere, emotions running high and an exhausting but very rewarding match!

After the Cup we had a few days off. since we were not given a Christmas break except for Christmas day, as we were preparing for the Cup. After the break we continued on in the European Cup, CEV league. We had won in the first round a month earlier against Brno, Czech Republic, and up next was Urbino, Italy.

This was a very exciting match up because it was Italy. Italy has one of the best leagues in the world, and Urbino is currently in 2nd place in the A1 league. 

We first played in Urbino, a 7 hour drive. We lost in 3 but it was a great experience and fun gym to play in with great fans even though it was a very small city. And of course we got to experience the DELICIOUS pasta, they say once you have pasta in Italy you are ruined for life, I am going to have to agree.

It wasn’t even that extravagant, just your basic noodles with marinara sauce. But the noodles were cooked to absolute perfection, my tastebuds were blown away and the sauce had just the right blend of spices and goodness mixed in. I didn’t know something so simple could be SO divine.

There were 2 Amercians on their team, one was Juliann Faucette who went to Texas, who I played against in college for 3 years. Also really cool, her former coach, Jerritt Elliott happened to be on one of Cory’s tours that started in Italy and they were able to come to the match along with 40 other Americans. My stud cousin, Nicole Dalton will be going to Texas next year to play for Jerritt so it was fun to be able to talk about her. I am continually reminded about what a SMALL world it is, especially the volleyball world!

A week later Urbino came to Maribor for a rematch where we took them to 4 sets but still lost. We played better and were able to take the first set off of them but just ended up making too many errors. At the end we were happy with the way we fought and the club was satisfied with the result.

We are now done with CEV league and Slovenian Cup. So now we are focusing on MEVZA, which the Final Four will be in February and Slovenian National league which the finals will be at the very end.

All very exciting and good news!

I have really been enjoying my time here this year, I am loving my team more than anything and have developed some great friendships on and off the court, and getting better and stronger in the gym every day! It has been successful so far and I am looking to end on an even stronger note here these next 2 months!

Ok that was a lot and I promise I will be more up to date, so stay posted :)

Fall is starting to turn to Winter here in Maribor, still no sign of snow, just cold cold cold and days on end of foggy no sunshine ing darkness. The fall here in Slovenia was GORGEOUS! So many pretty colors of orange, yellow and reds that just give the town great beautiful character.

Ryan was visiting a couple weeks ago and I took him up the infamous 500 stairs to get the great view of the city of Maribor. At the end of it he said “This place is like having Disney World in your back yard, you have to take all your visitors to it when they come” haha, very true. 

It was great having him in town, even though it was only for a few days. His practice schedule only allowed him 3 free days, the only 3 days he will get all year because they are playing on the road the day after Christmas and will have to travel on Christmas and will be practicing continuously. 

In volleyball news, Nova KBM has come back from our 2 week break of no matches with a good 4-0 start! We started with the number 1 team in the Middle European League, Vienna. Then beat Split, Croatia. We started Slovenian league last week. There are only about 3 or 4 solid teams in Slovenia therefore the first few rounds of Cup play are cake walks. For example our game scores were 25-6, 25-10, 25-11. And that is without most of us playing. 

This past week we took a trip to Brno, Czech Republic (a 4 hour drive) for the first round of European Cup (CEV league). We will play one match away, next week at home, and the winner advances to the next round. 

Last night we won a 5 set thriller! It was a very back and forth match and felt so good to get a very important win on the road! Next week they come to Maribor!