Downtown & 4 Exhibition Games

Today's September 11th. I think for the rest of my life the sound of the date 9/11 will have a bad feeling to it.

Well, I've been here for 2 weeks. I'm getting a little more used to things. I can get around town on the busses by myself. Last week was pretty busy. On Wednesday I had my first practice with the young kids. I coached a session of boys who were between 13 and 17 I think. It went well because they understand English and they've done a lot of different drills in the past. I also had to go downtown a couple of times with Dani to get my insurance, and bus pass, and student passport taken care of. I've been downtown a few times to eat with Lori too and I've had some really good food. We had some brocolli auflauf at a place called 1900 (in pic.). We have also had pizza and pasta at Youssef's (Lori's boyfriend) restaurant. It was really good... but the best was probably the Gilato place we've been to a few times and had some Italian Ice Cream.

We had a Home Tournament this weekend. We played 4 teams. We played a Czech team called Kara Trutnov on Friday night and won, then on Saturday at noon we played Zehlendorf from our conference and lost by about 5 points. On Saturday at 6:00 we played Oberhausen, which is one of the best teams in our league and won. Then on Sunday we played at 6:00 again against Mainz, who we beat last weekend and won by about 10 points. We actually lost to the team that had only one win, which is really weird. But, we ended up tournament champions. It was a lot of fun, and it was good practice for us to play 5 on 5, and to learn how we each play. I feel like I played very well at some points and very bad at some points.

On Saturday night we had a little party or get together at the gym with all of our sponsors. The president of our club introduced them all and our coach, and then our coach introduced each player on our team. Afterward there was some food and drinks, and people just kind of mingled and talked to each other. A bunch of little girls even asked for our autographs…. They were so cute. And the woman who owns a big restaurant that sponsors us gave us each a necklace with a dolphin on it. There are a lot of people in the community that helped out with the tournament setup and selling food and drinks. Everyone has been so nice and I hope that I can show my great appreciation somehow.