One Month Down…

Me & Kerline @ Dinner

Wow. I can’t believe I’ve been here a month already. Only eight more months to go (yeah, I need to NOT look at it that way)! Anyways, things are getting better on this end. I’ll be honest, the first couple of weeks here were incredibly trying, and I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to get any better and I just wasn’t going to find enough enjoyment in what I was doing to stick it out. I mean I’ve always been (and always will be) the type of person that is 100% devoted to whatever it is I’m doing. If I can’t give 100%, I’ll always question what the point is of doing it. But, during those first weeks, breaking the weeks down into days and the days down into individual tasks really helped me out. I was able to step up to each challenge, conquer it, and move on to the next. I really think those first couple of weeks made me a stronger person.

Preseason is actually almost over now (thank God). We only have one more scrimmage tomorrow before we open up our conference play next Saturday. Our first two games are against the best two teams in the league (why does it seem like this is ALWAYS the case), and we definitely have our work cut out for us.

This past week we had some team bonding time on Monday and Tuesday. Monday night we did a team Zumba class, went out to dinner, and then went bowling. Zumba is actually a lot of fun. The instructor brought his “A” game, was super enthusiastic and motivating, and all of my teammates got really into it, which just made it so much more enjoyable. Monday was also the first time I’d been out to eat since coming here, which was a really nice treat. The biggest surprise of the night for me though was at bowling, when I bowled the best game I’ve probably ever had (which still isn’t anything to write home about), and beat my teammates and my coaches. =)

Me, Joyce, & Lindsay checking out the scores ;-)

One of the things about being the only American on a team is that it is super annoying to have to ask people to translate stuff for you all of the time, so sometimes, and maybe this isn’t such a good thing, I just don’t. I just go with the flow and see what happens. The second day of team bonding was a big mystery (not only to me, but everyone). I was thinking booze cruise (The Office style) maybe? One could only hope. We were only given instructions to bring athletic wear, dinning wear, our swimsuits, and swim shoes. Well, I don’t have ‘swim shoes’ here, so I was really hoping we weren’t going to a pond or a river or lake or anything where there might be slimy gooey rocks under my feet. Anyways, I was thinking the big mystery day would entail maybe a hike, lunch, and then some kind of swimming. After we drove 45 minutes out of Limoges, pulled up to what looked like an abandoned building that had broken windows, I thought, ‘uh oh, this is actually a team massacre.’ Instead of asking what was up, I just waited to see what our next move was. It wasn’t long until we walked past the building and came out to a really beautiful view of this creek surrounded by nature. We proceeded to take pictures as both a team and individually along the creek, although I still don’t know why, and then headed to lunch. After lunch we ended up at an indoor spa where we enjoyed a sauna, jacuzzi, and hammam. I’m not sure why we needed those water shoes, but all in all, our two team bonding days were pretty relaxing and gratifying.  

Ker, me, & Eloo

This week I also started helping coach one of the school teams associated with the club. I helped out a few times in Switzerland with the school teams, but there were a lot of international students in those classes who helped translate what I was saying to their classmates. There really aren’t any of those international students in Limoges, so trying to get across the purpose of my drills, how to do the drills, and the rules of the drills was a lot more difficult this go-‘round. If anything though, coaching these little ones will definitely help me improve my French!