A Little Slice of Home

Wow, it's already been 10 days since my last post and I apologize about that. If you think I lead some exciting life over here you are sadly mistaken because not much has changed since my last post. This past week we finally received our paychecks for last month so Tyronn and I had to celebrate and we went to KFC in the mall. It was an okay meal, but the fact that it was from an American restaurant made it so much more delicious. There is a movie theater there was well that plays American movies so we will have to check that out sometime. We should definitely appreciate the prices of some things in the states compared to here. KFC's prices are equivalent to what they would be in the U.S., but shoes at the Nike store in the mall, for instance, are ridiculously high. A pair of shoes that would be $90 in the states are about $200 here. Guys on the team love making jokes about how cheap everything is in America and how we waste gasoline because it is so much cheaper in the U.S. than it is in Europe. They may be right, but the jokes still get a little old. Everyone has his or her own opinion and that's the way it is I guess.

We had our first official game tonight. It's considered a Cup game just with teams in our league. We have another Cup game Sunday and then our regular season starts October 2. We didn't play very well tonight and took a mark in the "L' column. It hurt not having Tyronn on the floor. Unfortunately, he had to have microscopic surgery on his knee this past week. He had been fighting through pain for weeks and he nor the coaches thought it was a big deal. Tyronn said it was time to get an MRI and it revealed some damage to his meniscus. He has been staying positive, but it killed him to sit on the bench tonight and spectate. We need to get better at taking constructive criticism from each other and we are still giving up too many easy buckets. Thank goodness it's still early in the season.

Here are some more links to the Romanian league that I thought you might like to check out (you most likely need to download Google Toolbar to translate the pages):
http://www.numaibaschet.ro/
http://www.frbaschet.ro/

Know that I am thinking about all of you often and I am blessed to have so much support from all of you. You give me a little slice of home that gives me some peace of mind and I greatly appreciate that.

Take care and God bless

Hungry in Hungary

So we had a tourney in Hungary this past weekend. We won two and lost one. It was a good tournament though and we are starting to click better on the court as a team. We played against two teams from Hungary and one from Serbia. We made a great comeback in the game we lost, but it wasn't quite enough. I never blame losses on the refs, but they definitely didn't help us in that game. We cut the lead down to 4 points in the third quarter, but that is the closest the officials let us get. Progressively, the calls started going in our opponents' favor and, since the team was from Hungary, it wasn't too surprising. I think the refs knew in their minds that they would have to officiate against these Hungarian teams in the regular season so they didn't want to start any sour feelings with the fans or coaches. They don't take that stuff lightly over here. That's the way it works though.

To be honest, I don't know what city we were in and I probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway. Nonetheless, it was a nice, clean city. Everything seemed to be more up-to-date than in Oradea. The currency exchange got the best of me though. The Hungarian currency is worth more than in Romania so I didn't have much money the whole trip with me running short on funds. Fortunately, I was foreshadowing such an event so I brought some snacks along to hold me over for the most part. The portions in the team meals were large so that helped as well. So although I didn't go completely hungry during the trip, I thought it was a pretty catchy title for this post haha :)

I should also mention that we got to see the Vikings-Saints NFL game on TV while we were in Hungary. It was dubbed over in Hungarian, but it was still an NFL game, which made Tyronn and me feel more at home. Tyronn was especially excited because he is from New Orleans and got to see his hometown team play. We have another trip this weekend in Romania for a pair of games so I will keep you posted. Take care and God bless.

Scouring the Romanian Internet

I was finally able to stumble upon some Romanian sports articles discussing the games played so far. The websites are translated to English so these links may not work. The translations are pretty rough but can be accurate at times, especially listing Michael as playing the 'extreme'. I would consider him a forward but 'extreme' is also fitting. Being that Michael is busy and humble, I will try to relay any stories I find to the Schachscribers (a word I just made up to describe readers of this blog).

If you go to this link (click here) you should find the articles listed under BASKETBALL. One has a quote and the other has the picture below. Let me know in the comments if it doesn't work and I will try to fix it.
Is this a file photo or did you really wear a Green Bay jersey in your game?

Round 2 of tourneys

This past weekend we had three more games. We ended up 2-1 so overall it was good progress for us. Two of the teams were from our league so we will see them again in the regular season. The other team was from Hungary. None of the games were very close in score to make dramatic endings. The game we lost we didn't play solid defense and lost by about 12 points. We gave up too many easy points. That will come with still getting accustomed to playing together. There are still too many communication errors that we need to correct. The team from Hungary had three 7-footers so that was interesting guarding them. We had an advantage in speed so that helped us beat them although they clearly had the rebounding edge. I played fairly well throughout the games. I didn't shoot very well in one of the games, but the other two went well.

The team went out to experience Oradea's nightlife on Saturday night. It was a good time and beer is cheap so that's always a plus :) I came out of there with the constant thud of house music in my ears and smelling like a cigarette so that wasn't the most enjoyable, but a good time with the guys nonetheless. We have another tournament this weekend in Hungary so I will keep you posted on how that goes. I hope all is well back in the good ol' United States.