I hope everyone is doing well.  Everything is going well over here.  We had our first preseason games this past weekend in northwestern Germany against two first division teams.  Both games resulted in a loss.  The first game was close and the second one was not close - I'll leave it at that.  I think we played alright despite only practicing one time with the whole team before the weekend.  We only practiced once before because we had a few players on the national team who were gone with games and a couple guys were injured.

Yesterday we had our first preseason game at home against a Belgium team.  We had a lot of turnovers and lost a fairly close game.  It was great to play in front of our fans.  There was a modest turnout, but I can't wait for the gym to be full for the regular season games.  We are not where we want to be as far as our playing standards go, but the season is young and we will get there.  

I don't know if you all remember my experience in Austria my first year playing when I helped a woman jump start her car.  Well, I almost had a chance to reminisce that moment.  I was walking home from practice and I saw an old man trying to start his car, but his battery was dead.  I went up to him and asked if he spoke English and he said he did (I couldn't really understand what he was saying, but he could understand me).  I asked if he needed help but he said he called help already.  Inside I was hoping I could help him out.  Then I would hopefully have a great story to tell all of you, but somehow it's just not as exciting of a story when the other person speaks English.  That's the thing about Holland.  You can go up to someone and just start speaking English no matter what their age, and they know exactly what you are talking about - definitely different from the other countries I've played in.

I should also tell you that our place has a dryer AND a dishwasher.  Pretty impressive, I know.  I've never had a dishwasher (unless her name was Mom :) so that was great.  The dryer is really great to have since we have to do laundry every other day with practice gear.  This way we don't have a sock graveyard in our bedrooms and living room, as my buddy Tyronn would say.

Hope all is well.

Take care and God bless,
Mike