Geting settled

Hello Everyone,

I figured it was about time to update the Blog, now that I am pretty much settled. I have a car now along with a washer. I think my washer actually is broken because my socks are not getting very clean. I will have to talk to management about that, but they have been real professional about everything. It is really a comfort to see that as I have talked with other players who were lucky to even get their money. I have set up my bank stuff and now have a visa for Europe. I will have no idea how to use it at first because the system is a little different here. I have been able to go to the store and have more food then just pasta and peanut butter, which got me by for the first few days. I have picked up a French tradition of putting plain yogurt on my cereal (Fromage Blanc is the name of the stuff). I also had one of the desserts which is very similar to a doughnut with pudding in the middle (not even going to try and spell that one). I have picked up some French, like the numbers, couple easy sayings like “It is over” and “It is working”. I say that a lot during the morning workouts because they never quit. Also, have some of the colors along with “good” and very good”. It will not take long to learn more as I am immersed in the culture (the spelling will be a different story).

The highlight of the week was getting my grandparents, mom, dad, and Morgan on Yahoo Messenger. Now, they can talk to me while also viewing me on my webcam. It is unbelievable some of the things you can do with a computer. I have become a pretty good driver with stick shift now as well. The first day I had the car I scraped the door handle on the garage. Now when I say garage I mean an area a little bigger then a cardboard box. It is really hard to pull in and out of. It takes me five minutes to accomplish this. A lot of my time is spent on the computer, but I have found the tram station and the train station along with a Chinese restaurant. I have not been able to eat there yet, the day I went it was closed. Tomorrow is our first day off since I have been here and we are going about an hour away to watch the France national team. I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing something new.

Practice is going really well and I have been playing really well. We either weight lift or run in the morning practices. They are some killer workouts, but I know it will pay off. Night practices consist of a lot of 3 on 3, 4 on 4 drills. Like I said earlier the team has a lot of energy and seems to be meshing very well. I have no idea about the competition we will face, but I know we will never quit. We have about 8 exhibition games with the first being this Tuesday. We are in a couple of pre-season tournaments as well. I’m ready to start playing some games. We had a team meal & meeting today where we paired up with a team member and found out about them. It was good to learn about all these different people and learn about there culture. The setting was very funny to me though, we were in a small nightclub with the couches and purple and orange lights. Our pasta was served to us in a Chinese food box, but outside appearance is not everything my salmon pasta was excellent (this is where I had the new doughnut treat).

I do have kind of a funny story. When I went to the market (grocery store) I had a cart that was filled to the top. When I was at the check out the lady was trying to speak to me. I had no idea what she was saying so I just showed her the Euros. She still would not check me out and got the manager who spoke a little English. He asked “do you have money?” I was like “yes” and he said “well that is all you need”. He started telling the lady to go, then looked at me and said “money will usually get you around here”, which is an accurate statement where money is the universal language. It just struck me as very interesting.

On a sad note, I found out that I will not be able to watch my ABC shows online as they are not available out of the states. Guess I will have to be informed on Grey’s anatomy from others.

This is BC gone for now

Good job to those who guessed #9. I really have no idea where the number 13 came from out of some people ;)

For anyone who is intersted my address is -16 Rue Leon Bourgeous
68100 Mulhouse France