Sep 7, 2008

Can I stay healthy?!




Hello Everyone,

Well, I have had about a week now to get accounted with the city. It is not a huge city, but does have a nice downtown area with lots of fountains and park areas. It has a small river or a canal running through the town, and I’m assuming into the ocean. I am not 100% on that. The city has tried to forget its communist past with adding a lot of colors to the apartments and rebuilding a lot of them however there are still reminders that the communist reign had its grips here with the tall blocked shape apartments. There ugly grey color rising 14 to 20 stories in the air. From what they have told me kolozberg used to belong to Germany.

I have been spending some time in the wireless park since I’m still waiting for internet in my apartment. The park seems to attract the crazies more then the computers. I have proof to back this statement up, first starting with the lady who was walking a ferret on a leash. She was saying it did not bite in polish over and over (a polish teammate was with us). Then the next thing you know it bit Drew in the toe. She must not be a very good ferret trainer. Second incident involved four of us. A drunken guy came stumbling over to Skip and Drew on their park bench with his hands together bowing and then began to ask questions. They could not understand him very well through is broken English. Once they ignored him long enough he came over to me and the polish teammate (dawid, not spelled wrong the polish way of spelling it). He was just standing there when I said “save it”, something concerning my computer and he asked “what **** kind of word is save it”. He then asked “what the #### are you guys doing in Paris” again in broken English and a mumble. We tried our best to ignore him, but skip pulled out his video camera and started recording. We left shortly after that so the man could get to sleep on his park bench. The third incident involved alcohol again only it was like 7 in the evening when three guys came stumbling through the park. They decided to use the restroom outside, which is fine except they went behind a bench with four older ladies and were clearly visible. They said something to the men and they all started conversation. I wish I could have understood because everyone in the park was laughing including the women on the bench. Those are the only stories I have from “Crazy Park” right now, but the other odd thing was my computer was the only computer out of 7 teammates to connect to the wireless. Sometimes older is better!!

We traveled about an hour in half for a tournament this past weekend. I can’t even spell the town because I don’t have the proper letters on the keyboard. It is funny to think about that I’m at all these different cities and I could not even get back there on my own if I tried or even pronounce the names correctly. We played Friday night and drove back, then played Saturday and Sunday staying over Saturday night. I would have rather drove back on Saturday night as well due to the hotel they put us in. It was about 20 minutes from the gym we were playing at. When you first walked in you had to dodge the pool table to get to reception, then at reception it was a desk with no computer, no phone, and no drawers. I forgot my camera, but the lobby and the room were defiantly picture worthy. The room itself had four beds and a table with two plastic lawn chairs in the middle of the room. I don’t think you can actually call these beds either they were more like glorified park benches. It had a piece of wood in the middle of the bed that stuck up. Even if you could fall asleep on them we then had to listen to a wedding reception that was occurring directly below us until like 3 AM (we played at 11 am on Sunday). I think drew and I spent about 20 minutes just laughing wondering if it was a dream or if we were on the show “Punked”. The only good thing was they did have a LAN cord to get on the internet and we watched some of the college football games that were on.

As for the basketball we played five games last week. We played Sunday and Tuesday both at home winning one and ending in a tie on the other one (it was preseason so we did not play overtime). I did not play in either one, but we seemed to only play well for one half. Luckily it did not hurt us in either of these games, but it did come back to get us in the tournament this past weekend.

We played Friday night against the host team and had a rather good first half. The start of the third quarter decided the game where they started on a 12-0 run in the first four minutes and we never recovered. It was a similar situation in the second game where we played another good first half and just came off really slow in the third. It also did not help that we shot absolutely terrible both games in the second half. My game was defiantly off as I am still recovering from the ankle injury. I was a step slower and my shot was just off. I believe I shot 2-14 from 3 and like 4-11 on 2’s for all three games. My luck with injuries has also been terrible as I got kicked in the eye on Saturday night’s game and have a black eye. I would like to describe how this happened but it would just confuse you. The good thing was we blew out the team Sunday morning. We put two good halves together and played well together. Our defense has been outstanding holding team to under 65, we were just struggling shooting which I don’t feel will continue. We have about two weeks or three until the season starts which is plenty of time to work on our stuff and feel comfortable with everyone.

This week will be all practices and we are supposed to host a tournament next weekend, but they are not sure if that is a go. Monday is something they have labeled as “Ziby Day”. Ziby is our trainer and we will be getting treatments, massages, and getting in the whirlpool.

I would like to give special congratulations to my cousin who got married this weekend!

A HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mother and step farther as they share the same birth date! (Sep 6th) And MORGIE (Sep 9th) on her 24th. Love ya babe!

I would like to thank those who have left comments on the blog as well. It is always nice to read those!

Pictures include a teammate’s apartment balcony where he hosted a cookout, and my black eye

As soon as I get internet in my apartment I will upload the video of my apartment.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brandon,

sorry about the black eye.

hope you get internet soon.

hang in there.

Big AL

Unknown said...

Looks like a nice balcony, maybe you should take a sleeping bag with you for those hotels with such
terrible beds. At least it would be a little more comfortable. I missed the "food channel" this week.
Lv ya Karen

Mom said...

Love the "play on words"!!! You are soooooo cute! Thanks for the Birthday Wish

xoxox Mom

Ms K said...

Hey, Brandon~~
I certainly appreciate being able to read your blog.
If we were all perfect spellers dictionary publishers would go out of business and spell check would be obsolete. Typos and I are good friends, too ;-)
Looks like white plastic chairs and McDonald's must be world wide.
Sorry to hear about the injuries.
Just remember: It's the early bird that gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese. Observation is the key!

Blessings!
~~Ms K~~