After our win in December against Aris we had a game the next weekend that we lost by 2 in our home gym. We were supposed to have another game, a Cup Game, on the island of Kos on Dec 22nd before returning home for Christmas but due to some rules and other things I won't bore you with, we decided not to play the game. With much back and forth, I thought I was going to be able to come home a few days early for Christmas but we couldn't find a flight for a decent price so I ended up staying and flying home on the 23rd as originally planned. However, instead of spending my off weekend in Athens, I headed to Istanbul, Turkey for 36 hours before flying back to Athens late on Sunday night to get up early on Monday morning for a trip back home! It was a whirlwind of a weekend before coming home for 10 days.
In Istanbul, I went to the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, and went on a Bosphorous boat tour (the Bosphorous is the bit of water that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea and connects the European side of Istanbul to the Asian side). It was a really neat trip and although I wish I would have had a little bit more time there to explore the city, I'm glad I got to go and I think I made the most of my trip.
My time home for Christmas was awesome. I was so happy that I got to come home in the first place and spend so much time with family and friends. I got to do a lot of things and eat a lot of delicious, greasy, and fatty American food. I was lucky enough to get to watch my old high school, Rock Bridge, practice and play a game, DePaul play a game and even managed to squeeze in a Chicago Bulls game in between seeing family and hanging out with college friends. There are more people I wish I could have seen but I think I made the most out of my time home. I got to spend New Years with my cousin in the Chicago before flying back to Athens on New Year's Day.
Since being back, we've played 2 games. We lost our first game against Panathinaikos, the best team in the league. We lost by 8, but it was a much closer game than the final score. I think we had a great chance to win but let it slip away. We came back the next game and beat Proteas, another top team in the league. We won by 2 in a crazy finish. It felt really good to finally get a win on our home court and against one of the better teams in the league. Hopefully, we will continue with this good play and string together a couple of wins during the second half of the season.
Currently, I don't have any more trips planned for any weekends while I'm still here but I'm ready to travel at the spur of the moment if an off weekend comes up. My cousin and I are however putting together a month-long backpacking trip through Europe with stops in Amsterdam, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Ireland and London for this spring. I'm really looking forward to that and am having a fun time looking up things to do in all of the cities we want to stop in along the way. This same cousin and I also impulsively purchased tickets to a major music festival in California called Coachella for the middle of April. Right now we are planning to make a big road trip out of it so it's also fun planning for that!
I just binge-watched 8 seasons of the show 'How I Met Your Mother' in one week, aka I hardly left my apartment for a whole week. Season 9 is the current season but I've taken a break from the show for today and maybe a few more days to give my eyes a break from the screen. I've also been hanging out with one of the other American players here on another team. Her name is Lykendra Johnson and she's actually from Chicago and we know quite a few of the same people. It's fun to have somebody to go to dinner and a movie with. We just saw 'The Wolf of Wall Street' and I personally thought it was really good, although I thought the ending was strange.
That's it for now. Thanks for checking in and I'll try to write more often!
