Play-outs/play-offs are about to start! That means it's getting closer and closer to when I get to come home. The way our play-offs are structured is kind of confusing but I'll give you the spark noted version of it. We finished 9th out of 10 teams (yikes) so we will go to the play-outs along with the 3 other bottom teams. We will play PAOK in a best of 5 game series, with the regular season games counting. We are tied with them 1-1 so we will have to win 2 games to move on to the next round. If we win our series against PAOK, we will then move on to play Elliniko, the number 1 team in the league and the team that just won the Greek Cup. (This is also the team my really good friend Lykendra plays for.) The teams that lose their play-out series are automatically sent to play in the 2nd division next year. We REALLY want to stay in the first division so this first series is crucial.
We had a weekend off a couple of weeks ago so I decided to travel to Barcelona for a quick trip. After getting in to the city on Sunday night, I walked around the Gothic Quarter and looked for a place to have dinner. I know that tapas are the meal of choice in Spain so I checked out a couple of tapas restaurants close to my hotel but the tapas they had that night weren't looking so appetizing to me so I passed on tapas. I happened to glance down a side street and saw a sign for a restaurant that said 'Mi Burrito Y Yo' and upon seeing the word 'burrito' for the first time in 7 months, I thought my Chipotle wishes had been answered! I grabbed a table and started checking out the menu only to see more tapas and paella. No burritos!! What I had failed to realize in my American, high-school-Spanish educated brain, was that 'burrito' in Catalan (the dialect of Spanish spoken in Barcelona) means donkey. The restaurant was called 'My Donkey and I.' You can imagine my disappointment when I learned this. I still ended up having a delicious dinner. I also decided to order some Sangria because I had heard that there was very good wine from this area and wanted to treat myself while on my 36 hour vacation. However, the sangria at this restaurant was wine with 2 lemon slices in the entire serving. Usually, there's a variety of chopped up fruit in sangria. I came away a little disappointed but it was a still a good meal.
On Monday I had a jam packed day. I visited the Sagrada Familia Basilica, Parc Guell, La Casa Battlo, the FC Barcelona soccer stadium, and took a long bus tour of the city. I won't bore you with all the details of my sightseeing escapades, but I will tell you that Barcelona is an absolutely beautiful city. I loved it and think I'm going to need to go back some day to get a fuller Barcelona experience! I was kind of amazed at how much of my high school Spanish came back to me. I was not confident enough to speak any, but I could read almost all of the signs and could pick up pieces of conversations I heard in passing. My flight was at noon on Tuesday to head back to Athens so I couldn't do anything that morning except grab a coffee at the Starbucks that was conveniently located next to my hotel! All in all it was a fantastic trip and I would definitely recommend Barcelona as a city to travel to!
Not much else is new here in Athens. We are just practicing and playing friendly games to keep fresh before play-outs start. I'm still expecting to be coming home April 7th and to be honest, I have a countdown going on! It's 3 weeks from today so I'm actually trying to pack up my apartment a bit. I don't want to leave all of my packing for the last minute because the play-out/play-off schedule could get kind of crazy. I'm really going to miss the girls on the team and everybody here that has helped make this year as easy for me as possible but I also really miss my family and friends back home!! I can't wait to be back home and catch up with everybody and share all the crazy stories that didn't make this blog!
Oh! I wanna give a HUGE HUGE shout out to my girls back at DePaul! BIG EAST Regular Season Champs, BIG EAST Tournament Champs, Coach Bruno was named BIG EAST Coach of the Year, and all of the personal accolades for the team! I'm incredibly proud of each and every one of those girls for working hard to achieve their goal of being BIG EAST Champs! I'm a proud alum out here! Good luck and make some noise in the NCAA Tournament!
Another big congrats and good luck to the Rock Bridge Girls Basketball team on making it back to the State Final 4 for the 3rd time in a row and are looking to make it 3 State Championships in a row!
That's all for now- wish us luck this coming weekend in our game against PAOK!
