Cold enough for an Ice Princess.

These past two weeks have been blurred together as one fast tracked movie. We faced off against Eura, a team we beat in the Liiga Cup (Finnish Cup), but this time lost in 4. After the somewhat disappointing match, we traveled to Salo for a Cup game against the top team in the league. We would stay with them in the beginning of the first two sets but then they would pull away and win. We forgot who we were in the 3rd set and lost 8-25. Following another loss, we had to redeem ourselves with the weekends up coming league match against Kangasala. I learned that my team had lost to them in the beginning of the season and to add it was also the match that our starting setter was taken out with a knee injury. So needless to say it was time for a little pay back not just for us but for Outi our injured setter. We knew that they weren't a very strong passing team so our game plan was to go after them at the service line, also to put pressure on them through blocking and defense. You can be a great attacker and server but when it comes down to it, I believe defense wins match's. We ended the match in 3 sets winning nicely. During the last set I was looking across the net at one of the girls on the Kangasala team, I remembered her from somewhere but couldn't quite put my finger on it. I turned to one of my teammates and told her that I knew her, she looked so familiar to me, like I had played her in high school. After the match I decided to ask her where she was from. I knocked on their locker room door and when I saw her I immediately asked "where do I know you from?" and she responded "I played at Redondo Beach High School!" I was shocked and relieved that my assumptions were right on. I was instantly happy to have another fellow South Bay beach chick here with me in Finland. While we spoke she told me she had just graduated from UCSB, so I asked her if she knew a couple guy vballers as well who were playing in Austria. She then shocked me some more saying that she did and was going to visit them for New Years! Amazing! I proceeded to tell my teammates that she was in fact from my high school league and we had played against one another even though she was about 3 years younger then me. It was great to see/meet her again, hopefully I will have a chance to go visit her area of Finland.

Now for the explanation of the title of this entry. While I was walking to our game Saturday night, I made it a point to layer up as well as I could. Unfortunately I forgot to layer up my legs, only dressing in my thick warm up pants and to wrap a scarf around my head. It took about 5 minutes for my legs and lower half of my face to feel completely frozen. When I got to the gym some of the girls asked if I was ok, seeing that my face was frozen into a frown, I told them that the cold was just bumming me out. They told me, unfortunately this wasn't the worst and it had yet to come. Fabulous. It only gets bad when you have to walk for a while or when you can't leave your apartment. With all the bad things that come with cold weather, there are plenty of good things. For the first time in my life, I woke up one morning to see that every tree had frost on its branches, making their colors turn from grey and brown, to a pure white. The other day the sun decided to show making these branches stand out against the blue blue sky. I decided to lug my camera around with me on my way to practice that morning, taking shots of all the nature that was frozen in place.


Almost every morning I try to wake up more by standing on my balcony and taking a bunch of deep breaths. The air smells so clean and the scent of the snow makes me feel like Im at a ski resort. Oddly enough there is a small one a couple clicks down the road from here. I saw something rather odd the other day on my way to the store. Many people in this town have what looks like a sled with a chair on the front. Almost like a small dog sled. They ride them around everywhere, sometimes with a small child sitting on the chair, sometimes they ride solo. I have decided that I need to invest in one of those, I have been close to slipping and falling far to many times to count....Finland doesn't take it easy on clumsy people like myself.





So to sum up, we lost one and we won one, Finland is freezing, I reunited with an old playful rivalry, and now we have two full weekends off. Definitely going to try and get out of this town and to a bigger city to do some shopping and some socializing. Thanksgiving is this week, I think some of the Americans and I will try to put something together. Less than a month until I go back to Sweden, I can't say how excited I am to go back for the 2 weeks we have off. It will definitely rejuvenate me for the last 4 months of the season. Enjoy the pictures!