Yes, I'm still alive and kicking over here. We'll just head straight into updates. We finished league undefeated and made it a perfect season. Since then, we have been training and waiting to find out when we will play to try and move up divisions. The results are in! We will play this weekend and next weekend. We will play against Hofheim, both at home and at their place. They are one of the tops teams in the other league, so we will face off and winner gets to move up, the other stays. So, that's exciting and I can't wait to play! Love big time games! I'm just so ready to play against another team and once again play with my teammates. Yes, training is fun and all, but any true athlete and competitor can tell you about the joy of competing with your team and beating up on another team =).
More fun and exciting news..I will be coming home soon! Now that we have the dates of our games, we were able to schedule me flight home. I will be flying back to the states May 12. I'm so excited to see my family and friends. It feels like I have been over here for a while, and as much fun as I am having here, I'm ready to be home. Although daily skype calls with my dad and weekend skype calls with the rest of my family and friends are great, I can't wait for the big hugs and smiles =).
I haven't only just been training over here. I'm still taking the time to enjoy my surroundings and the fact that I'm still in Germany =). With the great weather that is spring upon us, my host sister, Aliki, and I went to visit Schwetzingen. Here was a castle and the castle's garden. Here are Aliki and I, but I would also like to point out that it took us like 5 times to take this picture:
Ok, so this was a little waterfall/fountain thing that we thought would be a cute little picture. At some points of the trip it got really hot and I really wanted to jump in. Only problem was that it didn't look to clean..
Here is a shot from where I was standing in the previous pictures. This garden, wasn't your typical garden. One picture doesn't do it justice. This picture is only a small part of the elaborate collection of random paths, fountains, bridges, gardens, mini lakes, trees, open grass, and much more..There were even ducks and swans swimming about in the lakes. We ended up going on a perfect day, the sun was shining, at times a little bit of a breeze. We took our books and found a place by one of the lakes to lay in the sun and read. After about 2 hours of sun and reading, a man came by on a bike and said that it we weren't allowed to sit and hang out there. We both thought it was silly that there was no hanging out there, but we had gotten our time in so all we could do was smile and leave.
On the property, there was a bath house. In order to walk through it, we had to wear these stylish shoe/slipper things. We couldn't stop laughing once we got in. They may look easy to walk in, but these little suckers were so hard to move around in. And, of course, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the bath house, but it was the coolest thing. In the actual "bath" room, it was basically a room with a mini pool, known as the bath. As we walked around, we both couldn't help but wonder how silly it was to have a bath house. One seperate house just for when you felt like cleaning yourself. In this house was the bathing room, a seperate room that had a bed in it, in case you got super tired after your bath. There was another room that looked to be the room you would go in to check yourself out and make sure you cleaned all the cracks and crevices, since there were several full length mirrors.
In the end, Schwetzingen was a great little day trip. I can sit here and try and put together some words and sentences to try and give you a mental picture of what was there, but I don't think I could ever describe the beauty of it all. Not even pictures could capture how big it was and how great a view it was. So, when all of you eventually make your way out to Germany, may I recommend Schwetzingen =). And of course, I would love to be your personal tour guide =)
Ciao Ciao,
Serena
