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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

It's not my fault

I was doing so good about blogging but then my beautiful MacBook decided to die on me. I would get this annoying blue screen that would just ring every 2 seconds. It would never power up. Needless to say, it has been a rough couple of weeks with my only form of communication to the world being broken. I do have a Kindle (which has been GREAT) and I can connect to my email and facebook but that's about it. I haven't really been able to talk to my family in a few weeks which has been rough. But I am trying to take advantage of all of this ALONE time... my favorite thing if anyone knows me. But it has been really great for solitude with the Lord. My sister is coming to visit on February 19th for a week and she is bringing me a new computer, MacBookPro! Yahh!! She flys into Paris and then will figure out the train system in Europe and immediately hop on a train to Calais, France. We have a game in Calais that night. Calais is in the northwest of France and it is actually the city where you can jump on the chunnel to England. She will stay in Calais at the same hotel as us and then she has the same itinerary on the way back to Nantes with us. She will be in Nantes all week and then we have a free weekend the second weekend she is here so we are planning on venturing to Paris for a few days before she flys out.

Here's what's been going on with me:
  • We played against Venelles 2 weekends ago and we won 3-0. In case I haven't explained the scoring system for our league, I will do so now becase it is important. For every match there are 3 points up for grabs. If you win in 3 or 4 sets, you get all three points. If you win in 5 you get 2 points and the losing team gets 1 point. The rankings for the league are all based on number of points, so it is really important to win matches in 3 or 4 sets. The first half of the season, we won a lot of matches but they were all in 5 except for 1. So even though our record may have looked good we were missing out on a lot of points if we could have won matches in 3 or 4. Currently we are in 6th place out of 12 teams which is where we should be. I think we should finish the season in 5th place, but the coaches think that 6th or 7th place is more realistic. After the double round robin (we are in the second half) we have the play-offs. The top 4 teams go into a bracket and the 5th-8th teams go into a bracket. Then the top bracket competes for 1st-4th place while the second bracket fights for 5th-8th place. Hopefully all of that makes sense!
  • We celebrated King's Cake. In France they bake this special cake and they put a figurine in it. Then everyone takes a slice and while you are eating if you have the figurine, you are the "King" or "Queen" and you get to wear a crown. I think that if you win, you have to make the cake for the next year haha. I did not win :(
  • We went to this really really long awards ceremony where we were nominated for Professional Team of the Year in the Nantes region. We did not win :(
  • We have American family night every Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday's we have dinner together and watch Modern Family and on Thursday's we get together and watch Glee. It has been really fun and it breaks up the week a little bit.
  • This past weekend, we had a free weekend so us American's decided to venture to Normandy to see the D-day beaches. It was a 3 hour drive from Nantes and yes Bertha (the car) did make it! We went to Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, and Juno Beach. At Omaha Beach, 34, 250 Americans landed there on D-Day and there were 3,600 casualties. Gold Beach was where the 24,970 British landed and there were 1,050 casualties. At Juno Beach, 21,500 Canadians landed there and there were 1,270 casualties. We also saw the edges of the other 2 beaches, Utah and Sword Beach. Utah was an American Beach and Sword Beach was a British and French Beach. We also visited the American Cemetary which was really crazy. There are rows and rows of white crosses at the cemetary. There are 9, 387 Americans buried in the cemetary. Seeing those crosses made me realize the impact of the war and it was really moving. Most soldiers on D-Day knew that they were going to die as they paved the way for the others. Hard stuff. We also saw Arromanches which is near Gold beach. The allies brought over huge concrete slabs and dropped them in the ocean before D-Day in order to help calm the waters for the ships. The concrete slabs are still there. We also went to Point du Hoc which was by far the most astonishing. There were tons of Nazi bunkers up on this hill with huge cannons. The American Army Rangers scaled this 100 meter high cliff to somehow take out this area. Pointe du Hoc is definitely one of the places where you know that war took place. The beaches are just beaches. But at Pointe Du Hoc there are huge huge holes in the ground everywhere from bombs being dropped. It is really crazy. Many of the bunkers are still in tact and others were completely destroyed. I learned so much this weekend and it makes me wish I would have paid more attention in history class. We also went to Caen which was a city that the allies conquered about 3 months after D-Day which really paved the way to advance to Paris and Germany. You can click here http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/ for some more information. We also watched Saving Private Ryan while we were in Normandy. It details the story of Niland brothers and 3 of the 4 are buried in the American Cemetary. It was really cool to see the movie after visiting the cemetary and the beaches because they did a really really good job of keeping it authentic.
  • We play in the south of France this weekend against St. Raphael. It should be a good match!

I hope everyone is doing well. I will try to continue to update but who knows when I will be able to borrow a computer next! Have a great rest of the week. Hopefuly I can post pictures soon!