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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Last Day with my Kiddos!


Last night I had my last night of "Baby Volley." I have helped coach a group of 9-11 year olds every Wednesday all season. I LOVE THESE KIDS! I always looked forward to Wednesday's so that I could see them. We had a blast even though I could barely communicate with them. I used my limited French and when it made sense in my head, I would still get confused looks from them. I tried and it was sad that I could never really talk to them. O but we tried our hardest every single week. Some of the girls would come up to me and start telling me a story and it saddened me to tell them "Je ne comprends pas." These kids really have a special place in my heart and I am really going to miss them greatly.

So on our last night together I bought 3 big chocolate bunnies. I also brought 2 of my t-shirts from the club and a pair of sweats that I won't be able to fit in my bag on the way home. We had competitions. The first was for a chocolate bunny. They each had a ball and they had to pass-pass-set-set to themselves in that order. If they messed up the order of the ball fell, they had to sit down. The last one standing won! It was a long competition and in the middle the last 3 boys could not be stopped. So we changed it to pass-pass-pass-set-set-set and then even to pass 4 times then set 4 times. After about 5 minutes we had our winner!

The second competition was a serving competition. We had a boys side and a girls side. There would be a boy winner and a girl winner and each would win a chocolate bunny. They were in a line and they had to serve the ball in the court. If they made it in, they came back to the end of the line. If they missed their serve, they were out. This was intense!! I'm telling you, kids will do anything for candy.

Our last competition was for my clothes. We layed them on the court and then it was a free for all. If they served the ball and it hit the clothing, they got to keep it! I didn't really think this would be devastating for some of them. One of my girls was so upset that she didn't win my t-shirt. She wanted it so badly. It broke my heart and she was in tears. But I gave her a pep-talk (kind of) and tried to motivate her to beat the boys at the end of practice! And she did!

These kids have been such a blessing to me in my time in France. They brought me so much joy and they really made me feel loved so much. They brought me gifts for my birthday and drew me pictures and wanted to have pictures taken of me! It is going to be harder to leave Nantes than I thought...


Me and all the kiddos!

Me and the boys. Pierre-Lupe was proud to win those pants!

Me and my girlies! I miss them already. Cici, Kenza, Liza, Audrey, Chloe, Clementine, Lona, and Juliette.

Clement, one of the boys, got me this beautiful bouquet of flowers. How sweet!


Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Last Week of My Life

Last Saturday, we had our last regular season match. We played against Istres (the 4th place team). No one thought we could win... the fans, the club, the players, our coaches. But I did and maybe one other player on our team. We ended up shocking everyone in the first 2 sets. We won 25-23 and 25-19. We lost the 3rd 26-28 and lost the 4th 23-25. We ended up losing the match in 5 11-15. We had to win the match to make it to playoffs. We had our chances and we played really well as a team, but we just couldn't get it done. It was a bummer but I really enjoyed playing in the match. It was also bitter sweet for me because that was the last match of my career. I take this moment to announce my retirement from playing volleyball. Haha. I always wanted to say that. Around February, while I was processing what the next year of my life would look like, I really felt God was leading me away from playing and into coaching. I prayed a lot about this and I definitely felt confirmation of this. So the next chapter of my life is college coaching. I am really excited for what the future holds and where the Lord will take me with this, but I just want to say "Yes Lord" wherever that may be.

As I was processing through my last match, I really started to look back over my whole playing career. I started officially when I was in 4th grade, even though I was playing with my family in the backyard and at my sister's volleyball practices way before then. In 4th grade, I remember one match where I served the entire match 15-0 (side-out scoring). In 8th grade we won the city championship as a super small school and got to shave my dad's head. It was hard leaving my grade school teammates and friends going into high school to start new. But we won 3 sectional championships while in high school. My sophomore year, I started playing club seriously. My senior year high school season we played in Regional's and almost stunned Muncie Burris who had won a million state championships in a row. We lost in the 5th 15-11 after being up 11-9. Yes I remember this and still have dreams about it. My 18's year of club, I was forever changed as I had the opportunity to play for Mike Lingenfelter at Munciana. I will forever be a Samurai. Then I started on my adventure at UK. I loved EVERY second of it. My athleticism was trained and I developed into a volleyball player and a setter through lots and lots of reps. I got stronger, faster, and more fit thanks to Coach Tracey. I learned how to get neutral, get my feet to the ball, and how to finish my set from Robby. I learned how to block aggressively and how to play Grandma defensive from Beerman. And I learned how to lead a team, run an offensive, and how to trust my abilities and just play from Skinner. I had an amazing experience and will never forget a single second of it... well I may forget the 2 sets of 7 minute wall sits with medicine balls because girls were missing class and tutors. I love UK and I will always bleed blue through and through. As I finished my career in the states, I knew I wanted to keep playing and I decided on Nantes Volley Feminin here in France. I learned a lot about playing at the international level. I was definitely thrown into a new environment. The food, language, driving, comforts, and volleyball were all different. But I learned some life lessons while I was here and I met some truly great people that I will be very sad to say goodbye too. As I look back, I realize how much God has blessed me. He has given me so much more than I could ever ask for or come up with on my own. He gave me a passion for the sport of volleyball, and he followed that up with playing abilities so that I could carry out all of my dreams. I have had the most wonderful experiences as a volleyball athlete and I thank God for everyone of those experiences. I also see how God has used the sport of volleyball to draw me closer to Him through relationships I have built, places He has taken me, lessons I have learned, disappointments and successes, and I stand in awe of his love for me. I have truly been blessed.

Well, I'm just getting started with this blog post so bear with me. Saturday after the match, since we didn't make it to play-offs, the informed us that we didn't have practice until Thursday. I still don't understand the whole practicing when you don't have any matches left, but they are paying me to be here and it's just part of it. I have to stay until May 6 because we have sponsor events. Anyway, when I heard that we had a huge break, I got home and started searching places to travel to. Nicole and I decided we would head to Athens, Greece. WHAT? Greece was always some place that I always dreamed of going but I never thought I would ever travel there. So Sunday, we took the train to Paris, slept in the airport Sunday night (or tried... that's a whole blog post in itself), showered in the sink at 4am Monday, hoped on our EasyJet flight at 6 (which wasn't so easy... once again, a whole blog post for that story) and arrived in Greece at 10. Happy Birthday to Me! I turned 23 on Monday in Greece. We spent the day walking around the Plaka and doing a little shopping and really just getting familiar with the city! It was a relaxing day but so much fun. We had greek salad and lamb and other really great Greek food. We went to Hard Rock Cafe for a birthday dessert because I really wanted chocolate cake or something of the like. So we split a Brownie Ice Cream Sundae thingy. Yumm. I can't believe I am 23.

Tuesday we woke up, I had some greek yogurt (yumm) and we took one of the bus tours. You could hop off and hop back on any time you wanted. We first went to the Acropolis Museum. Then we went to the Acropolis itself. It was really really cool to see. The whole city of Athens is pretty much built on old ruins. So everywhere you look, there are random ruins from something 2000 years ago. Then we had lunch in the Plaka (gyro and greek salad). We then went to the Temple of Zeus, then jumped on the bus that took us to the port Piraeus. It is the biggest port in Europe and it was pretty to see the coast. Then we took the bus to the Archaeological Museum. We got there around 3:30 and it was closed. WHAT?? It closes at 3pm everyday. What kind of famous museum does that? We were pretty bummed because Nicole and I both like stuff like that. So we grabbed some coffee from Costa coffee and bought some Greek Sandals.

We then headed to dinner for our last night in Greece. :( Dinner was unbelievable. We went to this restaurant with a view of the Acropolis and the Ancient Agora. It was beautiful. We sat outside and just took in the view. We ordered Lamb Soulvaki, a meat combo dish and of course Greek Salad. Delish. Then we went to a different place and got Baklava! So so good! Then we headed back to the hotel to prepare to leave the next morning. Ok so I LOVE LOVE LOVE Greece. I really want to go back some day. I think I want to go to Santorini for my honeymoon. Hopefully my future husband is down with this! I love Greek Salad. I loved Greek salad from the states and I order it everytime I go to Panera, so I was in heaven eating actual real life Greek Salad!! :) I'm kind of addicted I think.

So here was our schedule Wednesday. We walked to the metro in Greece (15 mins). We took the metro to the airport (45 mins). Flew from Athens to Paris (4 hours). Took a special train from the airport to the metro in Paris (10 mins). Took the metro to the train station (30 mins). Took the train from Paris to Nantes (2 hours). Took the tram from the train station to our stop (20 mins). Walked to our apartment (15 mins). LONG DAY! So worth it though. I had a blast in Greece!

Thursday I made fruit pizza for my team to celebrate my birthday at practice. Friday I went to the center to walk and shop a little. Saturday we went to the market in Nantes and I went to the Park. And today we went to La Baule (the beach). It has been a great week!

Next weekend, I am going to Prague to meet my friend Liz for Easter. She is STINTing with AIA in Berlin and we are meeting up in Prague. The weekend after Easter is still up in the air (talks of possibly Milan with Nicole). My dad arrives here May 3. We are going to London May 7-9. We are going to Barcelona May 10-12, and Rome May 12-14. We fly out of Paris on May 15 and I will be back in the good Ole US of A!!!

Ok that was the world's longest blog post ever. Hope you didn't get bored. I'm hungry so I am going to go make myself one of these!! Yes the first thing I did upon returning to Nantes was buy feta cheese at the grocery store :)

Please be praying for wisdom for me as I am processing through and starting to make decisions about my coaching future! Thanks!! Also, my cousin Kelly had her triplets at 26 weeks 3 weeks ago. Please pray for their family and especially Ella, Luke and Wilson.