Road Trip....

We went on the road to play the #1 seeded team in our conference this weekend...and got smoked. It was bad, we lost by maybe 20 or 22 points. I can't even blame this game on the refs, we just played terribly. I had 18 points and 11 rebounds, one other person had 10 points and nobody else more than 6. With the loss we are now 3 games behind the top team...with 7 to play. Hopefully we can turn it around and still get good position for the playoffs.

On the plus side, did get to see another Turkish city. The city we were in is called Edirne. It is one of the westernmost cities in Turkey. It's very close to the borders with Bulgaria and Greece. For the most part Edirne wasn't that interesting. But it did have one major historical sight, Selimiye Mosque, that was pretty cool.

Basically it's a giant mosque built in 1575. It was pretty cool, we got to check it out late at night just before it closed. It was my first experience inside a mosque, it was very impressive inside. Much more interesting than the historical and cultural value of this mosque is the fact that when they built the mosque they, for some reason, had nothing to use for grout. However that did not deter the Turks, they had a solution for their problem: egg whites. All the grout for this really, really big mosque are egg whites. Crazy!


I would post more pictures but blogspot (the website I'm using) is terrible for adding photos, they mess up the text and it's just a pain in the butt. So that's all for now.

My current residence

Here is the link for the hotel that I am staying in. It will be my home for the next 2-3 months. Meh.

It's in Turkish, but there is an American flag that if you click it the text changes to English.

After practice icing...

So the day after I arrived here the ice machine at our facility died. That's how our trainer, with his limited English, explained it to me at least. For the last two weeks I haven't been able to ice after practice, which sucks.

Today during practice the big guys were working on post moves while the guards got perimeter shots up. There was no defense, it was just some practice time on fundamentals. We start doing a spin move in the post, and I'm just sort of on auto-pilot during this drill. It's really monotonous. Anyway, I get the ball in the post and spin toward the hoop and run straight into a wing player running under the basket. I still have no idea where he was running. Anyway, I never saw him coming and those are always the worst hits. I was pretty lucky, just strained my neck a little. Anyway this isn't the point of the story.

The point of the story is that I was able to ice my neck after practice! I asked if I could have ice (more like said, "ice?") after practice and the trainer nodded and went over to a cooler. I walked next to him, excited that I would be able to finally ice. He opened the cooler, and what was inside?

SNOW.

Apparently he went outside during the practice and grabbed some fresh snow and put it in the cooler for us to ice with after practice. So yeah, I iced my neck with snow today. Obviously this idea was straight genius, but it took me by surprise when he opened the cooler. I actually burst out laughing, it was absurd.

Oh yeah, it's been snowing here. It is supposed to stop, which, thank god cause all I have are some nikes that are not handling the snow well at all. Apparently this is the coldest weather Istanbul has gotten in the past 50 years. Just my luck!

For Alisa

What do you think about the iPhone now???

One win, One loss

So we had another game on Saturday. Since I'm not really in the mood to write something suspenseful I'll just tell you we lost by 3. It sucked, it was a home game against a team we were tied for second place with. We are now 9-5, in third place. There are 12 teams, the top 8 make the playoffs. So we're looking alright, but a win would have been nice.

It has been snowing here like crazy. Apparently this is the coldest it's been in Istanbul in the last 50 years. You can tell people aren't prepared for snow when they are wiping off their cars with tshirts and sweeping the streets with wicker brooms. Seriously their brooms look EXACTLY like a witch's broom. It's too cool. But yeah the snow has sucked for me cause it causes more traffic, which increases my commute. Lame.

So two funny things happened before our game on Saturday. The first was a couple of my teammates were drinking coffee, and they offered me some. This is like, 30 minutes before tip-off. I politely decline and they couldn't believe it. I told them I've never seen anyone drink coffee right before a game, I mean, not only will it dehydrate you but it will leave you crashing somewhere in the second half, when you need your energy the most. They disagreed and told me drinking coffee and smoking before games is a Turkish tradition.

The second funny thing was after the game I was standing by the door, zipping up my jacket and getting ready to go out in the cold. One of my teammates walks up and asks me if it's my first time. The look on my face cleared up any confusion he had (he thought) and he said, "Is it your first time seeing snow?" I had to conceal my laughter and say I had seen it before. I mean, I know not everyone knows a whole lot about America...but it's not like we're on the Equator...or in Africa. Funny.

Another thing that weirds me out about Turkey is the large number of wild dogs. While I haven't asked them if they are wild, they have to be because I see them everywhere, unaccompanied by anyone. I see them going in and out of abandoned buildings, and with all the snow, I see them walking around covered in snow. How are there so many wild dogs here? Don't they have a pound or something? Do wild dogs ever attack people? I mean, say they aren't hungry enough, what would they do? I've seen them running around in packs of up to 6. There are not a lot of people who, without a weapon, could fight off 6 wild dogs.

Before anyone asks, no I haven't had an opportunity to go see anything historical. We only have one off-day per week, and it happens to coincide with the one day per week that the Grand Bazaar is shut down. So that sucks. What also sucks is the snow that is covering the city makes it much less appealing to go outside and explore. So yeah...haven't seen much except every square inch of the walls of my hotel room. Exciting.

Ummm...guess that's it for now...

I'll be putting pictures up later, when I get the time to actually take some.

Soooo...updates......

So a couple people (alright, nobody) asked me if I was going to continue blogging while I was overseas as a means to keep all my friends and family in the loop on things (or pass time between practices). So let's get on with a quick update shall we?

After finishing my season in Japan, I returned home to Seattle for the summer. All in all it was a great summer, blah blah etc etc. I entered the NBA Development League Draft and was fortunate enough to get picked by the Springfield Armor. This was quite fortuitous because both my girlfriend's family and one of my best friends live near Boston.

Anyway, I went to training camp and played well, and probably should have made the team. But I got hurt and got sent home. About ten days later I was called back, the team wanted me to come back cause they realized after their 0-4 (with four blowout losses) start that they may have made some errors somewhere along the way. Feeling vindicated, I returned to Springfield.

Unfortunately things did not go well. At first I was playing good minutes, but my minutes went down as the season went on. Then on December 31st I got the news that I'd been cut. It sounds worse than it was, the team was losing all the games and I wasn't playing. Not like I was having a lot of fun there. Add in the fact that I spent December 24-29 stuck in Sioux Falls (if I didn't put the state would you know which one it was in????), South Dakota and I was more than ready to get out of there.

So I shacked up with my girlfriend's mom and sister for ten days. Oh and Alisa (gf) was there too. In that period of ten days I was contacted by an agent on facebook. He said if I was interested he could get me a job in Turkey. I said yes, and two days later I had a plane ticket to Istanbul bought for me by a Turkish man I met on the internet. So I flew to Istanbul knowing only two things. My agent's name anda the name of the team I was trying out for. I didn't know who was picking me up at the airport, what hotel I was staying at, or anything else that people generally tend to take care of when they fly halfway across the planet. This is not a joke or even a slight fabrication of events.

After getting here I had a whole day to orient myself before the tryout began. Making the transition tougher was the fact that I am the only American. But the tryouts went well, they offered me a contract on the second day of a three day tryout. Obviously I took the offer.

Our first game was today, and coincidentally it was an away game with the other team I was supposed to try out for. We ended up winning the game, 65-60. It was a little bit ugly but it's a win. I didn't play well for my standards, but the team and coaches liked my production so that's good. I ended up with 10 points, 11 rebounds and two steals.

Our next game is on Friday at home. Apparently we have a tough slate of games coming up or something. I could be totally wrong about that, only about 20% of what coach says gets translated for me.

Alright well it's late. I'll put another post up later in the week describing my initial impressions of Turkey.