Germany Blog Entry 2

It's that time again. Sometimes I really don't feel like writing a blog and when I told this to EJ through gchat she completely understood and told me to wait until I feel like it. I don't completely feel like it right now but if I don't write now then my news will be old, lost and never told.

So with that being said, yesterday on May 1 I played in my first club match for Blankenese. I realize I misspelled that in the last entry. We showed up for the match at about 8:20 and I (playing number 2) and number 4 and number 6 played our singles match at 9:00. I dominated my opponent 6-0, 6-0 and really enjoyed dropshotting her even though I kind of felt bad. Oh well, not bad enough to stop! She, along with most Germany girl, toss the ball like 10-15 feet in the air. I just kind of stand there and wait until it is freefalling back into her racquet to really get ready. She really was very bad and should have played like 6 for them, Claudia didn't understand why she played 2 either. Oh well, a win for me and my first match on the clay finished. After my match I watched the other girls finish their matches and THEN the next three went on...It is part of their system to have long and drawn out matches. They had extra courts but it's just what they do so I don't even ask. At the end of the singles matches the match score was tied 3-3, so we had to win 2 out of the 3 doubles matches for a team victory. Considering Claudia had told me that we should easily dispose of this team we all knew it would be bad to lose to them, esp. with the first match of 'the season.' (the season is beg. of May to end of June) Claudia and I won our dbs and our number 3 team won as well which meant we pulled out a victory! Yay!

After that I was really tired from spending an entire afternoon at the courts to play about 1.5 hrs of so of tennis. It was, however, an absolutely beautiful day of sunshine and cool fresh air so I couldn't complain about being outside. After the match Claudi and I scampered inside to take a shower and she remarked that we were the first ones is...a good thing. I took my clothes, towels, etc. into the shower area and my eyes bugged out when I saw my fear was a reality: community showers. I asked Claudia about this and she said, 'We are all God's creation...' and I was thinking, 'Yea, guys take showers together but not girls where I come from!' Anyway, I took a shower as fast as possible and couldn't believe that the team we had just beated was in our 'locker room' talking to my team...This thing is very social. After all this, we went upstairs to the restaurant at the club and had a meal. Once again, our opponents joined us and everyone pretty much spoke German to eachother except when Claudia announced that I wasn't used to taking showers in the vicinity of other girls. We had a great dinner but I really wished I could have used my phone to text people or something because I just couldn't understand a thing. I wonder how long it would take me to pick up on a few words or phrases when they are speaking. Hmm...we'll see by the end of the month if there is any progress.

Tonight is Friday and tomorrow we are going to a city an hour north to some Christian convention. I am really excited about it. We are taking three other people from her church and will also be meeting up with her sister. They have workshops in English ( :) ) so that will be great. We will all be coming back tomorrow night.

Thanks!