Letters from Italy...6. Expect The Unexpected

Well we took our one really sweet trip this weekend to the island of Sardinia where our team gets to stay in a nice resort with a pool and is literally 2 minutes from the beach. The island itself isn’t very big but it is pretty well known and a lot of rich movie stars own land on the seaside. According to some of the girls they even have a night club that is out on a pier and the floor is all glass looking down over the ocean BELLA. We stayed in a city called Budoni which is an hour from the city of Nuoro, which is where the ball team was from. Unfortunately for us it rained the entire time we set foot on the island :( NOT happy with mother nature!! and I found out some funky Italian softball rules. But we were doomed from the very start. Our team usually flies out on Friday so we can go to the beach and have a good nights rest but being Easter Sunday (Happy Easter Everybody or Buona Pasqua Raga) we couldn’t get a flight out till Saturday (we were suppose to play Saturday night) So we arrived, drove to the resort showered ate lunch, and then drove the hour down to the field knowing we weren’t playing (it was storming at this point and the fog was so bad we could barely see driving). But if both teams aren’t present when the umpires show up at the field at game time then your team gets the loss and is fined (basically you forfeit the game with a no show). So we had to drive down to the ball field both Saturday and Sunday for the umpires to tell us it was raining.. I want to be like there is a better way to handle this I swear... But we got up again on Sunday and did the same thing for an expected 9:30 game time. When it finally stopped raining which seemed like a little bit of hope for us to play a game they put the world’s dumbest field crew into the picture. Honest, they asked if they could put gasoline on the field and light it to see if they could dry the dirt faster! :) At this point all I could do was laugh but we sat around till 11:30 at ended up practicing and leaving Sardina with no sunshine. I was pretty bummed we didn’t get any beach time in orrrrrr games. Boo

TRYING to upload a picture but its not working :( . You'll all have to see my new facebook album instead!

Interesting fact: I did find out the team we play this coming weekend, Caserta, is owned by a mob family, bible. They do really good recruiting because they have the best supply of cash for a club team… go figure (Angelica Selden pitches for them). I was just wondering how I would explain this situation; calling home to tell my parents that the club team I play for in a foreign country happens to be owned by the Sicilian mafia, no biggie. asdffhkjshdfkjhs, Whaaat? Crazy!! This information still boogles me every time the Italian girls talk about it. Our Italian pitcher Mara actually played for them last year and apparently their coach is one of the biggest buttholes. Throws things at the players, screams a lot, and uses racial slurs. I wouldn’t last an hour on that team! Not much of mafia girl myself cry way too often.

Anyways we have a team BBQ tomorrow our assistant coach is turning 40!! So as a team we organized some fun drinking games and a nice little feast starting at 2 so I got to go get some sleep tonight so I revive myself for tomorrows activities! Goodnight or Buonanotte. Ciao Ciao. Miss you guys!!

Letters from Italy...5. You Only Live Once...

Ciao, Kiss-Kiss

Well lets see my last weeks plans fell through completely because I was so tired from practice and our ball game that I didn’t end up going anywhere and I got pretty sick. So I can no longer blame Ohio for its horrible weather it ends up its just me; I’m just one big disease... doesn’t matter where I am. But tomorrow I am finally going to Rimini to watch the baseball team play and hopefully get to see my high school buddy who lives there (maybe even meet a super hot stud, and fall in love, just sayin, haha). Super excited lets just hope these plans actually happen!! The traveling to Rimini part I mean.
I started working at the school this week. Where I go and teach softball to the little Italian kids during their P.E. class. It is quite hilarious but definitely a challenge trying to control a bunch of 8 year olds when you can't speak their language. Keep in mind baseball/softball isn’t popular over here. So these kids don’t even know how to play (they didn’t know they had to run after they hit the ball, they're standing 3 feet away from the hitter not understanding they were going to get hit in the face, and were just pegging each other instead of throwing to the actual base-No this is not dodge ball... it was a disaster!) And I found out the boys and girls play on the same team till they’re 13 so the boys are forced to play softball till they are old enough to play baseball, Bizarre. Leah you'll enjoy this story. I had this adorable fat boy come up to me, bow, then proceed to tell me he was Chinese but he could speak English. "Your shirt is blue." (It was red) Haha he was the cutest. They were so funny. And I fell in love with this tiny Italian boy who introduced himself as Francesco. I'll be sure to bring my camera next time and take pictures!
As far as training goes- my pitching practice happens before our actual practice and most of you know I'm not much of a utility player so when I'm not pitching I don't have anything else to do. They put me in right field for like a day and realized that I'm not an outfielder- I'm slow and a poor judge of direction with fly balls. My coach is a very straight-forward honest person so he told me to just go sit down because I looked awful, lol, thanks coach. But I may ask to start hitting! I know kind of crazy after taking 5 years off but at least I wouldn't be completely useless at practice anymore. We shall see.
And not much of an update on the Victoria Secret bod ... I'm still eating like a fat kid :-/ can't help myself, everything taste so good here! But I am super excited that my parents and Leah have both confirmed their trips over hopefully by then my Italian will be fluent and I'll be able to order off the menu for us. Right now I am hopeless when it comes to eating out I can barely manage to get ice cream from the gelato shop next door. Yeeks. Leah see if your new big girl budget allows you to purchase a ticket for Charles (he's about the same weight as a small toddler).
Well I was going to upload a very funny video of my roommates last Friday we had an interesting "girls night". The Americans were teaching the Italians 1. The soldier boy 2. How to dougie and then they decided to show me their Beyonce skills with Single Ladies. It was horrible but quite hilarious. They knew Beyonce but didn’t have a clue what a dougie was. Needless to say the softball girls over here aren’t winning any Jock Jams competitions either! Hopefully I can figure out how to upload the videos because they need to be shared. It would be a youtube sensation I'm sure. Alright check in soon. Hugs & Kisses form Italia!

And 1st Place goes to ........(long pause).........Mara (winner of the single ladies dance off*)

Letters from Italy...4. Baby, It's A Wild World!

Ciao Raga, (In other words hello everyone)

Well I was informed by my dear friend Leah that I am slacking in my blog posting (which just means she is slacking at work, lol, love ya buddy) But anywho we played our first set of home games last Saturday, again went 1-1, should have won our first game but we are making stupid errors. Which I think is typical for beginning of the season play; I really feel like we will do well as long as the starting 9 stays healthy! But other than that life is good in Italia. I experienced my first bit outside of Forli. Which was me and Darcy shopping in Bologna till our legs hurt. Then we sat down for some yummy gelato! I found it to be a very successful day.

Marta (aka George) with my new shades on. Hot mama.

Well I cannot believe I have already been here a month. It's crazy to me! The daytime goes by kind of slow because we have a full day to do whatever we want then practice late at night (starting at 7:30) then we come home make a family dinner, shower, skype (I have met everyone's family via skype), then head to bed. Very busy life I know... which is where I am wondering where all my time has gone, hmmm. And I have freakin access to a gelato shop across the street, ahhhhhh! I've tried my very best to steer clear. We have decided as a house (meaning me, Katrina, & Darcy aka the foreigners) to be sexy and have abs for the summer time. FYI I came here assuming Italians ate a lot of pasta and would be jolly, fat people (Not so much- I meant about the fat part they are jolly. By the way this is not meant to offend the Italians I'm just retarded). It is a mystery to me how everyone here is in the best shape, I am determined to discover their secret!! Nevertheless we have spoken to our trainer, Silvia, to make us a work-out to get us a Victoria Secret bod! I'll be sure to keep you posted on how this attempt to look hot works out. Plan B would be to just go get the abs tattooed on us. Yikes. I was told Rimini is the beach we go to and it is the equivalent to being in Miami in the U.S.-should be interesting. But they apparently have a national beach day which is the first day you can go, not really sure when that is though, need to look into that...

Andrea preparing a healthy dinner for our Victoria Secret diet...

Drea is the mom of the house; she tells me and Darcy when we are being stupid Americans and doing things wrong which is often then teaches us the proper Italian way- like making coffee, and opening a box of milk (we are hopeless individuals in this place)

Planning a trip to Rimini this Thursday to visit Andrea's boyfriend (he plays baseball there) and going home with her Sunday to experience some real homemade Italian food. Needless to say, I am super excited. AAND we play Leganno this weekend and my old friend Sam is suppose to be playing for them. So it looks like a good week ahead! So no worries Leah I am sure a new blog will be posted to tell you all about this coming weeks adventures.

Miss you all <3 KY