Carnival!

This past week it was Carnival here in Cyprus. It's similar to Halloween back home in that everyone dresses up in a costume. Our coach told us a lot of the guys will be dressed as women and he sure was right. There were a lot of times that I was not sure if it was a girl or a guy. The day of carnival fell on Valentine's Day, which was when Jackie and I decided to go on a date with a couple of American basketball players (Trent and Brandon) that play for our club team. We called it our "I love America" date and decided to go to an All-American place TGI-Fridays. It was pretty fun and nice to talk to other Americans. After dinner we decided to check out the crazy Cypriots all dressed up in downtown Larnaca. We saw a lot of things including a baby goat, a crazy Lebanese guy, many guys dressed in drag of course, a giant butterfly, the band KISS, and the Taliban. It was very entertaining to say the least and we took a lot of good pictures.

Me shooting up the Taliban.

Jackie, Brandon, Trent, and I on our "I Love America" date.

The next morning we had practice which was pretty difficult due to our late night. Practice was surprising since we only had 6 players and two of us can't even play in the matches. Oh well, the team won on Tuesday against the second to last place team. The match on Tuesday concluded the regular season so now up ahead are the cup championships and the league playoffs. The postseason here is a little different so I will try to explain it. There are the cup championships which the first round has already been played. It is like a bracket in that when you lose you are done. The top four teams in the league have all won so we are still in the cup. We have to play the second place team AEL two times, once at home and once at their place. Its basically the best of ten games so whoever has the most sets out of those two matches wins and moves on to the next round. So next Tuesday and Friday we play those matches.

Now for the league playoffs, this is really weird. So the top four teams play each other and the bottom four play each other. It goes all by points that have also been accumulated through out the league. Because we are the fourth place team we have no shot and winning the title because even if we win all our games the best we can do is fourth place. The way it is set up is so that there are to surprises for who wins the league playoffs. So the best we can do is shake up the top three teams and hope for third if we win all of our matches and they lose all of their matches. So it will be interesting to see what happens.

Some exciting news is that I just booked a trip to Athens, Greece in April. I am going by myself because Jackie has already been there and I found some cheap tickets. I may possibly meet up with Sherisa Livingston who used to play for the Badgers as she is playing on a professional team in Athens. Hopefully her team is still in the playoffs and she will still be there. Jackie and I are also thinking about taking a trip to Egypt to check out the pyramids. I have a few things to look forward to and see while I am here in Cyprus.

The weather is starting to warm up here, it was about 70 today and sunny. We went to the beach and went swimming. I am hoping for many more days as today. Well I think that is all for now. Stay warm and talk to you soon!