Almost Halloween

Last week our team had 4 matches in a row...Wedn, Thurs, Fri and Sat.  We finally have a complete team with the addition to our Argentinian player showing up after the World Championships and our new OH replacing our Cuban player Alex.  Our new player is Ryan Owens from the USA...We are def going to need his hitting abilities this season and its nice to have another American around for conversation.

The tournament was more of a training period than a serious situation.  With Rodrigo and Ryan just arriving they were thrown into the mix pretty quick but only for a few sets to get acquainted with the guys and team.  We played each team to the max but only won 1 out of 4.  By the last day everyone was zapped and tired.  Our middle blocker Sergiu from Romania hit a quick set in the 4th set and threw his shoulder completely out of the socket.  Needles to say he is now using a sling to keep his shoulder in place for the next month.  Such a bummer as we start the season this coming monday and we could really use him.  This past monday in training we lost another middle who hit his hand on our second setters elbow while doing warm up blocking and shattered a bone in his right hand.  He's wearing a cast and in a sling as well.  We are down to our last two middles.

Brett and I have our friend Kristin visiting from California for 10 days.  We all decided to buy some pumpkins from the market yesterday and carve them up in celebration of Halloween.  We are going to have a contest over facebook to see who did the best job.  Pretty sure I got this one in the bag though...sorry ladies.

We haven't ventured out of Kalamaria much but are looking to drive down to the center of Thessaloniki in a bit to check it out and grab lunch.  Not looking forward to the traffic but it will be good to be out of the house and make a quick Starbucks stop to get some more ground beans for the house.  I'm addicted to coffee for those of you who didn't know.