1 down 5 to go.....

The day after the beating we took at Gydnia coach informed us at practice that we have 6 games left before Christmas and if we win all 6 we can stay at home longer! Instead of coming back on the 27th I could come back on the 1st. This is his way of motivation and it has worked for me I am ready to go I wish all the games were in a row to take away the suspense. 4 of the games are Belgium league games so we should be able ot handle them all two are euroleage and we can beat these teams but it will be pretty hard! The first euroleague game is Wednesday in France so hopefully it all turns out great!

I went to my first Christmas market today in Brussels. Apparently the Christmas market in Brussels is one of the best because of its size and quality. I wasn't sure what to expect but this did blow my mind... it was so neat! In Belgium you can have some players on your team that play on lower division teams and one the girls that plays with us sometimes lives in Brussels with her boyfriend so she met us in Brussels and showed us around. This was really helpful as we avoided getting lost! My other teamate Jen and I were in the car together and parking has never been one of my strong points well we had to parallel park this I realy don't do well so after 5 failed attempts and the car perched up on the curb I got out adn let Jen have a go at it... first try I was mildly embarassed! The market stretched out over a few blocks and was broken into three main parts a lot of it is little crafts that people make, food, and of course beer. There were full on bars in this market I will post some pics later but people were walking around drinking shots, full bottles of beer, so funny! I had my first sample of hot wine pretty good I guess they add a different liquor as well as the wine there is a hint of apple cider taste in it but better than apple cider for sure. I also sampled my first hot beer. This sounds a little nasty but I figured if anybody knows about hot beer it would be teh Belgians as I never really liked the taste of beer but Belgian beer doesn't taste like beer so much better. The hot beer had lemon, cinnamon, and apples in it it was also pretty good I was surprised. I bought some beer I am thinking about trying to bring it home in my suitcase underneath... any suggestions and how much beer can I bring back into Canada? I finally saw the Grand Place in Brussels it was part of hte market it had a bunch of lights up it was really pretty and it also had a big manger display with live sheep! Emilie (teamate from Brussels) said htey normally have a live donkey as well.
Emilie was telling us the legend behing the famous pis mannekin (little boy peeing statue) apparently during the war the building caught on fire and legend has it that this little boy peed on the fire and saved the building thus the statue and postcards, bottle openers, shirts of him. We ate at the the Greek market and then headed out for a white chocolate covered waffle... so good I can't even put into the words the taste of these waffles. I also tried my first chestnuts roasting over an open fire (just like the song) however they were the one food of the day I would never eat again or recommend.

Emilie had a game in town so we checked out a bit of her game and then contemplated a movie but there wasn't really anything good playing (movies here are way behind) the choices were Georiga Rule, Beowulf, Mr. Brooks and a few others nothing striking us so we headed home... mighty proud that we didn't get lost once over hte course of the day!

Game two tomorrow.... Go Dexia!