The sun is always shining somewhere!!

If that is true, it has been far away from Santiago the past week...  I'm trying to start to appreciate the wet weather, but I found myself missing the snow at home in Norway instead. Pouring rain can be depressing and when it's combined with a long bus ride home from a 7 point loss against the league-leader, the best thing is to curl up under a blanket with some music and try to get some sleep. Buut, that's not always easy for a frustrated mind. The game went by so fast compared to what I usually feel. It was a close game until we all of a sudden were down by about 10 points with 5 minutes to go. Before that we had a few runs to take the lead ourselves and I really thought it was, like coach said "nuestro partido", but Zamora is a team that knows how to make important shots and wouldn't let us pull away. A lot of those shots were after grabbing offensive rebounds which was what hurt us the most throughout the whole game. This is frustrating enough if you're in the game, but even worse when you're on the sideline watching most of the time... I have to rewind one week to tell the whole story. 

Since August I've been having some problems with my feet that with physiotherapy have been a non-issue up until a couple of weeks back when the plantar fasciitis in my left foot got really bad. I know a ton of people experience or have experienced this extremely painful condition that makes getting up in the morning even harder to do. Last weekend we played at home against the bottom team and we won, but the pain was worse than ever. I talk to the physio and then coach and make a deal that I try to stick it out for the next two games since he tells me the team needs me. So last week I go through hell to get ready and prepared for the game in Zamora. Come Saturday I actually felt great and go through warm-ups almost pain-free :) I was prepared to not start and knew I would get my chance. I did and was focused to to my job, especially on defense and I did a good job. The best part was that my foot wasn't a problem at all, so it was a smack in the face when I only got to play 13 minutes (2pts, 3 rebs). I know I could've helped my team a lot more if given the chance. I'm usually not one to complain about a coach's decision because they know what's best most of the time, but shoot, they pay me to play so why not use me. I felt like the whole last week was a waste of time as I should have been resting to let my injury heal instead of fighting through it so I could sit on the bench and watch us lose... My goal this week is to communicate better with coach to understand what and why he does what he does. 

Over to something totally different and fun;

Not for me...

since we played on Sunday the previous week we had Saturday off! This was the same day "El Papa" came to visit Santiago so my teammate Lidia had the perfect plan for the day; take a trip and leave the chaos :) Andrea and I both agree she saved us from an otherwise very boring day. (I miss having a car...) Our destination was Pontevedra on the west coast, but on the way there we stopped in Caldas de Reis for lunch and some sightseeing. We ate a super nice little "Taberna" by the river. I think I mentioned before that the Spanish food is different and really an adventure in itself. I'm always ready to try new things, but this time I had to pass on the squid that had ink coming out of it... 

One of the locals came up to us while eating and introduced himself as "Papa Noel" and he really did look like Santa! He asked about us and told some stories from ancient Spain (From what I could understand. My Spanish still isn't great). Alejandra translated for me when he was telling us about a man that was being hunted by the church for saying that men and women are equal! I hope that was a really long time ago... One of the guys that worked there gave us a tip about "Cascada de Segade", a waterfall nearby, so we decided to go exploring to find it :) 

Cascada de Segade

We did find it and it was definitely worth it even though it was nothing like Niagara Falls ;) After a photo session by the water we moved on to the city of Pontevedra (only 40 mins away from Santiago.) We were going to see two of the teams in our league play in the evening, but before that we had some time to walk around and look in the shops. None of us ended up buying anything, but it was still a successful trip. After the game (Aviles beat Arxil) we drove home just tired enough to get a great nights sleep before gameday.