Made it in safely!!

Well I've been here for almost a full week now and time is already flying by. I arrived last Tuesday after 29hrs a flights and layovers!! Coach Carl picked me up from the airport and brought me back to my new home for the season. I am staying with a host family for my time in Bunbury. They are the Donovan family, made up of Karen (mom), Russell (dad), James (5yr old son) and Alex (3yr old daughter). That's all of the family who lives here in teh house as well. Russell also has 3 other girls from his first marriage, but they don't live in this house. The Donovan family also hosts students from a foreign exchange program school in town, so at the moment there are 2 Swedish girls staying here as well with the family. They've been hosting people/students over the past 2 years and love doing it. My other American teammate Nick will be staying here too, once he gets in from Germany where he's playing now.

I got to meet most all of my teammates over the first few days as I had my first practice with the team last Thursday. Everything went well and the team looks pretty good. We are definitely young, but we have some good athletes and a few shooters as well. We'll just have to wait and see how the season progresses. All the guys are really cool though and I don't see any problems happening on or off the court between any of the guys, so that's good.

I've gotten to see most all of Bunbury as its not a huge town, but it is quite spread out. The beach is absolutely beautiful and is only 5 minutes down the road from my house.






My schedule will start to pick up pretty quickly as I'm doing 2 schools a week where I will do some coaching, we'll be practicing about 2-3 times a week, and I'll shortly be getting a little side job somewhere probably working about 15 hrs a week. So with all that going on my time will start to fly by. The season will roughly go until August, but could go into September if we can make it to the late rounds of the playoffs. So it's going to be a longggggggggggg season, but it looks as though it's going to be a lot of fun and hopefully some friends will be able to make the trip out to visit me at some point!!

I've already asked around about a good church to go too and there seems to be a pretty good variety of choices. I didn't get to go on Sunday because it was Bianca's 18th Bday breakfast and the whole family was here for that, so I figured I should probably be here as well to meet everyone (plus the the food was awesome!). Bianca is Russell's oldest girl. I'll be sure to get out next Sunday and give one of the church's a try.

Our first official game is on March 18th but we have a few "scratch matches" as they call them before that official start game. We play on the 27th of Feb against another club from the league that's only 20 mins away, so that will be a good game to see where exactly we're at and what things we need to change before we get the season kicked off. There's also a tournament the first weekend of March in Perth that the league hosts where we will get to play a few games over that weekend against some other clubs. So that will be fun to see all the teams there, but also good for us to get some more practice games in before the season starts.

As for now I'm just practicing 2-3 times a week with the team and coaching at 2 schools twice a week. I'll eventually get a job, but that's no rush for right now. I'll just be enjoying my free time while I have it! The weather out here is beautiful and usually in the 80's-90's but with an awesome breeze that helps keep things cool. The sun out here is vicious though and I've already gotten a little bit burned just from being outside without sun tan lotion on. You really have to put it on ANY time you go outside hahaha, I'll learn eventually!

I hope everyone back home is doing well and loving life! I wish only the best for everyone for 2011!

Until tomorrow...
"make it happen"