Happy Days

Okay so this one is really long...

I really love my little life over here in Greece. I think to myself that there is really no where else in the world I would want to be right now. I’ve grown to love Athens and the life I lead over here contains so much of the things I enjoy to do. Granted we won our game this week so everything in life looks a little brighter.

But back to my point. I have created a happy little life over here. My apartment is so cute and its all mine. I don’t share it with anyone unless I choose to. I’ve bought two plants that keep me company and every week I go down the outdoor market and buy gerber daisies in every color. I cook in my little apartment with Etta James blaring from my laptop and clean my whole apartment on a sunny day and open all my balconies and let the air dry the freshly mopped floors. I hang up my laundry and listen to Greek people on the street. I love cleaning my apartment! And I love sitting down with a hot cup of coffee and reading or writing all by myself.

I do miss my friends and family, that’s something that never goes away. But it doesn’t consume my thoughts. I can’t wait to go home for Christmas but its not because I don’t like it here. For this year, I want to be in Athens. My days consist of only things I like to do. I wake up and go to morning practice or the gym and workout by myself. Then I come home and eat, cook, clean. Then I might go meet friends for a coffee or go by myself with my book, my laptop, or my Spanish studying. Then I come home, check my email, and go to practice. I love my teammates, my coach treats me with respect and trusts me, and we are getting better as a team. I finish practice at about 9 and usually go home and hang out but sometimes I go out for coffee or meet friends for dinner. I have a lot of friends over here, Greeks and Americans, and my social life can be as busy as I want it to be. Which is quite a change from last year.

Having friends and a social life is so important. Prior to last year I always appreciated my friends but never really thought about being without them. It started with the girls I grew up with. The five of us went from kindergarten through high school together and we are still going strong. We don’t see each other as often as we'd like but with history like that, nothing really ever changes. Almost any memory from my childhood includes either my family or them. And when we get together we can laugh about things that happened when we were in first grade. We’ve all changed a lot but our personalities have been the same since we were 6 years old and it is so funny because we know each other so well.

In high school I finally began to have friends that I played basketball with. Before that I just had teammates that I didn’t really connect with. But then I started playing AAU with Players Only and I loved my teammates and coaches so much. We hung out, played ball together, talked about boys, scholarships, recruiting visits. For the first time I really had teammates that were friends as well.

Then I went to college and I had no idea that I would be lucky again and meet some of my best friends in the world. I had the girls I grew up with, the girls I played ball with, and now in college I had the teammates that I lived with and shared everything with. I liked all of them but a few of us really bonded. And we had friends that didn’t play ball too which gave us some balance and perspective. They supported us so much and were always there for us when we needed them. For four years we all lived together, laughed about stupid shit all the time, and shared all our feelings, dreams, thoughts with one another. A social life to me was sitting in our dorm rooms or apartment. The tv. would be on the bachelor or some other mindless show, one person would be checking their email in between music requests, someone would be eating, someone would have just woken up from a nap (usually me), and someone would be pretending to study. Then girl talk or ball talk would start and it would go on and on till we were laughing so hard we couldn’t breath. The intimacy we all shared over the years won’t ever be replicated in our lives. Communal living with people you love is priceless and the bonds are now unbreakable.

So I’ve been blessed with great friends. I’ve bonded with wonderful people in all stages of my life and living overseas is no different. If you are an American living in Athens, playing ball, there are a lot of others just like you that you end up being friends with regardless of whether you really like the person or not. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean that circumstances make you hang out with people that you might not ordinarily be friends with if it weren’t for the fact that you share a common background in a foreign land. Then there are the people that you are friends with over here that you just know you would be great friends with anywhere in the world and you get close quickly. We have so much in common and our experiences are so similar. We can talk about all the craziness in our current lives and reminisce about how wonderful America is. But like I said, there are Americans that you meet and become friends with and it isn’t just because they are American. Its because they are a cool and sharing the experience of living overseas with them is unbelievable.

My first good friend over here was obviously Tracy Gahan. But I’ll get to her later. The first person I really bonded with over here was Kelly Komara. We saw each other occasionally in the fall when we played friendly games or real games. We talked about the usual, our teams, whether we have been paid, and all the intricacies of our lives in Greece. We went out to the clubs and laughed while one or the other of us got stalked by some nasty guy and went out to coffee and talked about how excited we were for Christmas. She had a good Greek friend, Giannis who we both hung out with. The three of us met up for New Year’s Eve when we got back from Xmas and from then on we were buds. We met up for coffee and got drunk at tavernas off cheap Greek wine. How many times we went out to eat and got plastered and started saying the three words we knew in Greek over and over again. We just laughed about stupid shit and had so much fun. And it wasn’t because we were both Americans, it was because we just clicked from the beginning. I felt like I had known her for a lot longer than a few months. And since living in Greece together, our experiences and memories are that much more ingrained. They were all unique and interesting. And Giannis, he was just the best friend you could ask for. I could call him up for anything and he was there for me. He was our host for everything.

This year I have wonderful teammates. They are so sweet and helpful and they are a lot of fun. But I also love the Americans that I hang out with. I feel like we are all teammates too. We meet up for coffee during the week and support each other. Every Sunday we either go out to the clubs or do something fun. This week we are going bowling and next week we are going to the center square of Athens to look at all the Christmas decorations. We have all gotten close quickly and its nice to have girls that you have more in common with than just our nationality. I feel like we are all on the same team and its funny because we all kind of new each other before Greece, or knew someone who knew them, or knew their boyfriend or whatever. The basketball world is a small one. We have a nice group that consists of Tracy, Trish (played against her in college, she went to Okie State), Meg (played for our old assistant coach, Coach Abe, at SMS, she’s from Iowa and Anne O’Neil is her cousin), Jordan (went to UNLV, and we have the same awesome agent, Eric), Lelo (played against her when she was at Duke, her ex boyfriend is Shane Power who played at ISU) and my teammate Erin (we went to USA Jones Cup tryouts together four years ago.). Then there are some Greeks we hang out with like Demetria who was Kelly’s teammate last year. She is such a sweetie and always up for having fun. And of course we see Giannis still and he is such fun. There are others of course and some guys players we hang out with. They are always fun to be around and they love it of course because there are always way more girls than guys so they get plenty of attention.

So back to Tracy. I think of how lucky I am to have had such wonderful friends since I was five years old. The different things I have shared with each of them; my childhood, high school, college, and now living abroad. Each period has had wonderful memories that I share with those people. To have memories of overseas with Tracy, someone who knows me so well, has been unbelievable. Last year we leaned on each other. If she hadn’t been here, it would have been so much more difficult and I know she feels the same way. Sometimes we just got through the week thinking about Sunday afternoon when we would get to hang out until Tuesday morning. She would come down to my apartment after almost every game. We would hang out, talk about how bad her team sucked and how much of an asshole my coach was and we would feel better. Then we would eat, hang out and talk about whatever. Monday we’d usually go do something touristy or at least get out of the house. We’d spend the whole weekend together just being together in Greece. Sometimes we would just sit there, at the highest point in Athens, or on a beach on a Greek Island, and just pinch ourselves. We’d be amazed at our lives and so thankful that we were experiencing all these things together. We’d think about where we had been the year before, in Ames, Iowa, never knowing that a year later we would be watching the sunset over the Aegean at the southern most tip of Athens.

Tracy and I were close in college. We were good teammates my first year then we were good friends and good teammates after that. We bonded and from then on we just got closer and closer. When she left for Italy and wasn’t around my senior year I think I really realized how close we had become. I definitely realized how much I missed her on the court but it was more than that. I was so happy to see her when she returned. Little did I know that we would be going to Greece together in 8 months.

Like I said, last year we needed each other. This year we are both so happy. There have still been hard times. My team losing, her coach threatening to send her home (how the tables have turned), but overall we are enjoying our lives here. So being here together is more about fun than counseling sessions. We know each other so well, never have to explain things, and get to talk about everything from friends from home, books we are reading, plans for the future, how our ISU girls are doing, our families, and everything in between. Our conversations are deep and intellectual or fun and girlie. Depends on our mood. And because Tracy and I are so close, anyone we are friends with gets included in this group of fun, cool, outgoing people. It really makes life over here much more exciting and I am so glad I get to share it with my girl.

I am having so much fun in fact that I can hardly believe that I am going home for xmas in a little over a week. Time has flown by. I will be home from the 20th to the 29th. I am so excited to go home and see all my family and friends!