League game in the Acores

Last weekend we travelled to the Island of Terceira for a league game against Fonte Bastardo. We stayed in a hotel about ten feet from the beach. It was a super nice area. The weather was awesome, it was nice to get away from rainy porto and into some sunshine. There is nothing like twenty degree weather in December! There wasn't a whole lot to the town though, i think that island fever would set in pretty quickly if i lived there permanently. The most excitement we found was when we climbed that giant hill (pictured) and messed with the cows. I've included as many pics as i could.
Anyways we won our match pretty handily 3-0. This was a good win for us because I think they are one of the better teams in the middle of the pack.
Our league seems to have separated into three mini groups. The top three teams have beat everyone pretty handily. We are super close to being in that top group because we have beat everyone below us and have beat the top teams in pre season but we put in poor performances against them in the regular season so we aren't quite there yet. Then there are about four or five teams that are all pretty even and can all beat each other. The bottom couple teams are not so strong, every once in a while they will take a set off good teams but their win columns are pretty empty.
thats all for now, I'm out!

Madeira
We had a league game this past weekend against Maritimo. Maritimo's team is based out of a city called Funchal located on the island of Madeira. This was our first real road trip of the season. All of our previous matches have been played a maximum of 30 minutes away by car. Madeira is actually decently far away. It is so far south that its parallel with the north western tip of Africa. Its pretty much directly west of Casablanca. Its a total tourist destination. I took a bunch of photos of the area we were in and i'll try to put them on here.
Anyways, we won our match 3-0, it was pretty uneventful. They had some pretty physical brazilians on their team but they didn't play very well so we rolled over them. I was having a pretty solid match before I pulled my hip flexor in the second set. I haven't practiced at all this week yet, just been chillin in physio trying to heal. Pretty boring but its gotta be done. Big matches coming up this weekend. Machico, another island team on saturday at home and then Benfica on sunday in Lisbon. I hope i can recover by then.

Here are some pics taken on our first day off without rain. Josh and I ventured into Porto to explore and enjoy a couple of super bocks in the sun. In our travels we discovered the ulitimate lunch. I've included a picture of it. We named it "the man sandwich". It starts with a plate of fries covered with chese. Then a sandwich with ham, steak, bacon, and some other random meat. On top of that is a fried egg with some sort of gravy/special sauce dumped all over it.

First Loss

Its been a while since I last posted on here. We've finished playing all our pre-season tournaments now. We won our home tournament in Castelo, which was probably the most competitive one featuring top teams such as Benfica and Guimares. The following weekend we won the tournament in Leixoes playing the home team in the final match. I just got home from playing the final of our last tournament in Espinho where we lost to the home team in a close 5 set final match.
We are no longer undefeated in Portugal. Now losing is never a good thing but in this case I don't think it is that bad for us. For one, it is only a pre-season game and therefore does not affect our standings or rankings or anything like that. Second, it knocks us off that 'undefeated' pedestal which does two things. It relieves some pressure off of us (nobody wants to break their undefeated streak) and also gives others team less motivation when playing us (everyone wants to beat the 'undefeated' team).
I can think of a couple of examples where going undefeated has not paid off. Last season in Denmark our team went undefeated for most of our league play only to lose three of our last four games and then lose in the national final. Then there were the 05-06' Golden Bears who went nearly undefeated all year, losing only one match all season long (to UBC of course), then were caught off guard by some cocky christians (TWU) playing the game of their lives in the national final and losing 3-0.

Anyways losing sucks but I would rather lose early in pre season than later down the road when it really matters.

Drugs drugs drugs!

So far my experience here has been quite a bit different from last year. It definitly feels more like i'm actually playing a professional sport. Everything is much more involved. We train way more. The level of play is higher. We have supervised weight sessions. We have a team physio, a team strength coach, and a bunch of other support staff people that i'm not entirely sure what they are there for. We have team vehicles to travel in.
They are now even starting to control our diets with supplements and vitamins (as pictured above). I'm not entirely sure what all of them are but I'm told they are all legal! We've got some vitamin C tablets on the bottom left, some ginseng and other goodness in the pills on the top right, magnesium gel capsuls on the bottom right, and i think the top left is some sort of arginine syrop...i don't know. I'm only on day one of taking them so i have no idea if they work yet, but i do know that they taste like shit!

Castelo da Maia Gymnasio Club

Here is my home for the next 7-8 months. Its nice playing on a good sport court floor everyday. Overall its a pretty decent gym. It is a good size, it has a good floor, and the lighting is good.
Our weight room on the other hand is pretty ghetto as you can see.

Heart Exam
Our team here in Castelo da Maia requires that all players get a full medical checkup. This medical checkup includes: a visit to a GP for a general checkup, blood tests, urine tests, and an echocardiogram.
We had our GP checkups last week, today it was time for our echocardigram. For no apparent reason I decided to document our trip to the clinic.
These are pictures of our journey into Maia (the neighboring small town) by metro. The first two pics are actual pics of my heart. I asked the doctor is I could take a picture of the screen when my heart was on the monitor and he offered to print a couple pics off for me, what a nice guy eh! So ya thats actually my heart, crzy!
The echocardiogram was pretty cool. They hooked a couple of clips up to each arm, layed me on my side and then used an ultrasound-like device on my chest to bring up my heart on the monitor. It was pretty sweet cuz I could actually hear my heart beating loudly and see my valves opening and closing.

Cooking in Portugal! Here are a couple of pics displaying our fine culinary skills. In the first pic Josh is showcasing our kebabs which we washed down with a couple of cold Super Bocks. The second is chef Lee J's concoction, a believe it was a stew.