Jan. 30, 2012
Former Mizzou libero Caitlyn Vann is playing professional volleyball in Split, Croatia, and the former Tiger checked in with MUTigers.com to give an update on her adventures overseas. Below is her blog.
Helluurrr! So today I figured I'd update everyone on the happenings of last week. With the team being out of town for a couple away games, Lucy and I got a chance to experience a little bit different of a schedule which allowed us to have a few adventures of our own that I feel are blog-worthy.
I'll start with our daily routine, if you can even call it a "routine" since as you learned in my last post, there aren't really routines or schedules over here in Splitsville... You really just go with the flow. Anyway, basically all week we practiced with the 2nd team in our club. When I say 2nd team, I mean we were practicing with a group of girls ranging between the ages of 15-18 and a couple 13-14yr olds thrown in the mix. Our head coach really wanted to make sure we were still getting touches on the ball while the rest of the team was out of town, so it didn't matter who we were practicing with, as long as we were practicing. This meant some days we would be with a coach who was putting us through pit drills, other days we'd be with a very relaxed coach and just play 6v6 the whole time, and one time we just practiced on our own.
Our schedule went as follows: wake up, eat breakfast, head to some sort of practice, go to coffee with Vesna, lunch, nap, back to practice. The only thing that we were sure we would be doing each day was getting coffee with Vesna. This was always a sure thing... coffee and cigarettes between practices (of course, I was not doing any of the smoking). It was nice because Vesna kind of took us under her wing and we were able to bond with her, since we were somewhat on our own while the team was out of town, with only our new driver Kreso (who as I said, knew less about our schedule than we did).. So with our new best friend, we would head to coffee every day after practice and listen to Vesna's stories about her travels to the US, her adventures in Istanbul, the celebrity parties she attends in LA, New York, and Miami, and just all about her fab lifestyle. Turns out Vesna is quite the worldwide socialite, hanging with average folks like Lil Wayne, Lebron James, Nikki Hilton, Turtle from Entourage, you know, just doing everyday things with everyday people. So any who, all week long it became part of our routine to grab donuts and coffee at a little cafe', creep the Internet, and listen to Vesna's interesting stories.
Some other highlights of my week included babysitting cheeseburger, trying new foods, Lucy and I's bus trip journey, and finally our game last night!
First, I'll give a quick recap on our bonding time with The Burger. Our two other teammates have a little pug named Cheeseburger, so when the team traveled out of town I of course begged them to let us watch him. I miss my little snuggie and as everyone knows, I loooooove all dogs, especially pugs. The Burger is absolutely adorable and I thought a week with him would be too much fun! Well, let's just say I was a bit off in my predictions. To be fair, his parents warned me about his mischievous behavior and I just ignored it all thinking "he can't be that bad". Man was I wrong.
Cheeseburger is a terrorist in the form of a pug. All week long he was either chewing on our charger cords, eating fuzz, eating the wall, eating the carpet, eating our shoes, eating anything he could find, biting our toes, barking at every noise he heard, sniffing in our ear, and basically just being a little demon dog. This resulted in us spending a lot of the week (and mostly our nap time) trying to find ways to entertain the little guy. We would take long walks with him, play fetch with him, and Lucy even invented a game to play with him. She would stand in the middle of the room throwing his ball back and forth from wall to wall while Cheeseburger would sprint back and forth, never quite catching the ball. This was hilarious to watch, and actually worked at exhausting the little energizer bunny.
Needless to say, our week with him was quite interesting, and I only joke by saying he is a terrorist.. He was only a terrorist the first 2 days, a little the 3rd, some the 4th, and welllll ok yeah, he's a terrorist. Buuuut by the end of the week we did have him sleeping through the night, napping with us, scratching at the door when he needed let out, and we even had ourselves trained to live without making sudden movements or noises so we wouldn't disturb Burgs from his sleep or cause him to bark. I will also admit that when my teammates returned Friday and relieved us of our babysitting duties, I missed the little devil!!!
Although a lot of our time was dedicated to babysitting The Burger, we were able to go on a few adventures of our own. One night Vesna introduced us to this amazing traditional southeastern European kebab-like sandwich called Cevapi. Oh my goodness gracious - Mmm mmm goooodddd! The meal is served in flatbread with beef kebabs inside along with onions, cream cheese, and deliciousness! I'm now obsessed and would also like to say that this meal definitely competes with anything I've had to eat here.
Along with trying a new meal, Lucy and I also took a little bus voyage to the city. We hopped on bus #60, as we were instructed to take by Z, and rode into Split for a some shopping. Little did we know bus #60 is apparently the most popular hangout for Splitopians, so we rode for 20mins standing up on this jam packed bus full of 12yr olds and other folks. The important part is that we made it, we navigated our way through the city, got a little shopping in, grabbed some coffee, and even had lunch at our favorite spot, before taking #60 back to the hotel. Looks like Lucy and I could definitely survive in Split as loners.
On Friday the team returned and Saturday we had practice. Boyyyy were we happy to have the team back and a regular practice with players above the age of 12. No more free ball rally's or pit drills for us!
On Sunday we had a pretty important match against the team one place below us in the league, and although we had swept them 3-0 before, we knew it was going to be a big game. We started off set 1 going point for point back and forth, but finally got into a rhythm and ended up sweeping them 3-0.....because we're ballers like that. The 3rd set we tried to keep things interesting (for the crowd's sake ya know) and started off slow getting down 8-11 before Becci went on a 14 point serving run to give us a 22-11 lead, with a 25-15 finish.
I had a ton of fun playing in this match and it was interesting for me personally, because international rules allow you to play with two liberos, which meant Micki (the other libero) and I both played every match. She would go in for 2 rotations and then I would go in for someone else 2 rotations. It was definitely weird playing this way and sharing time, but I had fun nonetheless and we were all thrilled with 3-0 our victory! ((SWEEEEPPPP!!!)) To top off the night, and our week, we grabbed some Tex-Mex and drinks and watched the handball game with our teammates.
Even though the last 7 days often felt like we were going through an episode of Punk'd with Ashton Kutcher, it was by far one of my favorite weeks in Croatia up to this point. We made a lot of new memories, bonded with new people and a terrorist pug, and ended the week with a win and some Mexican food! Doesn't get better than that!
Now it's back to normal practices with the team and a game this weekend. I'll be sure to keep you all updated on how things go now that Lucy and I are no longer loners in Splitopia. Bok Bok everyone!