Well I am on my way for another season. I signed a new year contract with Chorale Roanne, which is in France. It's located in the central-south of France. Smallish town about 100,000 people which makes it really easy to get around and get to know some of the locals. I arrived here about a month ago to start the preseason. It has been a pretty smooth transition, minus the language barrier. Don't believe what people say about how knowing Spanish will help you with French cuz the French people just like to drop letters from words and spell things all crazy. So my French is a work in progress but I am happy to report that I can successfully count to 12. (small victories right?)
Basketball-wise I am having a really great time. The first month has consisted of learning the European style of basketball which is very much system oriented as a opposed to American one-on-one. But I am playing well and have been able to maintain my weight which for me is the most important thing. My team I think is going to do very well based on how we have played in our 9 preseason games. We lost only one game by one point and won the rest by at least 8 or 9. So it's a pretty good start considering we have only been together for a month. My team has 4 American players and 2 guys who are pretty much Americans but have European passports so they don't count. See in Europe countries have rules regarding how many American players can be on a team. Here in France the limit is 4 so only 4 guys with American passport are allowed on a team. But in our case we have two guys that have skirted the rules. One guy has an African passport but lives in the US and played in college in the States so he pretty much is an American guy. The other guy has his French passport because his mom is French born and his dad is from the States. So he has dual citizenship but has the French passport so doesn't count against us. This can prove to be a big advantage. It may sound silly but American's are sought after and we play a little different game. So with all this put together we should do very well. Our first league game is this Saturday so it all starts for real.
On a side note our team also qualified for a Euro Cup series which puts teams from countries all around Europe and Asia, pretty much everywhere except the States and we all play for a European Championship. Our first round match is against a team from Jerusalem. They come here to play on October 20 and then we get to travel to Jerusalem to play a game. It's a pretty sweet deal to get to travel to the holy land for basketball. I am really excited about that. I will definitely take lots of pictures.
Jessica and I have traveled here together following our amazing wedding back in August. We were so blessed to have all our friends and family in Seattle to celebrate with us. We send many thanks and tons of love to ALL of you!! I will be posting now for the year so keep tuning in. The team website is http://www.chorale-roanne.com/ but unless you are fluent in French you are gonna need to visit a translation site for some help. CHEERS for now!!
