Hey everyone! Ok.... Lots to say. I'm going to have to write two notes because this is just too much staring at the computer for me..but here we go

Our team is wicked. Everyone is super nice and friendly, some are super eager for us to speak english with them because they want to learn and others are awesome about helping us with Spanish. We went on a road trip up to the North of Spain (Orio- such a beautiful little town) but were not able to play because you had to be in the country for at least a week before you could play in the league. Our team takes a big bus wherever we go in Spain usually.... however sometimes they sleep on the bus... they went to San Sebastien the week after and we didn't have to go if we didn't want to (rain make-up and had to be same roster that would have been if it wasn't rained out). They were leaving at 10 at night to play at 11 the next day... driving all night on the bus... ummmm... no thank you. You better believe we didn't go and went out for our first night out on the town. More on that in the next note.

Our team is number one in the country right now which is pretty sweet and we played our first two games this past saturday at home against San Sebastien again... (The other game was a rain make-up). We won both games... I pitched the first one with Becky catching for me. Threw a one hitter and Becky popped a grand slam over the fence... not too shabby for our first game. Our infield is pretty damn solid. Most of the girls are on the Spanish national team, however our outfield is lacking and Becky and I played center and rightfield for the second game. I think when we're not pitching and catching we'll be hanging out around there. Becky especially if she keeps hitting bombs. The field is so sweet because the river that used to run through the entire city is now completely dry and it's parks and sports complexes all the way through... so people are running and bicycling by our game all the time and we get a pretty decent crowd out. I'd say equal or more to an SFU seniors day crowd.... There is this one girl on our team named Eli.... she is just a baller.... shortstop, dives all the time, unreal plays.... soo good. She's super sweet too. Anyways games and practices and the softball side of things is going really well. Becky and I help on tuesday and thursday mornings at Cheste with the young kids and then train afterwards, we finally got unlimited access to the weight room here (pretty ghetto but it'll do) and practicing monday and wednesdays. We have this coming weekend of because the Junior national team is going to Belgium for some big tournament so some of our girls are gone and Beto- our coach is the junior and senior national team coach so he's gone too.

Ok... what else..................stories stories stories
The beach is AMAZING. Becky is black already and I am getting burnt in patches and tanned in other places so that my body pretty much looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle... but a few more weeks being a complete beach bum and getting all my peeling out and i'll be evened out and have a sweet tan. There is this wicked paddle game that everyone plays on the beach. Becky and I got to try it out on sunday although it was less than exciting due to my extreme hungoverness..... two other girls on our team are UNREAL and drew a crowd on the beach. We are going to play with them and get really good and i'm sure being half as good as them plus our yelling and swearing in english will draw a crowd of its own.

The water is pretty cold, salty, and cold.... did i say cold? we've braved it a few times because of the extreme heat, or the day we spent on the beach in some sort of small sand storm (never been that sandy in my life). But apparently there are two beautiful beaches- one just north and one south of us that is the clearest most beautiful beaches ever. Or so the locals say. We'll head up there eventually for sure. But for now the beach 10 mins away from the city center is PERFECT. So much toplessness and men in speedos. Oh europeans.... Becky is fully disturbed by the prepubescent girls walking around topless with their fathers and brothers.... haha it's pretty weird... but different cultures...

Another weird thing on the beach is that this whole country is FILLED with Beautiful girls..... and they are all dating men that are just ......kind of short, kind of unhealthy looking, crazy hairy and kind of not attractive.... of course there are some exceptions.... but in general....SFU athletics boys would absolutely KILL here. The girls would not know what hit them.... They'd be so confused what exactly these bulges protruding from beneath their skin are.... muscles...? anyone? NO. I don't think they even know what they are. I'm telling you boys..... Come to Spain. Jason Marshall... if you're reading this.... (which I don't think you are- but good friends should share this with him)..... This is where you belong. On a completely unrelated note.... not speaking proper english is widely accepted... almost considered cute.... Like I said Jason.... get to Spain.

Haha.. moving on... Everywhere we go is a scene because we speak english and it's not tourist season yet so people are either confused, stare, want to talk to us, help us, or show us around the city in some way. Every single time we walk into the cafeteria everyone in the caf stares at us... or if we are standing near them in line for food, no one talks because they want to listen to us talk. Another big issue is "Chunklas" the Spanish word for flip flops... which we wear everywhere even though it is not chunkla season yet.. Apparently we just SCREAM foreigners because we are wearing chunklas. meh... oh well.

Becky and I went to this bookstore downtown the other day and bought ourselves Spanish textbooks. Then got so excited about them we immediately went to our car and drove all the way to Cheste and plopped ourselves down at our kitchen table and started studying. Haha. we're dorks. The spanish is coming along alright I guess. I am an amazing Spanish speaker when i'm drunk... haha. becky is getting good at understanding specific words and can figure out what people are saying just by a few select words and their actions and facial expressions. One of our CA friends is coming over twice a week for conversations in Spanish with me. Besides that it's coming along well.... we are super busy doing nothing (doesn't make sense to me either) so there's not a lot of time to sit down and learn but hopefully the days will start slowing down soon cause we are still trying to figure out life here.

The team is treating us soo well.... We go for groceries once a week and they pay for it all, plus a car, gas money, plus a phone, plus just introducing us to so many good people and paying for everything for us on roadtrips. It's unreal. Considering we came here thinking we were only getting flight plus house and a small salary. It's a bit ridiculous how much they've given us. I love them!

Valencia is so random......mostly because it is so small. We know about 40 people here and we keep running into these people we know whether it's on the beach, in the city, walking down the river trails.... walking through random ghetto's.. it's crazy. Plus just crazy things. It seems like we have yet to have a day where something completely crazy hasn't happened. A good example of this is monday night after practice. We woke up, worked out at Cheste, showered, packed a lunch and all our stuff, drove into the city, parked (an ordeal in itself), wheel gymnastics, then head out to practice, practice, then the girls ask us to go for a drink and eat dinner... so we do.. then we're heading home... just talking about how we finally had a normal day out here and all of a sudden as we are about to drive out of the city we come up to a massive check stop. So they usher our car to the side of the road and to this man who comes to my side of the window and says something in Spanish. Now.... there is a time to speak Spanish and a time to play dumb... Considering we're illegally in the country, don't really know what's going on with the whole having some random man we don't knows car......... my response was "uhhhh.... we don't speak spanish." to which he replies "that's ok because I speak english" in this super sexy i'm a 40ish year old spanish policeman voice. So this guy procedes to ask for our license, registration and passports (which we didn't have and apparently you are supposed to have them with you at all times) and ask us a million questions about why we are here... there were some misunderstandings such as that he thought we said we play some sort of similar to raquetball sport we had just learnt about earlier that day... and other such weird conversations such as Becky thinking that he said he was going to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics when really he said he's going to Vancouver for the fire and police olympic games..... Anyways he goes on and on talking to us and the other cops are just watching the whole thing and kind of having a good laugh over it, the younger ones are wanting to partake in it but don't speak any english... and then finally our cop friend says well.... can i have your phone number so I can take you out and show you around Valencia sometime? lol. I almost lost it. but we gave him our number and now we have a cop friend. SO random.... we have a video of it that will be up once we can get internet fast enough to do such a thing.

Other goals of ours is to find someone that owns a plane so they can fly us to Ibiza and we don't have to pay for our flights since we already have VIP hook up....or one of us start dating a pilot. Another one is to find a handicap parking pass.... The parking here is ridiculous! RIDICULOUS!!!!! The other day we spent 45 minutes trying to find a parking spot and then gave up in frustration and ended up driving about 20 minutes from where we wanted to park. And find someone that can take us to a soccer game for free. I know these sound like ridiculous requests... but we have confidence it will happen. Everything else seems to be working out in our favor.

Anyways Love you all! Miss you tons. Write lots!!!!!!!
XOXOXOXOXOXO