May 27, 2008

This opportunity to play in front of my family and friends in my own country means a lot to me. I really appreciate our coaches' effort to make this happen. We were always hoping that one day we will go to Croatia but we never really believed it will happen. I am extremely excited that my family can see me play in Tulane jersey, and so are my friends.

At the same time I am excited that I can show my teammates where I am coming from, my country and culture. They finally tried our food, which I have been talking about ever since I came to America.

I am very happy that we played in the same gym that I played in for 10 years. I want to show everybody in Croatia how good my team is and I want to make myself and my coaches proud.

Today we had a tournament and we played against two teams which both play First Croatian league. First match we played was against Azena, and we were really excited and started off with a lot of energy. We played as a team, and we won 3-0. Almost all our players had a chance to play. In our second match, we played the national team of Zagreb, which is a really good team. We came out very strong, we played together and we won the first game. In the second game, they were better and there is nothing else to say about it. Unfortunately, in the last game we did everything we could but it just wasn't enough to beat them. We ended up finishing second in the tournament.

I think we could have played better but we learned a lot from this tournament and we will use the mistakes that we made to improve and correct them for our following matches.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Pula, which is the city on the coast end everybody is really excited to swim in the sea for the first time. I hope my whole team is having fun and will go back to America with great experience and no regrets.

From home,
Sara