'River' Rematch, Big Christmas Trees and Blue Santa

       Last weekend marked the half-way point in the season, so on Saturday we had a rematch with our opening day opponent. This time when everyone was talking about what sounded like the 'river' match, I knew they meant rivalry, and the sold out crowd and rowdy fans confirmed this. Thankfully, we jumped out to an early lead, got the crowd behind us, and ended up with a 40-point win.  We are still in a 4-way tie for first, with one game left before Christmas. We play Friday and I fly back to the States on Sunday. Can't wait to get home!

    Our fair-weather fans were all cheers after the rivalry win and after the game, we did some kind of chant with the crowd where we sat on the ground and basically yelled back whatever they yelled at us.

As you can see, Marcus and I lack the intensity and passion of our teammates in the front row, probably because we have no idea what is going on.

     On Sunday, Marcus and I were invited to the under-12 team's Christmas party, where we had to dress up as Santa and a reindeer. As is pretty evident, I got the worse of the two costumes, and before the last minute addition of the antlers, I looked more like one of the three wise men with a bath mat on my back than Rudolph.

 I also made it to Dortmund to see one of the largest Christmas Markets in Germany, and supposedly, the largest Christmas tree in the world. It is actually 1,700 Christmas trees combined on multiple levels to create one tree over 150 ft tall. That is one tree I would not want to have to decorate.

  While the Christmas tree and the rest of the market were impressive, the spelling was sub-par...

   I was also informed that Santa Claus used to be blue until Coca Cola started marketing it with their red logo. The facts behind the transition from red to blue are hard to confirm, but my research does indicate that Santa's rosy red cheeks didn't always match the rest of this outfit.

     I am sure everyone will be very disappointed to hear that this will be my last post until January. I have spent the last 3 months camped in front of my computer, so I plan to do as little of that as possible over break. You can however keep checking the blog if you like, so that I can feel cool about the number of views I get!