The flight over to Holland was a long one. After goodbyes to my family and girlfriend at Melbourne airport I was travelling for over 20 hours stopping in Kuala Lumpar before the second flight to Amsterdam. I was picked up by one of the staff at Landstede volleyball and 'team mum' Conny where she drove me straight to my first training. I'm not going to lie it was a struggle, not sleeping for 30 hours made it hard. After training my coach Redbad took me on a tour of the brand new Landstede stadium- very impressive, a great bog two story building fully decked out with a new weights room with all the latest equipment upstairs, Physio rooms, staff offices, training courts and then of course our home court capable of holding some big rowdy crowds, and with all the laser lights, massive speakers and crazy fans surrounding the stadium it makes for an amazing atmosphere to play in. After my tour I was finally able to put all my luggage down as Conny drove me to my apartment. Right in the city centre of Zwolle I'm sharing a two bedroom, two bathroom and two kitchen apartment with one of my team mates. As for the training well it's great. I'm learning a whole different style of play. At the moment I'm still in pre season but we've been training for 6 hours every day with Saturdays off. Generally we start in the gym for an hour before ball training for a further two hours straight after. Morning sessions mainly focused on serve receive, defence and serving reps as our 3 hour session in the late afternoon has been a lot of side out attack and match play. I'm really loving playing with such a great team with some very experienced and established players. Lately we have been playing a lot of practice matches against other Dutch clubs and clubs from different leagues for example when we travelled over to Antwerpen Belgium for two matches against a strong top div Belgium outfit. we played well on both days but went down both times in 4 then a close 5 setter. It was great to see a bit more of Europe when we had a wonder around Antwerpen city on the first night. I felt like a real tourist taking photos every chance I could of these beautiful 500 year old buildings and churches littered throughout the city but I couldn't help myself, some of the European architecture is just breathtaking. It was there in Belgium when I realised how amazing a lifestyle I'm living as a pro volleyball player, getting paid to not only do something I love every day but to travel the world and experience new cultures which really is half of it, I think it's a pretty sweet gig! It's been a very intense two weeks in which I've been here and it's just about to get even more full on as our Dutch league season starts soon. We're coming of the back of winning the Dutch championship last year and are expected to take it out again this year with what our coach says is an even stronger team than last years. After the Dutch league we will play in the CEV cup which is where we will play some really quality clubs. The CEV cup is the European championship where all of the best European clubs come together to compete for the CEV championship. Last year my club didn't make finals but got to play some top clubs from Germany and Italy and some great players such as members from the US, and french senior national team. I just can't wait to start the season! Outside of volleyball life is pretty cruisey over here with my free time filled with mainly cooking, stretching and skyping. I start my online university course next year so I'm just using this year to settle in and get used to everything which has been surprisingly easy thanks to my great team mates and club. Well I think that's all from me for now. I hope that gave you guys an idea of what I'm doing over here. I'll try my best to update you guys on how I'm going throughout the season!
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