Lithuania

The past few weeks we have been training and playing pre season games in Kaunas, Lithuania and a few surrounding cities. It has been a cool experience seeing a part of the world I never would have imagined going. Practices have been going well as we continue to improve each day and figure each other out the more we get to play together. We have won every game but one so far this pre season. The game we lost to was against a quality team that plays in the Euroleague from Riga, Latvia. It was a very close game as we lost by one point in the end. In a recent game against a team from Lithuania I shot the ball well making 6 three pointers as we won by 14 points. I’m excited to get the real season going and start competing in the Ukrainian Superleague and the Eurocup competition in which we will travel all around Europe.

Life off the court has been relaxing as we spend most of the time in the Best Western Hotel which has been our home for 12 days now. The three other americans and myself have gone to three movies so far while we have been here. We saw 2 Guns, Elysium and Riddick. We are lucky that they show movies in English here! I thought Elysium was a good one while the other two were pretty average at best. We are talking about going bowling at the mall as well one of these days soon. We head back to Ukraine on the 16th so our days here in Lithuania are coming to an end and it will be back to our home in Yuzhne. I am told we should get our apartments when we get back so I am looking forward to see where we’ll be living for the next 8 months or so.

Erin will be arriving in Ukraine in a little over a week. Cannot wait to see her and start our new adventure together over here in a different place. Not to mention some of her great cooking which I have obviously been missing and craving!

I have been knocking out a lot of time by watching shows and reading. I am currently reading Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson. It has been good read so far about his career and philosophies in coaching the Bulls and Lakers. I recently finished the series The Wire. I highly suggest this show as it is incredibly well done about the streets, police and politics of inner city Baltimore. The show tackles many issues about real life. I also started to watch the show The League which is a comedy series about a group of guys in a fantasy football league. It is perfect timing to watch this show as I am currently in two fantasy leagues in which I am proudly 0-2…Thanks Cam Newton.

This morning we had time off so I went with one of my teammates, Paul Delaney who played at UAB and has been playing overseas for a few years now, to an old concentration camp and political prison turned museum named Ninth Fort. It was about a ten minute cab ride outside the town and a real interesting experience. We didn’t have time to go inside the vaults to where they kept the prisoners but we walked around outside the grounds and got some good photos. They have a huge monument they built in the 1980’s to remember all the victims. The monument is over 32 meters tall and has some incredible features of faces and other details. There was also a field where over 50,000 victims were buried. This was definitely like something I had never seen before and I’m glad we were able to go check it out while we were here. Ill post some photos below of the day.

Hope the Hawks can beat State Saturday. Need it. Interesting site my friend showed me.

http://www.winsipedia.com/iowa/vs/iowa-state

Nice try clones

-Matt

chains and shells from guns

monument

me in front of monument

prison

plaque stating “way of death”

monument

plaque stating 50,000 buried

plaque honoring jewish victims where 30,000 buried

sign by wall where they mass murdered victims

area of mass murder