time flies

Hi all!

Clearly I have been slacking on the updates!  My last message left you at the end of our regular season.  Well, now our season is completely over.  We played the round robin style “middle games” and advanced out of that, but then we had a best-of-three series and lost our first two.  It was disappointing, especially since I knew in the back of my mind that it could very well be my last competitive basketball game. 

The upside is that now I have even more free time.    Reese is heading home soon, so we’ve tried to cram in all the cultural stuff before she goes home.  Our assistant coach’s family has been helping us make sure we get around to all the important stuff.  We also made dinner for our coaches’ families.  We’ve come a long way in the kitchen over the past year!  We have been making dinner every Tuesday for our assistant coach’s family because Reese lives with them.  Our progress is evidenced by the fact that Reese is now comfortable handling raw meat!  We also made dinner on Wednesday for the team, kind of as an end-of-the-season celebration.  OJ surprised me with a poster naming me the team’s MVP, which will be a nice souvenir to remember the team.

            Reese and I also took advantage of the Easter weekend break and went to southern Germany and Switzerland.  It was a very relaxed weekend as we were with her cousin Toni and Austrian husband Markus all weekend.  We still really enjoyed our trip though.  We spent the first day touring the area around Lake Constance, which borders Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It was great weather and we had a nice time touring the cities of Konstanz and Meersburg.  Toni is an adult English teacher in Germany, so we went over to one of her students’ houses for an American movie night with his family and some of their friends.  The selection was… (drum roll please)… Lonesome Dove! J I had never heard of it before—it’s an old Tommy Lee Jones/Robert Duvall western movie, for those of you that haven’t either.  In any case, that is some THICK southern drawl… I was impressed the Germans were willing to watch it!  The only people they could really understand were the Mexican cook, an Irishman, and the Scottish bar owner (i.e. the actors not speaking with a southern accent).  The plot moves away from the Scot’s town and the Irish guy dies by snakebite, so the Mexican quickly became their favorite character. (Naturally, they were very concerned for his well-being.) 

Anyway, the next day we drove to Zermatt, Switzerland for world-class skiing.  Basketball has prevented me from downhill skiing for the last decade, so I was a bit nervous.  Sure enough, I fell at least once on each run and was sure I was going to tear a ligament when I was on some intermediate runs… but I made it through the day relatively unscathed.  We met up with a family there that Toni knew from New York.  The father used to be a competitive skier, so he gave us a few tips (and so did Markus).  At the end of the day, Markus laughed that if Reese and I weren’t as athletic as we are, we probably would’ve been on our faces all day because our form was so terrible.  I did get pretty out-of-control and had to snow plow like crazy or turn pretty sharp a few times.  On Easter Day, we had lunch on Lake Geneva at the house of the parents-in-law of yet another one of Reese’s cousins.  It was a gorgeous view and great weather.  That night, we drove back into Zurich for dinner before flying out early Monday morning.  Another great Reese-and-Lisa Adventure!

            I guess not much else is going on.  I am just coaching and playing pick-up, since the season is over. The days are getting long here and the sun is finally shining!  Everyone seems to be in a better mood, even our assistant coach’s two-year old! (AND, biking is enjoyable again!) I’ve also been studying for the CPA exam… I really want to pass a few parts this summer when I get home from travelling.  Speaking of which, my family begins to arrive in three weeks! I’m bummed that I won’t be home for another 10 weeks, but extremely excited to travel with the fam!  They’ll be here for varying amounts of time, but my plans with them include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and France.  Then I am meeting up with a friend in Florence and travelling with her to Barcelona.  I will be very ready to come home at that point.  I scheduled my flight home for July 2^nd.  Just in time for the holiday!

 

The last piece of news I have is that I have decided not to return to Europe for another season.  I am headed to UO (blasphemy in my family) for a master’s in accounting.  There are a variety of reasons, but the biggest two are that I have been away from home for five years now, and my foot pain has not improved (plantar fasciitis).  I have really enjoyed the past year—my team has made it a great experience for me. 

 

Well, I will hopefully be seeing you stateside this summer!  Thanks for all your support!

 

Lisa

lots of snow in february

Hi All!

I guess it's been a while and a lot has changed since I last wrote.  First off, the basic updates.  I had a wonderful time at home for Christmas.  It was nice seeing that nothing at home had changed while I was thousands of miles away; everything was waiting for me just as I had left it.  In a way, being home served as rejuvenation and allowed me to be more excited about being back over here.  Also, it is SO much easier to be over here now that I have internet at home.  It was really hard to barely talk to people the first couple months I was here.  I feel much more connected to my friends and family's lives back at home now.

 

As far as what's happened since I last wrote, we did get to the Pokal cup final game.  It was a much bigger deal than I expected.  Our game was on tv, so I have a really good copy of the game film.  All the commentary is in Danish, but that just means that I can alter any translations in my favor when I watch it at home!  No, actually, I played really well and the announcers do talk me up quite a bit because they've seen me play a few games before.  It was a while ago, but I think we ended up losing by 6 or 8 and I had 18 points and double digit rebounds. It was a fun experience, but a win would've obviously made it better.

 

A couple weeks ago we had a Denmark vs "The World" game, which was all the best Danish players versus all the foreign players in the Danish league.  My coach, OJ, coached the foreign team, so that was helpful.  However, without really practicing together, the foreigners had a hard time playing cohesively.  Danish basketball is very small/connected so they had mostly all played together before on the Danish national team and had been playing against each other for years. I did not play well at all, but we ended up beating the Danes by 10 or so.  It was hard to get very excited for the game since my plantar fascia is still bothering me and I would've rather had a weekend to rest it, especially since no one really cared about the game anyway.  Just a few parents and coaches came to watch. The men's game was much more of a lighthearted All-Star game and there was a lot more people there.  (I don't blame them for not coming to our game… I don't really like to watch much women's basketball myself, so I am not going to force others to watch!  It's too boring if you don't know the players.)

 

Our regular season ended this week.  We finished in fourth, which was a little disappointing, but it's much better than the team did last year. Now we start a long playoffs process, which could include as many as 17 more games. It was important that we finish at least fourth though because now the top four teams play each other home and away and the bottom five do the same.  We wanted to have these games against other strong teams to keep our intensity up and figure out how to beat the one team that we haven't beat yet (although the stats and ego boosts of being in the lower group would've been nice).

 

A small group of us are still doing our Wednesday dinner rotation, which has been really nice.  Danish has a word that doesn't really translate well, but it's cross between "hanging out/relaxing", "cozy/comfortable", and "nice/enjoyable" (it has many meanings).  In any case, our Wednesday dinners have been very hyggeligt.  The Americans from the teams in and around Copenhagen have been hanging out once a week as well.  We meet up during the day since none of us have too much of a schedule besides evening practices.  We have also been going out at night together a little bit too. We all consider it the highlight of our week to have "American lunch" or other gatherings.

 

Well, I have to run off to coach a practice and then have my own practice… hope to talk to you all soon!

 

Lisa

almost home for the holidays!

Where to start? First of all, I was a little worried we were underestimating the second division team we were supposed to play and that they might surprise us. Definitely not. Keep in mind that it is not considered unsportsmanlike to run up scores here. Everyone played equal playing time, but we did press the entire game. Any guesses for the final score? We won 136-19! Not only that, but they were so “honored” to have had the opportunity to play against us that they served us champagne after the game! Only in Denmark! ☺

The next morning, Reese and I headed off to Rome on different flights. We figured—okay, I figured—it’d be easy to meet up in the main train station at the McDonalds. I got in a few hours before her, so I planned on just finding a hostel and then heading back there to meet up with her. Not one of my better ideas. My ½-hour train ride to the city from the airport took three hours due to weather… and the trains were cancelled for the rest of the day, so Reese had to take a long cab ride. Plus, there are three McDonald’s in or next to the train station. To make a long story short, Reese and I couldn’t find each other and ended up running into each other on the street in the rain (I was trying to find a hostel and she was trying to find an internet café.) Needless to say, it was quite the start to our trip. The rest of the trip went smoothly though and we had a ton of fun. It was weird traveling with someone I barely knew, but we got along great and got to know each other along the way. We saw all the big sights: the Pantheon, Colosseum, Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, and Vatican City/St. Peter’s Cathedral. Everything was so impressive… I didn’t know where to look because I knew I would be missing something in another direction!

Reese had some family in Rome that she’d never met, so they invited us over for dinner. It was great to interact with some Italians on a more normal basis, rather than just talking to waiters and tour guides. After dinner, we went out with one of her cousins and her friends. They spoke decent English and had lots of questions about the US and about English. It was really interesting to hang out with young people from such a different culture. Other than that, we ate lots of pizza, pasta, and gelato… and took hundreds of pictures!

After being away for Thanksgiving the last four years, I guess I am kind of getting used to it. It’s always hard to be away from family on a holiday, but we had our own celebration to make the best of it. Reese and I were going to try to cook everything for the team, but found that there were many ingredients that we just couldn’t find in Copenhagen. We ended up getting food catered from the Copenhagen Marriott to take back to my coach’s house. The food was not really that great or what I consider traditional, but it was decent considering we didn’t have to do any work for it. The Danes didn’t really understand what Thanksgiving was, but they were happy to see what it’s all about. Two Americans from another Copenhagen team came and joined us too. The good company made up for the lackluster food.

The ongoing cup tournament has a weird setup with two semifinal games (home and away against the same team). Whichever team has scored the most points (i.e. has the greater overall point margin) moves on to the single final game. Well, we beat the team we that we’re playing in the semifinal by at least 20 in league play. However, they got a new 6’5” girl from the states, so we didn’t know how it would be. Well, we played them at home yesterday for the first round and won by 38. That obviously puts us in a really good position for the next semifinal game, so it looks like we’ll be in the Pokal final. It was one of my best games since being here. I finished with 26 points, 26 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals, and 2 turnovers over all forty minutes. They don’t record blocks, but I had a handful of those too. It felt good to bounce back from our 4-point loss this weekend that I didn’t play that great in.

I started off our Wednesday night dinners a month ago, but stuff keeps coming up, so we’ve mostly gone out to eat on Wednesdays since then instead of cooking for each other. Either way, it’s nice to hang out with each other outside of practice! I’m getting to know my teammates more and more and really enjoy spending time with them. I only hang out with four or five of them outside of practice, but they’re all fun to be around.

Danish classes are going well. I find that I can understand quite a bit, but have a hard time stepping out of my comfort zone to try to speak it much. Practice makes perfect though! I switched into a class that starts later in the morning, so it has kind of renewed my motivation because I wasn’t enjoying waking up early.

The USF athletics department asked me to write an update to put on the website and I finally got around to it. It doesn’t really say anything you haven’t read in my other updates, but if you want to check it out, the address is: http://usfdons.cstv.com/sports/w-baskbl/spec-rel/120808aaa.html

That’s pretty much everything going on over here. I am really excited to come home next week! This will be the most time that I have had off for Christmas in years! I will be driving down from Seattle with Julie the night of the 19th… I would love to see those of you in Portland! Happy holidays!

apparently these just aren't going to be short

Hi everyone!  Guess it’s about that time again…

I guess quite a bit has happened since the last one of these… first of all, we did win that Pokal game against the defending national champions and another one last week.  Now on Wednesday we play a division two team out in the country for the quarterfinals.  Division 2 is actually two levels below us: Elite (my league), then D1, then D2.  So it’s supposed to be a ridiculously easy game, which is good because I fly out to Rome the next morning!  We don’t have a game next weekend so my coach gave us a few days off.   I’ve never been to Italy, so I am really excited!

I was planning on exploring alone, but we just got a new American last weekend and she is going to come with me!  Her name is Marisa or Reese and she played for a D3 school in New York.  I’m really happy to have another friend to hang out with while my teammates are at work and school.  She seems nice and she is actually Italian, so she is just as thrilled to be going to Rome as I am.  I have to admit, I am a bit jealous… I think she lucked into the better timing.  As much as I am enjoying the experience, I think November-May would have been enough for me.  Oh well!

Anyway, other stuff that I have been up to…  the five or six of us on our team that are my age or older are starting up a weekly dinner rotation.  Every week someone new will take a turn making dinner and having everyone over.  I think it’ll be nice because otherwise some of us only see each other at practice.  I also found an American MeetUp group online…  basically there’s a group of Americans (and Danes who like hanging out with them) who have a couple events a month.  I went to a cafe last week on election night because they were having a results viewing party with the group.  There was probably about 50 people, young to middle-aged there. 

Speaking of the election, people were so into it here!  When I first got here, people were occasionally asking me what I thought about Bush.  The last couple weeks everyone was asking me about the election.  Someone said like 85% of Denmark was for Obama and 5% was for McCain and the other 10% didn’t know or didn’t care.  I don’t think I met a single person who was for McCain.  Maybe they just don’t tell anyone if they are because they’d probably get publicly shunned or shot or something.  Denmark’s current government is about as far right as they’ve had (most people are really unhappy with it) and it’s still well to the left of Obama.  I think the hospitals would’ve been full with heart attack victims if McCain had won.  I guess I sometimes forget how much American politics affect the rest of the world.

They don’t really celebrate Halloween here… or at least they don’t celebrate it right.  Hardly anyone dresses up or does anything for it… they just sell some pumpkins and think that covers it.  We had a game the next day, so I didn’t get a chance to show them how it’s done either! I just made some pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies.  (They don’t really have American style cookies here, but they love them, so I make them some every other week or so.)  Even though I missed out on Halloween, I have gone out a couple times… European nightlife is so crazy!  They head out to the bars at like midnight and stay out until like 6 in the morning.  I am not exactly a party animal at home, so I am used to heading home at like 2am when I go out.  So, one night at like 5am, I looked at my friends and said, “Alright guys, I am going to have to call it an EARLY night.”  I was proud I lasted that long and they stayed out for a couple more hours!  Wow.  We had fun though… big clubs with lots of young people.

My Danish is coming along slowly, but surely.  I still don’t know how to say too much and I read like a four year old… stuttering on words and having to be corrected all the time in class.  (For those of you who have seen Billy Madison: “t-t-today, junior!”) However, in typical Lisa fashion, I do all my homework and really put a lot of effort into class, so I am actually one of the better students in our class of about ten.  Sometimes I debate whether it’s really worth it to try to learn a language that I will probably never use again after about six more months… I mean just as I get the hang of it, it will be time to leave.  But every time I can understand a newspaper headline or part of a conversation between teammates, it motivates me to stick with it.  All in all, I am glad I am trying it.

Before I left I looked up the average Portland and Copenhagen temperatures and saw that Copenhagen was only about 10 degrees colder than Portland.  Well, I forgot that I haven’t been home for the last four winters.  It’s definitely getting cold and only going to get colder.  I have come to the conclusion that one coat just doesn’t cut it… I have to layer up with two!  Plus, I will be biking along and see the time/temperature/date reader boards like they have at banks and stuff and they’ll say like 2°!  Even though I never really do the exact conversion to Fahrenheit… I can tell pretty easily that that means it’s pretty darn cold.  I guess I will know it’s really winter when I start seeing negative numbers!

Okay, two last things:

If any of you have any souvenir requests or want me to bring you anything back from either Copenhagen or Rome, let me know!

Also, if you’ve decided that these long emails are just more than you want coming into your inbox… just let me know if you want to be removed from my email list—no big deal.  You can always just check out my blog where I post them if you want.

Catch me up on what's going on with you back at home!

Lisa

it's been over a month already

Hi again! Good news from Copenhagen: my butt doesn't get sore from riding my bike anymore! Maybe that is the sign that I have fully adjusted to the European lifestyle… maybe not. As I expected, riding my bike everywhere is no longer exciting, but it is still convenient and I don't mind it too much if it's not raining. Our regular season games just started this Sunday, but we also already played in two tournaments. Our first was in Herlev, which is a local suburb. We played shortened games, which was definitely necessary since we played three on Sunday. The first team we played was from the division below us and they were absolutely terrible—maybe the level of a high school JV team. I was thinking it's going to be a long year if this is the level of Danish basketball. The next team was much better though and we didn't really come ready to play so we lost by two. The tournament was pool play, so we were still able to make it to the championship with one more win in our pool and a 15-point comeback in the semi-final. Our semi-final was a great game… it was my best game and I even brought the ball up the court several times since I had the advantage on my defender. Lisa, the point guard… who would've thought? Anyway, we went on to win the championship by about 20 or so.

Our second tournament was in Wedel, Germany just outside of Hamburg. My teammate has a Chevy SUV of some sort, so I actually drove halfway there and the entire 5-hr drive back. Going 90 mph on the German Autobahn was a nice change from the Oregon 55. We lost to the tournament host (who we should've beat) and then lost to the Irish national champions. That meant we only had one game on Sunday and it was at 1pm. So, I went with our Australian player, Prue, and another two of our teammates, Anna and Thea, into Wedel on Saturday evening. We walked around and stopped to have a German beer at a pub with some outdoor seating just to get the full German experience. We met up with the team for a very un-German dinner and then Prue, Anna, and I took a 9:45pm train into Hamburg for a couple hours. We had fun just walking around the busy nightlife area and checking out some former Beatles venues. It was a pretty crazy area; one club had a pole-dancing grandma in the entry way! And I do mean grandma—she was at least 80 years old. Anyway, we won our last game and headed home… well, I guess our win wasn't that clear cut. We were the guest team, but had to wear our home jerseys since the other team forgot theirs. So the whole game, I thought we were the home team on the score board. When I am playing, I really only look at the score every couple minutes to kind of check in. I thought we were up by six at halftime and no one thought anything of it when I said "Lets push this lead up." Well, we were playing really well in the second half, but the other team got the lead and was pulling away. I kept thinking, "Wow, they must be scoring more than I realize." You know where this is going… I thought we lost by 15 and didn't realize we had won until I high-fived the other team and shook the refs' hands (ya, they do that here… weird) and came back to our team huddle! I had thought it was a bit weird when my coach had said, "This was a good game for us." Haha Well, it turns out one of my teammates thought the same thing I did… so at least I wasn't alone in my stupidity!

Like I said, our regular season just started. We lost on Sunday to the five-time defending Danish champions. I had 15 points and 10 rebounds, so my coach was happy with the way I played, but I did not think I had a particularly good game. Luckily, we play the same team tomorrow as part of the "Pokal". It's an ongoing tournament of all the Danish teams that is single elimination. It is most of the same teams in the league, but every other week you play a game in addition to the league games. So, there is a Pokal cup winner and also a league winner (which is also decided by a tournament at the end of the season)… not sure if that makes sense or not. Anyway, it'll be nice to get another shot at them while revenge is still fresh on our minds. Coaching is still a bit difficult, but I think I am starting to figure out how tough I can be on them. I didn't yell at my players at all the first week or so. It's weird making them do some of the drills that I always hated, although I try to avoid the worst ones. And somehow the words "On the line!" invoke a much different feeling when coming out of my mouth instead of into my ears! :) The hardest part for me is figuring out the substitutions in the games. I'm not used to that. Plus, since they all pay to be on the team, I have to play all of them every game. I am also coaching a team of 25-yr olds who have barely played any basketball. It is a bit frustrating, but it is kind of nice because at least with them I don't feel as much pressure since they are not as serious about basketball. Besides practices and tournaments, I have mostly just been working out and exploring the city. I went to Copenhagen's botanical gardens, which is actually a huge park… very relaxing. A couple of the girls took me around the shopping district and I also discovered their library system. There is one really close to my house that I will be able to reserve American dvds at (and you thought I wanted to read—please!). The two guys who live downstairs have been really nice. Every Sunday they have five or six friends over for "soup night" and they are excellent cooks. It has been a good way to meet some new people and take a break from cooking for myself.

I started Danish classes last week, so I am kind of getting into a weekly routine. I have class for six hours a week (plus homework) with about ten other people. The teacher is really friendly and pretty good at explaining things, but my classmates can be a bit dull. I guess it doesn't help that almost all of us have different first languages. It's funny to hear peoples' accents in other languages… and I am sure I sound just as ridiculous! Once I get another week or two under my belt, I will take my teammates up on their offers to help me with it. If I decide to put the effort into it, I think I can learn it pretty quickly. To get my last couple credits I need in order to take the CPA exam, I also started an online class through PCC last week. I figured "Intro to Interculutral Communication" would be a relevant choice. I lost my camera cord, but as soon as I can find or borrow one, I will upload more pictures! Hope all is well back home! Sorry this is so long… maybe I will write shorter, more frequent updates or something. Farvel! Lisa

Address

I don't expect most of you to need it, but a few people asked for it.

Lisa Olden

Hovmestervej 47, 2 th

DK-2400 København NV

First Week in CPH

Hi! I’ve been in Copenhagen for a week now, so I am mostly settled in.  Language hasn’t been too much of an issue.  Pretty much everyone speaks English besides the lady at the bakery down the street.  I had to interview at the language school to sign up for Danish classes (which are government funded for immigrants), but I guess I fooled them enough to let me in because I start at the end of the month (maybe it was the whole college degree thing).  Until then, my teammates said they would try to help me out.  My first word (like I’m a baby or something) was “plell” which is what they call the backboard. 

 

My apartment is fairly spacious and has pretty much everything I need thanks to my teammates and IKEA (go figure—I am in Scandinavia).  My balcony overlooks a soccer (or should I say “football”) field and also a playground a little farther out.  For some reason, they don’t use shower curtains here… bathrooms are built for the water to kind of just go everywhere and drain out.  Outside my door is one of those cool trash chutes which is pretty convenient considering how lazy I am.

 

Everyone bikes everywhere.  No, seriously… everyone. Kids bike to school, businessmen bike to work in their suits… even elderly people mosey down the bike paths (I guess if they’re not going to slow you down on the road or sidewalk, they have to be somewhere.)  It’s a great way to see the city and save money.  I think gas is around $10/gallon here!  I’m sure it will eventually lose it’s novelty and it might not be so fun in the colder, wetter weather starting in a few weeks… but I am enjoying it so far.  The city is really flat; my teammate said she lives up a hill but we got to her place and couldn’t for the life of me remember going up a hill.  Turns out she had been referring to the slight incline that I had barely noticed... even calling it an incline is a stretch (especially compared to San Francisco’s hills).  The basketball gym is a 15-minute lazy ride, the regular gym that I joined is less than a 10-minute ride, and the grocery store is a 2-minute ride, so everything is really close.

 

One of my first nights here I went to dinner and a movie with a teammate which was fun, but also a bit eye-opening.  Everything here is really expensive, but a couple of things are just ridiculous.  A meal at a casual restaurant will run you at least $30 and take-out sandwich, pizza by the slice, etc. shops are also about $10-15 per person (and a pop is another $5 on top of that).  On the up side, people don’t tip at all here for anything.  Waitors are salaried and even cab drivers would find it unusual to get a tip.  Movie theaters play mostly American movies, but tickets are $20-25 (might as well forget about snacks)!!!

 

A few of my teammates took me sightseeing on a boat/canal tour this weekend and then we also went to Tivioli, which is Denmark’s only “big” amusement park.  It had lots of stuff, but most of it was not as daring as the US parks.  They thought I was so brave because I wanted to do all of the craziest rides: a roller coaster with one upside down loop and a tower that takes you up and then drops you… both of which would be nothing out of the ordinary in the states.  Anyway, we had lots of fun and the weather was perfect, so it was a good ending to my summer.

 

Basketball has been going really well.  I’m adjusting to the European style of play (changing my footwork so I don’t travel and shooting more bank shots).  My teammates range from 16-29 years old.  Practices have been good; it has been an adjustment being the go-to player.  Our team is in the top Danish division, so it is supposedly only the serious players… but we only practice 4 times a week for an hour and 45 minutes.  So, it is pretty easy compared to the usual American training schedule.  Practices are almost completely in English and the rest I can usually figure out.  We have a practice game tomorrow and then we start preseason games next weekend! The weekend after that we have a tournament in Hamburg, Germany for three days so I am really excited for that.

 

I am also coaching a team of 16-yr old girls, which is a bit out of my comfort zone since I have no coaching experience.  The team is great though and I mostly just run the drills with them that my team does in our practice.

 

One of the tv channels plays American tv shows, so I have been watching a Fresh Prince,  Diagnosis Murder, Law & Order: SVU, and a little Spin City... it kind of makes me feel at home. Other than that, I am meeting lots of people… a couple guys who live downstairs from me had me over for dinner and now invite me in to hang out basically every time they see me coming in the building haha  Plus, the club I play for has 35 teams (both men and women) ranging from all different ages and skill levels, so I have met a lot of people through that. 

 

The team website is http://falconbasket.dk, but it’s all in Danish… so, good luck with that. J

 

This got long fast, so I guess I will save the rest for some other time.  Denmark is nine hours ahead (for those of you on the west coast, that is).  As far as contacting me…  I can use Sykpe, AIM, Facebook chat, and obviously email. I am going to try to remember to upload my pictures every once in a while through google, so they can be viewed at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lisaolden.

Okay... off to practice!