Day 3- Comfort At Last

Ok, to recap-I was finishing my second day in Poland. I had already had several experiences that were leading me to an early return home. But I am warrior-I was going to give it one more day, plus in two days I had only seen the gym but had not had the chance to work out any players. I had to at least see if they could play.
Day 3- I am an early riser, especially in the summer time, but usually I get up and it is still dark outside; in Poland the sun comes up a little earlier-like 4:30am. Yea I said it right-not dawn breaking sun, I mean full sun. It was weird. The early sun brought the tiniest little problem on day 3-the fly! This fly began its torment of me at 4:30am. It began buzzing around my face and ears. I did not want to get up and try to kill it; so I found shirt to tie over my face. I spent the next two hours smelling my own morning breath and sweating to death because I had a shirt over my face. When I got up about 6:30am, I decided that sometime during the day I would not only look for my fly but to be safe I would kill every fly in sight. It was going to be the only way to make it through the week. I was now on a mission.
I was off to a rough start; I had been up since 4:30am, I had been tormented by a fly; I had three things to look forward too-my shower, my breakfast, and basketball work-outs. I went to the shower thinging about how refreshed I would feel after a nice warm shower. The shower set up was a little different-it had one push button that started the water. That's weird; where was the hot and cold knobs or maybe it was just all hot water; because no one takes a cold shower. Wrong! It was ice cold. I pressed that button three times before I stepped in; in hopes that eventually someone would turn on the hot. No luck. I took my first cold shower for the week-strike one. I went to breakfast thinking it has to be uphill from here. For breakfast they served bread, butter, jam, hot tea, cool milk (not cold), and salad. Yes-salad. I was getting use to the hot tea in the summer, but I draw the line at salad for breakfast. I am all for healthy, but that is too far-strike two. One more strike and I promise my American backside would be on a Lufthansa flight to the U.S.
Work-outs started at 8:30am. I was going to work-out the girls first and then the boys. It was going to be 3 hour work-out. (1.5 for the girls, 1.5 for the boys). I walked into the gym with a scowl. (Some would say that was normal-but it was a result of my morning) There were kids already shooting and warming up, they had no idea what they were in for. We beagan to work-out and they worked as hard as any group I had ever coached. They were sponges! They wanted to work and improve and I was ready to give them all they could handle. We could not verbally communicate very well, but their actions told me everything I needed to know. They were just like me-searching and working to be excellent. After about 30 minutes, it was like the scene from the Grinch, my frown was turned upside down. I had found my comfort zone. I was in-anxiety gone. I was going to make it. I did make it! It took me 3 days, but the next 7 days were some of the greatest moments of my life.