Sladjana's Worst Day

Below is the transcipt of an actual messenger conversation between me and Dante. Notice how he tries to throw me off course while I'm telling the story. Don't worry I valiantly shielded the attempts, and managed to tell the entire story in it's full glory.



Cait- Do I ever have a Sladjy story for you!


Dante- Tell me the story!

Cait - Ok so I am lying half asleep in bed this morning, when my cell ring



Dante- What time?


Cait - 8 am, way earlier than I'm used to



Dante- got it, oh yeah, I hear that


Cait -So, it's Sladj
Cait- Hysterical Sladj
Cait -I just want you to imagine what that sounds like


Dante- I am trying


Cait - She was crying and obviously very upset


Dante - It hurts my ears


Cait -and the only words I could make out were 'police' and 'metro'


Dante -What??


Cait -so I'm like "What is it Sladjy?"
Cait -and then a French women is put on the phone
Cait -and by French women, I mean female police officer



Dante -OK


Cait - So at this point i'm starting to wake up a little


Dante-Haha,as you would


Cait -I am trying to string together a French sentence
Cait -while the woman is talking about a ticket
Cait -and about the metro
Cait -and it clicks
Cait -Sladj got busted on public transport with no ticket


Dante -Oh no
Dante -haha
Dante - Why is there a cop involved??


Cait -Also, please keep in mind that the only advice that Cory our agent gave us was 'steal as much public transportation as possible'


Dante - LOL
Dante - good advice...until you get busted


Cait -What I managed to piece together from the broken Slovie-English was that the tram or metro stopped in front of the university and there was a full swat team of officers waiting to bust evil student transport stealers


Dante - wow and double wow


Cait - And it turns out, a very common scheme when you get busted is to pretend you don't speak French


Dante - That happened to me in Paris a few times but I had my ticket


Cait -Well slaj had no ticket
Cait -and she really can 't speak French
Cait -but she made the fatal flaw of saying 'je ne parle pas francais'.
Cait -Which, according to French police, is a dead give-a-way that you can.



Dante - And they weren't buying it

Cait -Yeah, so five male officers were harassing her and telling her she could speak French
Cait -and kept calling her a liar.


Dante - Wow that sucks.

Dante -French bastards! so that made you her guardian?


Cait -Anyway they got her good and riled up
Cait -which is not that hard to do, but I think they were actually very rude to her
Cait -and they demanded to see her passport.


Dante - Will this be a blog entry sometime soon?


Cait -Well you don't carry your passport around for the obvious reason that if it gets stolen you are stuck in France for the rest of your life


Dante -By the way do you keep the same hours as me...messed up?


Cait -Which is the equivalent of life in prison in some countries


Dante -Haha, exactly


Cait - PS yes, same hours, very messed up


Dante - Crappy prison with poop on the floor (FYI there is dog poop ALL over the sidewalks in France)

Dante - slippery poop


Cait -yes yes yes
Cait -I digress
Cait - At this point Sladjy pulled the fail safe and starting dialing her cellphone while the cops were yelling at her
Cait -which probably got her in more trouble.


Dante - Haha, no doubt.


Cait -So what would have been a 20 euro ticket became a 44 euro ticket because she didn't have her passport.


Dante - that makes sense


Cait -But let's be honest, it was France's way of punishing her for not having learnt French in 4 weeks


Cait -The End

The Only One Who Really Tries and Comes to Play

Step Number 2

The problem: at this point I was a relatively unknown player on a mid level OUA team, which until then, had only dipped it's big toe into playoffs. I didn't exactly have the resume nor the confidance to be asking for money to play volleyball on a professional team.
At this point the team was sitting at 2-5 in the league which I'm pretty sure is not good for your odds come playoff time.

But then something amazing happened. Whatever had been our hang up for the last few months (vball girls you all know what, or who, I'm talking about), we got over it. We became a team. And we started to pay well. Very well. Like 'Mighty Ducks', 'Bad News Bears' and 'Miracle on Ice' rolled into one well.
I started to play with more purpose. If I wanted to go somewhere after this, I would need to have something besides OUA quarterfinalist on my resume to back me up. I played with more confidence, and so did my teammates. We weren't the best team according to stats, rankings or the regular season standings, but we knew we could be.
To make a long story short, our 7th seed team pulled a fast one on the league, and upset the #1, #2 and #3 seeds to take the OUA title.
Now if I were to look back through time, perhaps at award acceptance speeches at a certain Lancer Athletic Banquet or to absolutely inappropriate pep talks after getting trounced by Laval, you would think that one person, who 'always tries hard and plays with passion, and pride', was responsible for the success of the team (hint: not me). But truth be told, the success was a direct result of teamwork.
I learned a lot from playing this past year. It gave me the experience and more importantly, the confidence to leave everything behind to follow a dream.
I learned even more from my teammates, who showed me what it takes to be successful. They were great in pushing me and supporting me. They made the decision to try this Europe thing that much easier.

Yesss! a blog is born

What is a blog? Baba is probably contemplating that question right now....

It's an easy way for me to post messages about what is happening in my life and keep everyone updated on my shenanigans. It is also a way for me to spend my days, wondering what I will write next.



So how did this craziness begin? How did I end up in France? And what am I doing here?

Let me begin....

Last year I was in Teachers' College, and as I sat through another absolutely useless lecture about classroom management or Piaget (I'm not sure), I had an epiphany.


I don't think I'm ready to be a teacher.


Right around this time the panic started to set in. Everyone around me was always talking about teaching, or preparing lessons or how they couldn't wait to apply for boards. Not that these things didn't interest me, but everyone else was so much more enthusiastic about teaching. So many people had given up different careers to become teachers. People couldn't wait to get out of Teachers' College to start their careers. Uh, gulp? Career, isn't that like 35 to 40years? Sounds like a prison sentence.

I had never been out of the city for more than a few weeks at a time, and now I could potentially be tied downed here until I retired.


I threw myself into school (ok, maybe not completely if you ask Liana), volleyball and enjoying what little time I had left in the free world (all those Wednesday and Saturday nights at Faces... oh how I wasted my undergrad studying). I could feel the time slipping through my fingers like water.

One night, I finally broke down and told my mom the truth. I didn't think I wanted to teach. At least not yet. She asked me what I wanted to do instead. The truth? Play volleyball. And get paid for it. She asked me if this was possible. It is possible, just not in North America.

At this point she shocked me.

"Do it." she said

Huh? I did not expect mymother to be the main proponent for stepping off the career path. If you know her you might say it seemed out of character.

Check off step one in the Euro plan. Get demi-parental support.