Tamera Young: Taking in Turkey

Hey Hey Hey Sky Fans. I'm checking in from the great Kayseri, Turkey, where the sun barely shines and it rains every other day, HA, a special delight. There is nothing at all to brag about in this city. We have one small mall that I go to every other day either to buy groceries or have dinner. The food here in Kayseri is actually good. I mean HEY, everyone who knows me knows I love to eat. Aside from the boring city we do have a bowling alley and movie theater. I haven't been bowling yet, but I've been to the movies about four times. The movie theater plays American movies in English with Turkish subtitles, which makes it even better *pumps fist*. Oh, and can you believe this? The movies have a 10 minute intermission!

There are five Americans on my team including me. The other four Americans are Tangela Smith (Phoenix Mercury) and LaToya Pringle (Los Angeles Sparks) who are the picture to the right with me, and Vickie Johnson (San Antonio Silver Stars) and Julie McBride. My Turkish teammates are very young. Most of them are 18 or 19 except for two. The young Turkish players, like our point guard Burcu who you can see in the picture at the bottom right playing the drums with me, are hilarious and fun to be around. They are always trying to teach me Turkish or learn English. When they teach me a Turkish words they quiz me later and I always seem to fail, LOL.

The Turkish league is a nice, competitive league with the talent it has from many American and other Foreign players. There are 12 teams in our league and we are currently in 4th place. Our
schedule consists of practicing usually once a day. On other days we practice in the evening, in the morning we either lift or have a shoot around. The longest practice we've had so far was three hours, and the shortest was an hour and a half. We stay in the hotel for home games which is weird to me. The staff thinks it make us focus better, but before last week we hadn't won a road game, and we stay in hotels for those, HAHA. We play one game a week which makes the time go by slower than usual ... Tangela taught some of our teammates and me how to play the game Phase 10 so we play that a lot to kill time.

When we have days off I usually go to Istanbul, Turkey. It's an hour flight from Kayseri. There's much more to do there than in my city; nice food, good shopping and great night life. My coach gave us three and half days off one time, and I came back to the States. HA!! He never gave us that much time off again after that. I went to Israel during one of my weekends off. I had a nice time with all of the American players there including my loving Sky teammates Kristi Toliver and Dominique Canty. The food in Israel was bomb by the way, I would definitely like to visit again.

We have two more months until our last game which is April 17, then playoffs begin ... the top eight teams qualify for playoffs, so we shall see what happens. I am excited about this upcoming season and being able to have a full season with the Chicago Sky. Until next time I will keep in touch with all my supporters and fans through Twitter.. Follow @tyoung11 ... GO SKY!!!!!!!!!!

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