After winning the 2005 WNBA Championship Ticha Penicheiro left for her home country of Portugal where she was honored with a big celebration and received a medal for outstanding sporting achievement. Shortly after her arrival in Portugal she was off to Moscow, Russia to play for her off-season team, Spartak. Recently, SacramentoMonarchs.com caught up with Pencheiro to see how life was treating her overseas.

Here�s what she had to say:

Well, I have been playing for Spartak Moscow since October 15th. Things are good here, despite the cold weather. Tamika Catchings and Natalie Williams from the Indiana Fever were my teammates for the first half of the season. Our team is in the playoffs of the FIBA EuroCup and we�re slated to play Nicole�s (Powell) team, Fenerbahce, beginning January 12th. Nicole�s team was in our pairings group at the start of the season and we have already defeated her team twice, but now it's the playoffs. It�s a best-of-two-game series and the winning team advances to the next round, but the losing team is eliminated from the FIBA EuroCup competition. Wish my team luck!!

I enjoyed playing with Tamika, she is my favorite player to watch in the WNBA. She is also a great person so it was fun to be her teammate. Natalie had already retired from the WNBA, but came to Russia for her final playing days. I can actually say that I played with her in the last game of her career! My team looks a bit different now, as Tamika went to play in Korea and Natalie retired, again!! ;-) Crystal Robinson from the New York Liberty and Lisa Leslie from the Los Angeles Sparks have recently arrived, so now we have to quickly work on our team chemistry because we have a lot of important games just around the corner.

In my opinion the Russian league is the most competitive league in Europe. There are so many great teams and players. Every game is a challenge. On January 7th, we played against Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Tammy Sutton-Brown and Kamila Vodichkova. Yes, they are all on the same team (Dynamo, Moscow)! Can you believe it?

I said before how much I enjoy watching Catchings play and now I have another confession, I'm a very lucky point guard!! In the summer I play with the "one and only" Yo Yo Griffith and now I have the pleasure to play with Lisa Leslie. I must admit that at first I was wondering how it would be because of the rivalry between the Sparks and the Monarchs. It almost feels weird that I will be passing Lisa the ball, instead of being in our famous �white line help" to make her life difficult, but I must say that I feel privileged to be teammates with such a player.

As for my life away from basketball, well, I just got back from Portugal where I went for 10 days to celebrate Christmas with my family. I feel rejuvenated and I'm happy to be back in Russia. Plus, I brought my parents with me, which means that I won't have to cook and clean for at least a month and a half!! YEAH!!! :-)

Moscow is a great city with lots to do, awesome places to eat and fantastic shopping!! The worst is the traffic. Sometimes it takes us two hours to reach downtown as we go bumper to bumper for most of the way. Thank God I have a driver, which allows me to take little naps, while we get to our destination.

Well, that�s all for now. I need to go to sleep and get some rest. Hope all is well in Sacramento; the season will be here before we know it!