Euros Documentation

I did bring a camera to Euros but, unfortunately, I cannot find the USB cord to upload photos. I keep telling myself to buy a memory card reader. Alas....

So, for your viewing pleasure (or, more likely than not, for my own personal entertainment), here are some photos and videos - taken by others - of Euros. Come on, it's not like mine came out this good anyway! ;)

Russian Ksenia Semenova's floor routine in Event Finals. 14.625. Bronze medal.

Just check out the way she enters the floor mat! She has grown quite a bit since Beijing - some of the commentators were saying as much as 10 centimeters! She had quite a few form problems in Milan, but still managed to win the all-around comfortably. Hopefully she will get used to her new body and clean up some of her skills, because she is looking elegant and beautiful.

Russian Ksenia Afanasyeva's all-around floor routine. 14.575. Silver medal.

Haha, I love that both of the top Russian women are named Ksenia. I've taken to calling Afanasyeva "Big Ksenia" and Semy "Little Ksenia." For obvious reasons. :P

Both Ksenias train at the same gym and placed 1-2 in the all-around at Euros. They have kick-ass choreography too.

The Ksenias training hard at their home club in Moscow.

Romanian Anamaria Tamirjan's event finals balance beam routine. 14.750. Silver medal.

I like Ana a lot. She's a very elegant gymnast; I am glad she medaled here in spite of her wobbles, especially if it encourages her to continue on with gymnastics. She's dealing with some injuries - pain in one of her hips, a fissure in her thighbone, and was having some ankle problems after the all-around. The same goes for Ana's teammate, Gabriela Dragoi, who placed third in the finals. This was her first medal in a major meet and hopefully will be incentive for her to continue as she is dealing with chronic tibia pain. Sigh... gymnastics injuries... I'm thinking the Romanians really ought to do something differently with their training, as they are losing so many gymnasts lately.

On a second note, I am not the only one who's an Ana fan. Did you hear the horn in the background of the video after Tamirjan finishes her routine? That was courtesy of a particularly zealous Romanian fan who was not at all shy about voicing his allegiance to his team of choice. He blew that thing every single time a Romanian girl did a routine, but he went particularly crazy for Ana. He'd yell "Viva Ana! Viva Gabi!" He had a huge Romanian flag. It was great.

Apparently Steliana Nistor knows him, too. They spoke to each other throughout floor finals; I was in awe. I really need to figure out who he is. :)

Great Britain's Beth Tweddle on uneven bars for event finals. 15.575. Gold medal.

Beth's got a few form issues. But so do Nastia Liukin and He Kexin, and her releases are better than both of their's. And she's twenty-four fucking years old, ancient in gymnastics! She has decided to specialize on bars and floor in order to save her body for London in 2012. I hope she can.

Also - I met her father on the bus to the arena. I heard him speaking English and asked him when the bus was supposed to leave, and fifteen minutes or so into talking I found out he was her dad! I waited with him and her mother in the line to get in - but they called it the queue, hahaha. Very, very nice people.

Switzerland's Ariella Kaslin on vault during event finals. 15.050. Gold medal.

Kaslin's medals (gold here, and bronze in the all-around) were the first at Euros that Switzerland has ever gotten. Not perfect, but she can do a non-Yurchenko vault, and she can do it well. That earns her points in my book.

Other Assorted Photos

Men's floor podium - Matthias Fahring and Fabian Hambuchen of Germany, Alexander Shatilov of Israeli, and Eleftherios Kosmidis of Greece

Beam podium - Anamaria Tamirjan (Romania, Yana Demyanchuk (Ukraine), and Gabriela Dragoi (Romania)


Oh my God! Someone (Beth Tweddle) who actually points her toes during double pikes!

Little Ksenia mid-Pak salto.

Good luck at Worlds, everyone!!

Laziness/ La Pereza/ La Mandra

In whatever language you want to say it... yes, I have been lazy; terribly lazy, in fact, when it comes to writing in this blog. I guess Eva was write - writing in English, Spanish, and Catalan would be a lot of work. Oh well, I am up to the job, though my entries may not be as frequent as they once were or as detailed. I guess I will just provide a numbered outline with some key bits of news from my love - again, my laziness kicking in! :P

La Dolce Vita de Kayla Isaacs

(Yes, for those of you who are half-awake while reading this, that is not English. It's Italian!).

1. My "multi-part" series about the important people in my life - namely, my host family - will not be continuing, because I have switched host families. It was not my choice to switch family. No, that was a suprise my host mother pulled on me while I was away from home, which segues into event #2.

2. I spent two weeks in northern Italy during the Semana Santa (Spanish spring break). For those of you who know that Semana means "week" - as in, one week only -, I should clarify that I took a couple extra days off school. It was well worth it. :)

3. The original reason I wanted to go to Italy was to see European Championships (affectionately abbreviated by fans as "Euros") of Artistic Gymnastics in Milan. I did go to Euros indeed, and it was amazing. While many complained about the decline of European gymnastics over the years and found the meet outright painful, it was the first major competition that I've attended, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. A month later, I would still say I'm on a post-Euros high!

4. Speaking of Euros, I am trying to learn Romanian. Guess why? I met Steliana "Kick Ass" Nistor while I was there! For those of you living under a rock (which I'm guessing would be anyone who doesn't regularly follow gymnastics), Stela is a retired Romanian gymnast. She has a team bronze medal from Beijing, two silvers in the all-around and balance beam from the 2007 World Championships in Stuttgart, and several Euros medals. Unfortunately, these successes probably don't even measure her true potential, as she was plagued by injuries for nearly all of her senior career.

Stela at 2004 Junior Europeans, before her knee and back injuries and her growth spurt.
Her all-around total surpassed that of even Alina Kozich, the senior winner.



On bars at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Stela and I talked throughout the competition and ended up exchanging email addresses. She is a sweet, sweet girl and deserves nothing but the best (are you listening, Romanian Gymnastics Federation???) in her future.

Stela speaks to the Romanian press after women's qualifications in Milan.

5. I will be attending Mills College in Oakland, California this fall (and hopefully for all four years!). I have been getting to know my classmates through a Facebook (Oh, what would we do without it?) group, and they seem like wonderful women. Yes, it is a women's college, not a "girls' school" -

Dumbass!

6. It is now May. May 4, to be exact. That means that my birthday is in two weeks (!!), and also that I have been in Spain for over three months. Now that is crazy.

7. I still don't understand exactly why I had to change host families. I found out my last day in Italy that I was moving (way to ruin an otherwise perfect trip). My host mother sent me an email saying that her mother had to move in - no reason was ever specified - and that she needed me room. People from the exchange student organization packed my stuff for me, which I was really pissed about, and that was it. Aside from host mother, no one else even attempted to say goodbye.

8. On the bright side - I like my new host family much better than my old one. I have a mother (Antonia) and a father (Francesc), and two siblings (Berta and Eudald), which was basically the structure of my old family, except that this one actually wants to spend time with me. My host sister is 12 and my brother is 10 - obviously much younger than my previous host siblings (two boys, Ignasi and Joan Pao, who were 23 and 19, respectively). I'm sure the fact that they have younger kids contributes to the fact that we actually spend time together - my old host brothers were just always gone, and when they were around, we never talked. My old host father only wanted to talk about obscure historical events and was vaguely senile, while my host mother was almost always working or tired. In all fairness, I don't think they were a "bad" family - I just think they either were unwilling or unprepared to make the emotional investment of having an exchange student. Perhaps if they had a student who was a little more outgoing and who craved a little less familial contact, things would have worked out differently. Who knows?

9. I have come down with a bit of a cold. My host parents have been playing doctor, making me ginseng tea and asking about my well-being. It's adorable. :)

10. Our poodle, Claude (my father and stepmom's dog), died last night after a battle with some sort of immune disease. He was 9 1/2 years old. I was always afraid that one of our dogs would pass away when I was at boarding school (or, as the case may be, abroad), and now it has. I had thought he was doing better, but I guess not. Poor baby. He was truly a good dog, until very recently behaving like the puppy he was at heart. He will be missed.

Claude in happier days.

11. Right now, I don't feel like translating this to Spanish or Catalan. If anyone has a serious problem with that, leave a comment and tell me, and I will provide it. Other than that...

¡Adios!