Erin Thorn: Bonjour Sky Fans

I am coming to you from a small town in the south of France. The name of the city and the team is Tarbes. I have been here since the middle of September and we are working hard over here. We practice a ton, sometimes twice in one day, and we play two games a week because we are playing Euroleague. The fun part about Euroleague is that I am in the same group as both my Sky teammates Sylvia Fowles (Galatasaray) and Epiphanny Prince (Spartak), so I get to see some familiar faces along the way. We played Sylvia in our first Euroleague game and unfortunately came out on the losing end of that one. That was our first loss of the season, so I wasn't too sad.

We have played four French league games so far. Most other teams have played five, but we had one of our games cancelled because of strikes going on in France. I guess the government decided to raise the retirement age two years and people were not very happy about it. They shut down airports and gas stations - things got crazy - and the French Basketball Federation decided to cancel our game. That would have been against another Sky teammate, Mistie Bass� team.

Fortunately, things have settled down here and we were allowed to return to the court. Our most recent French League game was against Tamera Young's team ... seems like I play against a Sky teammate every week ... I even played against a former Sky player, KB Sharp, a couple weeks ago. Anyway, it was Tamera's first game over here in France. She played well, but we were able to sneak out the victory.

Outside of basketball, life is good in this small town. I have taken the opportunity, on the rare day when we aren't practicing or playing games, to wander around and discover. There is a nice park/garden that is a 15 minute walk from my apartment, there is some good shopping in the center, and some good places to eat ... everything you need to survive the overseas experience.

Hope you are enjoying your WNBA off-season. Take care Sky Fans!