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Bowling Green State University Athletics
Van De Walle Blog - July 12
July 13, 2007 | Volleyball
July 13, 2007
CHINA -
July 12
Started the day out earlier because of opening ceremonies There
are seven countries represented in the AOCVD Tournament. China, USA,
Malaysia, Iran, Australia, Japan, and Mongolia. The ceremonies were
quite small with all the teams sitting and listening to the chosen
speakers. The most interesting teams are Iran and Malaysia. Because they are Muslim countries, they must play fully covered..from head to toe. It's pretty amazing that they can move at all in their coverings. After the ceremonies we practiced for an hour and then played China again. We played three sets and lost again. China is REALLY good. It's hard for me to explain just how good they really are.
We played MUCH better against them today and had really great rallies. We ate lunch at the sports school which was an experience. They served real Chinese food...not what we're used to at home. So the team was leary to try it. Today was a lot of different seafood mixtures. I personally love the food here. I have had lots of fried rice,tofu, broccoli, the best potato salad ever,tons of watermelon. They always offer lots of desserts as well. Today they offered us a chocolate fountain to dip our fruit in. It was awesome! Then it was back to the gym to train again for an hour. It was ok. The Dutch coaches are here to watch the tournament so they train with us.
Since we spent a week with them in Oklahoma they feel like good friends now. We headed back to the Hotel and had dinner then back to the gym for a coaches seminar on Sitting Volleyball with the Iranian men's sitting volleyball coach.It was really interesting to listen to him...through an interpreter of course. Back to the hotel and lights out at 11pm. Tomorrow will be a repeat of today. We have the exact same schedule.
The team is doing really well adapting to the 12 hour time change and a completely different culture. I mentioned that everyone smokes here and that is tough to be around. Also, the traffic here is unreal. People drive really crazy. The weather is really hot and humid and there really isn't much air conditioning as we travel in the bus or the gym. We are certainly spoiled at home.
Good night.
