PLayer Journal: Days 1-2
 |
|
| Sarah Holloway, Jessica Curtis, Bethany Howden, Erin Larson, Jenny Andrew |
We are in Rome!
We left Austin yesterday (Tuesday) at 2 p.m., and flew to Cincinnati, where we departed for Italy at 7 p.m. (6 p.m. Central). We flew through the night and tried to sleep on the plane, but most of us were unsucessful because it was too early for most of us to need to sleep. We landed in Rome after a nine-hour flight at 10 a.m. (Italy time), but to us, it felt like 3 a.m. since our bodies were still on Central time. We were pretty tired to say the least. Once we arrived, (Head Coach) Jerritt (Elliott) told us that, while on our trip, we would be playing the Texas volleyball version of the telvision show The Apprentice. We divided into two teams with Mira (Topic) and myself being the captains for the day.
My team, the Italian Stallions included Sarah (Holloway), Erin (Larson), Jenny (Andrew) and Jessica (Curtis). The other team, The Stunners, included Mira, Dariam (Acevedo), Tea (Leticia Armstrong), Jen (Christian) and Brandy (Magee). The tasks that we had to complete included taking a picture of the youngest Italian we could find, the oldest Italian we could find, and as many people as we could in one picture holding up the "Hook 'em Horns" sign (we later that this sign does not translate well over here!).
We also found out each team would get points deducted if any of us where searched by customs or if any of us fell asleep during the day, because we were supposed to stay up all day in order to sleep during the night to get accustomed to the time change. In addition, we had to learn five Italian phrases such as "I play volleyball" and "I am hungry and thirsty" and "where is the bathroom".
After getting our lugage we were met by our tour guide, Tim, and boarded the bus to head to the gym. We practiced for about an hour and a half, then traveled to our hotel in downtown Rome. The hotels here don't have elevators so we all had to drag our suitcases up flights of stairs to our rooms, and since we are women we definetly learned the hard way that we overpacked.
 |
|
| The Roman Coliseum |
We quickly took showers and headed out for some sightseeing. We broke up into our two teams and were instructed to navigate through Rome and meet at the ancient Roman tribute to the Gods, the Pantheon. My group decided to make the trip on foot, while the other group took the Metro (the underground subway system). The Stunners arrived in twenty minutes, while we sprinted the last four blocks of our hour-long journey to make it on time. We arrived with 45 seconds to spare!! The Executive Committe (our coaches and staff members) then judged how we had completed our tasks to determine who got how many points, and who had points deducted for several things. They even gave us a quiz on the Italian terms we were supposed to learn.
When all the points were added up, my team - the Italian Stallions - won by two points. We were promised either a great prize for winning or a bad prize if we lost. And yesterday, the losing team felt the sting of defeat! Mira's team had to wake up at 7 a.m. and find a way back to the airport to retrieve Tea's bag, which she had forgotten to pick up with the rest of her luggage the day before. Since my team won, we were allowed to sleep in until 9 a.m., which was the best reward we could have dreamt of after a long day of traveling, training and sightseeing.
This morning we all traveled by Metro to see the Coliseum and the Forum. After sightseeing for most of the morning we shopped for a bit, then headed back to the hotel to rest up for our game tonight.
So far we've had a great time, and we keep saying, "We're in Rome!" and "We're in Italy!" It's hard to remember that just a couple of days ago, we were sitting in class taking our last finals!
We'll keep you in the loop about what we're up to so keep checking back to see what we've been doing and how we've been playing.
