April's Team, Journal Entry #1
By Lauren (Coral Springs) and Kristin (Coral Springs)
Day 1: Starting off our trip, we all met at the Miami Airport. Our flight left at 5:40 and the 9hr 20min flight to Paris went by fairly quick thanks to sleep and our ipods. We noticed that the airports in Paris are more advanced than ours. During our 90 min layover, we enjoyed some Parisian sweets and then got on the plane to head to Venice. We arrived at 11:30am into Venice and met up with the other Florida teams.
Day 2: We put all of our belongings on the tour bus and then took a local bus into Venice to tour the historical magnificent city. When we departed from the bus, we ate at an authentic Italian resteraunt. Afterwards, CJ took us through a non-stop spectatuclar tour through the amazing buildings and shops. We managed to buy our Italian soveingers in record time. From visiting the Rialto Bridge, pigeons in the San Marco Square to seeing the gondolas, it was an awesome adventure. Coach April especially liked feeding the pigeons! After all the excitement we had to go back to the airport and board the bus to head to Izola where we had dinner and went to bed.
Day 3: We woke up at 8:30am (2:30am Florida time), had a quick slovenian breakfast and headed out to play our first match against a team against Croatia (lost to Payin, 19-25, 12-25). After playzing, we went to watch our other teams play at a gym called the bomb shelter by the locals. Then we had more italian food and ran back to the gym to play a team from slovenia. We had about 3 min to warm-up and 2 balls amongst the 7 of us, it was quite a change from USA warm-ups! We lost our 2nd match as well to Lakolhanikaran, but still got such a great experience. We got to take pictures with the other teams and meet them and their coaches. Its pretty strange hearing them talk on their side of the court and having no idea what they are saying! Some of us decided to get daring and take a quick jump into the freezing Adriatic Sea!!!! We quickly jumped into the hottubs, then hung out and had a Slovenian dinner with the other teams. We play early tomorrow and hope to get a good nights rest. We miss everyone and can not wait to share all the stories and experiences!
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