From Daxing to The Olympic Village.

We woke up yesterday morning for our last training and found that it was the hottest day since we arrived AND the most humid. I took my camera to the pool to get a shot of the pool we have been training at. As you can see, there is so much water in the air the flash reflected off of it making the picture all hazy. Pretty impressive you can get a visual of the thickness in the air without actually being here!

So after our last three hour practice with The Netherlands (I'm not sure if I explained that before....the whole reason we came to Daxing when we first got to China was to go to a place where we could train while we got acclimated to the time difference. The Netherlands in not in our bracket of play during the preliminary rounds, so we invited them to train against us. We had two "official" scrimmages- official as they could get while running off someones wristwatch since the game clocks were missing! , two practices where we played "man-up and man-down situations" against each other, and a few solo practices for fine tuning.) we got all packed up and ventured out into the sauna to load the bus. I think it took three seconds for my favorite shirt we got to be completely soaked through. My wrists were sweating before I even reached down to grab my bag and haul it into the baggage compartment! Wrists sweat? I mean I am an athlete and work out all the time. This place is hot!

But that of course didn't put any sort of damper on our enthusiasm to get to the Village! We had coordinated matching outfits for the trip so that the team arrived looking great and tough. Black has a way of doing that. And if you look close the lettering is in gold. That has to be some sort of subliminal message to the world, right? Well, no need for subliminal.

And now we are here! This Village is incredible. The buildings and surrounding gardens (yes, beautiful Chinese gardens filled with flowers, ponds, and statues!) are gorgeous. The food is great. And there are so many amenities for the athletes. Now I would love to show you pictures of all these things but when we got here we were better informed of all the restrictions placed on blogs during the Games. And there are many! The biggest let down for me is that there can be no pictures of anyone but me from now on. Which is a huge cramp in my style since where ever I go my teammates are sure to follow and I love taking pictures with them. AHAH! I am still trying to make sure I have all the guidelines straight before I post something that gets me in trouble! So after looking through the almost 100 photos I took just yesterday after arriving her shortly after 3pm....there is only 1 photo of just me. Here I am with the HUGE mascot of the water sports located right next to the dining hall!

Oh and one more thing. I act like a kid in a candy store, all star struck by the other athletes. My teammate, Patty Cardenas, was sitting next to me at lunch yesterday. We had almost finished when she made a squeak I have never heard come from her before, a smile spread across her face and she pointed behind our table. I looked up to see the back of a Spanish athlete as he walked away. What Patty? That is the tennis player Nadal! OH gosh Patty. SWEET! Wimbledon Champion and all around awesome tennis player! She was sooo excited to see him. She is a huge fan. I was like "Lets go get a picture!". So we chased him down....and despite the fact that he was on his phone, and probbaly bothered by the many fans that were coming up to him, he took a picture with us. The smile didn't leave Patty's face all night. That is what the Olympics are all about!