After a long and interesting day of travel, we are finally settling down into our beds for a good nights sleep. The trip to Europe started out relatively smoothly - but chaos erupted about 40 minutes into the trip. The bus driver was whizzing thru traffic when all of sudden we realized he was slowing down and pulling over to the side of Interstate 64. We were all a little confused and thought perhaps he had to use the bathroom. But he soon revealed to us that the alternator belt had broken - just our luck. So stranded on the side of the road, we were given word to unpack our tightly packed suitcases from under the bus. (Now just imagine the amount of luggage that 20 girls have when they are away from home for over a month). In record time the bus was unpacked - and we all had a bit of elbow grease on our travel uniforms. We felt very accomplished at this point until the bus driver emerged and told us to repack the bus. So without hestitation Dingo, Lee and myself hopped in the luggage area and the rest of the girls started handing us the luggage. I think we may have set a new world record for quickest bus pack. So after about an hour of standing on the side of the highway, another bus rescued us. We eventually made it to DC just in time to catch our flight to Amsterdam. We flew for 8 hours, and then hopped on another bus for 5 hours to Bremen. We settled into the hotel, had lunch, and then training at 8pm. Surprisingly, we had a pretty sharp training run. Now its off to bed
Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose; and three times we tied - and unfortunately, ties didn't give us the point total we needed to go through to the medal rounds. The tie to Great Britain left a bitter taste in my mouth - it was extremely disappointing not to get a result because we feel that we are fully competent of succeeding at this level. I believe we have proved that we can play with the best in the world - the next step is proving that we can beat the best (consistently). Tomorrow, we play Spain in the 7/8th classification match. This game will be a great opportunity to play a highly skilled and talented opponent; it is an opportunity to get a win against a quality side. And it will be our last opportunity to showcase USA Field Hockey in the 2008 Olympic Games. Go USA.
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