6-30

this morning the men got up early to go for a jog. at 8:00. so i decided to sleep in a bit since we stayed up til about 2 playing poker the night before. but i couldn’t actually go back to sleep because i felt like i had overcome the jet lag. in reality, it was because i’d taken a nap until 2 am EST so now i was up for the rest of the east coast night.

today we had the flag raising ceremony. we got together with the US men’s waterpolo team, who all looked like large, blonde, mustached bears. there was also the US men’s and women’s basketball teams. they made kris uy, our 6′4 welterweight, look like a shorty. we walked up the red carpet to the flags, the same place we kicked outside yesterday. then we saw the Universiade Sparrow, and took a few goofy pictures with them.

the flag ceremony was nice and short, despite having about 100 US athletes there. when i say short, i mean time, because most of those people were either over 6 foot tall or over 200 lbs heavy, or both. i got the women’s bball center to take a few pictures for me, and when she reached up with my camera it reached up about twice my height.

we went to the official practice room a bit late because of the ceremony. there was a long tkd room with a long set of mats, and the spanish and australian teams had been there for a while. we finally got some room and kicked out with some team drills, and i felt really pumped with all the energy in the room. except my calf was getting more and more pained so i could only kiyup loud and pretend i was kicking hard.

on the way to and back from the training space, we took the C shuttle. and one interesting sight was that when we went over the bridge each time, you could see the slums that were under the bridge – old abandoned cars and tin foil roofs and clothes lines hung up between the trees. and there were lines of old abandoned trains with graffiti all over them and broken windows. also, everywhere you see wild/stray dogs running around, in ones or pairs, just hanging out in the streets. serbia is still an old city, with trash and industrial waste all over the place, a combination of the new athletic complexes and the old ruins from the US bombing in 1999.

we had a second workout at 7 or 8 pm today. by that time everyone had been napping for an hour and we were super tired. i was out of it until we did a few warmup drills, then my poomse felt pretty good. i also used a little gadget called “the answer” which was supposed to help you kick high and be stretched and warmed up after a minute per leg.

at night, we got our SWUG swag. nice USA jackets, nike warmups and shirts, and a few polos and a pair of shorts. it’s pretty sweet stuff. that also meant that we got our luggage back – it felt so good to have a real shower, a change of clothes and a shave. also, carissa and becca arrived so our team was all there.

tomorrow the individual poomse people, johnny nguyen and carissa fu, compete. we’ll be up at 8:30 to cheer them on.