Published: May 10, 2007
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam
Dear Family, Friends and Fans:
When we arrived at St John’s Tuesday afternoon, we were all
excited about our trip to Vietnam. I knew we were all really
worried about the long flight. My seat was beside Alanna [Rutan]
and Patti [Hardimon]. The three of us slept the whole flight. There
was some turbulence during the flight, nothing that was that scary,
but I am pretty sure that Coach might have freaked out. Haha, she
is not a big fan of flying.
The first part of the trip to Alaska was almost 7 hours. When we
got in Anchorage, Alaska, we were all very tired. Some of us
crawled up on the floor and continued to sleep while waiting for to
board the next flight. The longest flight was from Alaska to
Taipei. It was nine hours and 45 minutes straight and there was not
much to do but eat, sleep and watch movies. But it was not as bad
of a flight we thought it would be. We got in Taipei at 7:30 a.m.,
and the time change completely messed us up. We were 12 hours
ahead. Right after that we had the last part of our trip; a four
hour flight to Vietnam.
When we got there we had a nice reception with Dr. Le and some
students from Vietnam. They gave us flowers and were very friendly.
It was really nice they were waiting for us in the airport.
The weather here is really hot. It felt like I was in Brazil
during summer time. We got in the hotel and had lunch. The food was
very different than what we are used to, but it was good! The way
they serve the food here is different from the United States. Here
they serve one big plate and everyone eats from it. We relaxed
after lunch, took naps and then went to practice. It was hard
getting into the playing mode because of the hot weather and the
plane trip. Yet, we had a really good practice.
After practice we went back to the hotel, took a shower and had
dinner, which was similar to lunch. We are getting use to it. We
had a wonderful day and already saw many different things,
including tons of people riding around on mopeds. Tomorrow we have
our city tour and I am very excited to go and see the city. It will
be fun.
Well its 1 a.m. here, so that means time for bed. Check back
tomorrow for another postcard from one of my teammates.
Ruisa Scheffel #15