High Performance YOUTH TEAM Blog: July 18th

Journal of Events
Hi this is Clotile and I am just going to tell you a little about my experience in Brazil. My journey started on July 17, 2008 and also pretty early. I had woken up at 9:30 so that I would be able to make the airport. I had made it on time and then off I went to start my 12 hour flight to Brazil. We were on the plane for about 2 or 3 hours before we hit Atlanta and a 9 hour and 15 minute to Brazil from Atlanta. The flight was pretty awesome though because when we had gone on our 2nd plane ride the air plane had all sorts of games and movies (so I couldn’t sleep much).

As soon as we landed in Brazil we went and had our passports checked, picked up our belongings and meet our tour guide through Brazil. His name was Czar and he is supper tall!!! And after all that we had to get on the bus for another 3 hours. But during the 3 hour drive I had seen a lot of places that here they call “favillas” and in Portuguese that means ghetto. It was amazing to me to see the way most people lived here. They literally live in run down buildings that are in pretty bad shape. It just makes me so much more grateful for all the many blessing that I take for granted in the USA.

We arrived at our hotel around 1:00 and we have a really nice hotel here, that is like the top 5 star hotels in the USA. The hotel we are staying at is called the “four point” and it also has an amazing view of the ocean. Then we got our rooms and watched movies. Around 3:45 we had eaten our first Brazilian food of the trip. Boy do I have to say that it is definitely different than the normal American food that I am use to (but I am not going to complain). Then we left to the “Fundacao De Esporte” which is actually the volleyball court that we were playing at.
We got to the Fundacao De Esporte and it was so amazing. It is just one court, but the place is huge. I was kind of intimidated at first, but that all changed when I realized that I would be representing the US. We had arrived at the court around 5 and our game was scheduled at 6. We didn’t end up playing until almost 6:30. We then played our first team who was “Macae”.
We played 5 games. The first game we played we won. We were focused and knew what our mission was. We started to play more games though, and lost focus and lost our match. It was tragic, but at least we knew that even with all the bad calls of the refs, we had still done some pretty amazing things. Finally, we got to meet some pretty amazing Brazilian youth who had so much spunk! It was kinda funny though, because they would try to say something in English and they just sounded so corny (not to be rude).

And that is how my trip is going so far.

Hey! My name’s Ashley! Brazil has been a pretty amazing place so far. The journey was long, but we all had a good time and got to know each other a little better. We even got a little bit of sleep! The bus ride was probably one of my favorite parts of the day. I loved seeing all the houses and the activities people did. To me, the houses in Brazil are not as important to the people as the houses are in the US. They’re merely just shelter, while they do their real living in the outdoors and interacting with other people. They all seem pretty happy too! We had dinner at the hotel, which was really fun. We had loads of good food, and most of the time we did not know what we were eating. The fruit was especially amazing. After dinner, we had our matches, with the Youth going first. They played very hard, and looked great to me, but there were a few crucial errors that the ref made so that in the end they lost. Up next was the Junior team! Our first game we went out and played pretty great, we won! We lost our energy in the second and third games, so we also lost those games. The forth game it took us about halfway through to come back again. We were building momentum as they were two points away from winning. We came back and won that game 26-24! The fifth game was awesome, we gelled together so much as a team, and won them with 15-11. It was a great feeling to win our first match in Brazil. I hope we’ll continue enjoying this country during our stay!

Hey this is Alydia! Despite the fact that the plane ride was long and very uncomfortable, sitting next to Kallie the entire way we found something to entertain ourselves. Not only was the plane ride long and boring but it was crazy! I took one sleeping pill and I just could not stop laughing. Once we got off the plane we went strait to a bus and drove 3 hours to our hotel. It was so strange to see how little people have here and how much we have and yet we still complain, but not once have I heard someone complain who lives here.

Once we got to the hotel we got settled in for about 3 hours and then we had an odd and yet delicious lunch. I ate an egg that was like a boiled egg but it was in some weird sauce. The desserts and meat were delicious! I just wanted to keep eating it! Oh and the rice was so so so so so good!!! After we ate we hung out at the hotel for about 30 minutes then we loaded the bus to go to our volleyball game. I have come to the realize that many people around the world have certain perspectives about the USA. My team had a few experiences with these perspectives during the game. Not only did we get called on doubles but it seemed like every 10 calls we were out of rotation, even though we weren’t. We took the game to 5, and during the last game to 15 I received a yellow card. It may sound strange but I was so fired up when Courtney got the pancake and it went into the net and a girl on the opposite side of the net hit the ball through the net and I hit it over and we ended up losing the point. So I did not like that and so I started to talk to the ref, ok I was yelling at the ref. Even though I was totally in the right and he knew it too, he gave me a yellow card. By this I learned so much and I am really thankful I got to experience that.

And I would just like to end by saying that Im already having so much fun and to my dad, that conversation we had on the phone… BAM! I’ll talk to you later J LOVE YOU MOM AND DAD!!
Hey this is Janae! Brazil has been pretty amazing! The flight was pretty long but we kept our self preoccupied with movies, shows, and games. When we got off the plane we boarded the bus and got to see all of Brazil, the houses and all of activities that they do. When we got to the hotel we checked in and then we went downstairs at eat lunch. When we were done with that we headed over to go play some volleyball!

The youth fought hard but in the end they lost 2-5 games. Then the junior team played we won the first game, but we lost our intensity and we lost the second and third match. But we turned it around and left with a win! I hope to have fun and experience more of Brazil!