I've become a blogger: Surprise! GB in Quimper!

Thursday January 7th-Saturday January 9th

I'm going to take you back 2 weeks time. You may not remember what you were doing on that Thursday the 7th, but I sure do. If I didn't, this blog might be a little boring. A typical thursday usually consists of breakfast 9:30am, French class 10am-11:30am, Training 12-2pm, lunch 3pm, video anaylsis 8pm, Training #2 8:30-10:30pm, dinner 11pm, and then an episode of "Rescue Me".

However, on this particular thursday, the Great Britain National team arrived at the Ibis Hotel in Quimper in preparation for a 3 day training period with my french team Quimper Volley 29.

It was great to see the girls again! I missed them over the christmas training period. I don't know why they thought they had to speak french with me. Anyways, they had arrived safely and full of banter!

We trained the following day in preparation for our "official" match on Saturday evening.

Ok, so now we're to Saturday evening the 9th. We're playing in a brand new gym in Quimper. Our typical home crowd has come, 600 people, "God Save the Queen" has been played energizing team GB, and now we're ready to play.

Great Britian vs. Quimper

Maybe nows the point to mention, I played with Quimper against my national team. Due to having now just 2 middles on Quimper, it was necessary to play with them. Lucy and Rach (my fellow brits on Quimper) played with GB.

It was a challenge mentally that I hope I

never have to do again. The only thing I could focus on was...to just play. I was psyched up to play a great game of volleyball and wanted to win. The match went back and forth, lasting 5 sets. I suppose the biggest challenge occurred during the match right after Rachel got a line drive hit smack in the face. She was not being able to see and a time out had to be called. So after this time out, I'm up to serve. As I'm walking back to the end line to serve I'm thinking, "I can't believe I'm about to do this". Do what? Serve Rachel. And that I did.

It's all in the past now. In the end, GB pulled out a better performance in the 5th set, beating us 15-10 (I'm not sure if that's the actual score, but it was around there).

So it was a successful weekend for GB. They won, played competative volleyball for 3 days in France, got to meet the major of Quimper, eat well, and practice their french (ou est la salade?)

The weekend brought lots of excitement for our summer season beginning in May!