St. John's University Athletics
Volleyball Postcard: Greetings from Vietnam Part I
5/10/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
- St. John's Volleyball Travels To 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
