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RHIAN'S SOCCER JOURNALS:

HERE WE GO 29th July 2008

Tomorrow we depart for China, so today’s training session was a really tough one. This would have been bad enough under any conditions, but as so often happens under Murphy's Law, today was the hottest day we have yet had in Singapore.

We were out on the pitch at 10:30 am and by 11:00am we had probably lost more volume of sweat than we had in all other sessions combined. It was disgusting. It was so insanely hot that just making your legs move was a huge effort. The only thing that made all this easier to handle was the fact that the Brazilian men’s team played Singapore here last night, and the great Ronaldinho himself was visibly struggling and sweating - and he’s Brazilian!!!

Despite this last trial, I don’t think we could have found a better place to do our staging and heat acclimatization. It is a beautiful city, food and accommodation are good, and it has truly been scorching here. Despite all my zinc oxide and sunscreen, I have managed to burn arms and face. I am told that this means I will burn less in China ... right?

The training session itself was a basic one. It was just long. We had some one-touch play, a scrimmage, and then some fitness. Finally we headed back to the hotel at around 1:45 pm. Long...

The rest of the day was off to ourselves. However, most of us were so exhausted that we went straight to bed. Then, after a long nap, and feeling slightly more energetic, Robyn, D, and I headed out to find a Toys’R’Us store. This was part of an attempt to find the board game Trivial Pursuit. We thought it would be a good way to stimulate our intellectual juices, but we were unsuccessful - sad. I thought that Trivial Pursuit might kill some time for us between events in Beijing, I guess I am going to have to do without the game though, as I was told that they haven’t sold Trivial Pursuit in Singapore for two years now. I will have to make do with cards.

Not much else has happened today. We had a meeting and received schedule announcements for tomorrow. It is really game on now, as we leave our little haven here for the "big show."; Tomorrow is going to be an insanely long travel day, at least it appears this way on paper, and these things usually end up being longer than the paper versions. My sister Sara sent me a bon voyage message.

Even though I am less than thrilled about another long day of travel ahead of me, I have also just started to feel the pre - tournament butterflies. This is really it.

I am not sure when I am next going to be able to post, as I am not sure what the internet situation is going to be like in China, but I will do my best to keep everyone up to date with our goings. I will do the best I can.

Here we go!