Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Continuing from Monday night when I mentioned that we were about to go to dinner, we walked to this little steak restaurant in The Rocks district near downtown. We all thought that we were going to get a good, quick and easy meal; however, there was a twist. Little did we know that we had to actually work in order to eat. This particular restaurant requires customers to actually cook their own meat. I must say this was a new thing for me, if not everyone. Most of us are not too handy with the grill, so you can see that this kind of presented a problem. However, we ordered our T-bones, sirloins, etc. and cooked our meat on the outside grill with the help of assistant coach Stacy Cantley, Mr. Finnerty (Megan's dad), and some of the locals. The meal was awesome and we had a great time learning how to properly cook meat.

After dinner, the team came back to the hotel and most if not everyone, was asleep by 9:00 pm, which is rare. I guess we haven't adjusted to the 14-hour time difference. We all had a great night's sleep and got up the today (Tuesday) to eat a wonderful breakfast in the hotel before our day actually got started. We left the hotel at 12:30 p.m. to walk down to the Sydney Harbour, which is only a couple of blocks away, to take a tour of the Sydney Opera House.

The Sydney Opera House is one of the most amazing structures that I have, or will ever, see. We got to go within the theaters where some of the most amazing and talented artists have performed. We also were able to listen to a chamber orchestra, who had a performance Tuesday evening, rehearse within one of the Opera House auditoriums. The music was so beautiful that it could bring tears to your eyes, and really makes you appreciate the musicians that perform something so beautiful. After learning the history of the structure and looking at some amazing scenery, we purchased some souvenirs and were on our way to eat our pre-game meal. Everybody keeps forgetting that we actually came over here to play some games, not just tour the whole time.

As we were walking to the Italian restaurant that overlooks the harbour for the pre-game meal, we ran across a mime. This particular mime wore aluminum foil as his costume, and had strict rules to do nothing entertaining unless you paid him to do so. So of course we had to see what he did, so a few players threw some coins in his cup and got a picture as well as a marriage proposal out of it. The player did turn down the marriage proposal because the mime had a foul smell coming off of his aluminum foil. The pre-game meal was great, but the only complaint would be that we had to eat with pigeons. The outdoor restaurant apparently has birds that walk around begging for food. This wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have players that were afraid of them.

After eating, we departed the restaurant to head back to the hotel to get ready the game. We arrived at the National Sports Centre where the Olympics were held to play our game at 7:00 p.m. We did win, but we had a hard time getting use to the rules that foreign teams have and all the differences in the game. Also, we still haven't gotten our legs under us from the plane ride to get use to the international extended court. All in all we did well, and we are learning new things that we need to improve on, not only for the upcoming game, but for the season as well. Well, this was our Tuesday and we are hoping our day off tomorrow will give us plenty of time to shop and relax before our next game on Thursday afternoon.