May 22, 2000

Today was competition day. We had breakfast at 8:15am with taping and treatment in the trainers room at 8:45am. We were in rooms right next to the gym and had a team meeting at 9:45am and began our match warm-up at 10:00am. Our first match was against Sweden's National B Team, losing the first two sets 17-21 and 15-21. We lost the second set in a tie breaker 18-21, 21-15 and 10-12 (rally to 7 point). We have truly improved as a team, particularly without practice time on the road. We ate lunch (sandwiches) at the training center with all the other participating teams. We began our warm-up for the second match at 1:00pm and played the Danish National Team at 2:00pm. We won the first set with impressive blocking 23-21 and 21-19. Denmark won the third set in a tie-breaker 9-15 (rally to 15). They know who Florida State is now!

Everyone took showers an forty-five minutes later we left for Tivoli Gardens in downtown Copenhagen. We had to stop and exchange our currency again, over to Danish Kronas (8 Krona equals one American dollar). Tivoli Gardens is one of the oldest amusement parks in Europe. We started with dinner at Groften's...the place to be seen is the park. We had a pre-ordered dinner of Danish food: pickled herring with capers, roast beef, fried flounder, chicken salad, potato salad, pork, blue cheese, baskets of wonderful bread and colas.

We handed out incidental money and off the girls went to experience all the rides. We found them all on one ride we'll refer to as the "brain scrambler". Lucy McDaniel bought a ticket, jumped in line and all we did was laugh and scream and hold on for dear life until the five minute ride was over. We wobbled off down the ramp holding the handrail and trying to catch our breath.

We reassembled at 11:00pm for the train ride back to the training center. We hopped in the taxi's for the last few blocks from the train station and arrived back at our rooms for a well deserved rest. Tomorrow is our final day of competition for this team. We look forward to playing Ireland and Denmark B Team.