I arrived home last Monday night and last week flew by. I worked AIA camps and I didn't actually know what I was getting myself into it was very tiring but the girls were so awesome so it was worth it! I found once I got into a little routine I managed to survive with no sleep!
Yesterday mom and dad asked if I wanted to go for a Sunday morning bike ride... I thought it sounded great. I should have backed out when they told me it was to begin at 8am to avoid the heat. I woke up early and we headed out to the Dyke to start the bike ride it was a really gorgeous day the trail was part of the trans Canada trail.... really pretty! Anyways we biked and biked and biked all the way to Fort Langley in fact where we stopped for coffee and brunch. It took about 2.5 hours I was done after an hour forty five. I didn't see the point in hurting myself for a bike ride so upon my parents suggestion I called up my Megs and she came to my rescue! The bikers took a different route back, it only took an hour and a half. My butt is quite bruised today not sure how people get used to sitting on bike seats.

Happy Canada Day!!

Some pics from our Canada day festivities here in CT! Ben's parents watched from inside, Erin braved the mosquitoes and came outside to celebrate with us. Ben bought a ten dollar firework package dressed up in all of his Canadian attire and we had quite the show in the backyard.

Attended my first golf tournament today, the PGA tour comes to Hartford CT and Ben's grandparents have tickets. It was a gorgeous day out (got a little burned) I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly time passed. I don't love golf and so the prospect of attending a half day of events was not exciting but it turned out to be great!
Everything else is routine swimming in the pool a whole lot trying to stay in shape and getting in a few shots hoping my ankle/thumb pains will go away real soon!
Turning my attention back to the NBA draft... I love watching the draft!

It is 8pm and once again I am struggling to stay awake, for some reason as soon as 7pm hits I feel like I need to immediately go to sleep!
I went to the gym for the first time today since getting back and it felt really good to sweat again and I am hoping my muscles will come back quickly now that I am back to lifting again.

Ben and I went strawberry picking yesterday! Ben's mom wanted some strawberries so she sent us off to the fields. We used to go with grandma and it always seemed like a full day affair not leaving until we had buckets upon buckets of strawberries. I was surprised at how fast it went and how easy it was to pick a measly little flat of berries. It was the first time for Ben I don't think he enjoyed it as much as I do because he doesn't like to eat them which is half the fun of picking them, you can eat a bunch for free! Fresh tastes SO much better than anything you can buy in the grocery store.

I booked my flight home to BC for July 6th, excited to get back and visit the family, go on some hikes and once again re-organize my clothes!

me vs. jet lag

26 hours of travelling later I am back in Connecticut and trying to outsmart my jet lag (so far futile).
A wrap up of the last few days in China, while in Ningbo we stayed at an amazing hotel it was a sports hotel complex. The showers were amazing had a rain water feature that came from the roof, the beds were long and comfy and the water was clear! I wish we could have stayed there the whole time. The complex was pretty amazing it had a huge basketball facility nice little weight room cafeteria, one could only dream that something like that would happen for us in Canada!! The food was much better we had omlettes in the morning again multi grain toast and of course rice!
Game 3 against China was almost the lucky one... we actually ended up losing in OT I finally played okay! It felt nice to get a good game in I was starting to wonder when my game was going to come back. After the game we packed up and got ready to begin our journey home.

7am wake up to get in a little cardio and stretch
830 breakfast
930 depart Ningbo for bus ride to Shanghai
this was supposed to take 4 hours only took 3
1pm Arrive Shanghai airport
Too early to check in so we are fed pizza hut mini pizzas and an ice cream bar!
530pm Flight departs Shanghai for Toronto
655pm Arrive Toronto
clear customs, grab bags say some goodbyes, speed walk to air Canada desk to check in for flight to Hartford
8pm Enter US customs line
835 Arrive at gate 10 minutes before boarding
1115pm Arrive Hartford
1230am Showered and in bed!

It was a long day of travel but the plane to Toronto was empty and I got a whole 3 seats to myself, this coupled with a sleeping pill was amazing I managed around 6-7 hours of sleep!

The next few days I plan on eating a lot of food (I have a few pounds to put back) and resting. Next training camp starts in 7 weeks so taking some time to get my body right.

Only 3 days left in China and I am not going to lie I can’t wait to leave. While it has been really neat to see China and experience a little of their culture I am ready to sleep in a comfortable bed (note: not a rock hard mattress/board) Jordan and I went on a walk the other day to check out some of the little stores and we came across a bunch of little meat stores that just had slabs of meat out cooking in the humidity apparently their meat does not spoil in the heat. Speaking of humidity it is hot here the gym has air conditioning and thankfully they figured it out for our second game but the first game there wasn’t any. I could literally feel the water squishing around in my shoes and when I pulled off my socks I wrung them out and there was a large pool of water. My uniform was the same way incredibly heavy it was hard to keep your shorts up at the end of the game because they weighed so much.

We lost both our games so far the first one was rough we only had 3 points in the first quarter! I am not going to lie I was rusty which I should have expected but I know I can play better and being patient is a struggle. I got things going a little in the second half of the first game which felt good. Then today it was back to bad I couldn’t hit any of my shots but I did land some really good elbows and cheap shots although I am pretty sure I received my fair share. The refs have not called a whole lot so the game gets a little out of control at times.

Here is a quick look at what I ate on a game day:
Breakfast
Instant oatmeal (brought from home)
White toast with peanut butter
Our team thankfully bought us some youghurt

Lunch
Instant oatmeal x 2
White toast with peanut butter and banannas
Yoghurt

Dinner
White rice
White toast with peanut butter
Yoghurt
apple

No wonder I wake up in the middle of the night starving these meals are not very filling. I know I am picky but if you saw what some of the food looked like and descriptions to match them you would do the same.

Tomorrow is a 2 hour bus ride then an hour flight and then a 2 hour bus ride to a new city, Beilun. One more game and I am hoping to get back into old form again!

After a full 24 hours of travel we arrived in Quanzhiou China last night! The trip went pretty well we flew Air Canada so I watched quite a few movies a little Entourage and 30 Rock and slept a few hours. Once we landed in China 4 Chinese health officials boarded the plane decked out in full on haz mat gear. It really felt like we were in the movies they were head to toe covered, breathing masks you name it they had it on. They checked the temperature of everyone on the plane and we were warned not to take pictures. I really wanted to but if there is one country I would not want to mess with it would be China. Everyone on the plane was okay so we were able to get off and go through customs. We met with our translator and some other guys who were supposed to be helping us but we ended up walking around the Shanghai airport for a good 40 minutes before we found our bus and took a trip to another airport for our next flight. Some of the bathrooms had regular toilets others were just holes in the ground (they flushed and everything they were just floor level) squatting at that height after flying is incredibly difficult! Got to our hotel at 1230am China time which would be 1230pm Toronto time. Showered and passed out!

The hotel is gorgeous and breakfast this morning was amazing… got an egg white omlette, wheat bread and fruit. Way better than what we had for breakfast at training camp so I am thinking this is a really good start!

We went for a little walk around this afternoon and you have to really careful because sidewalks are for whoever wants to go on them; cars, bikes, motorcycles and if you are bigger you have the right a way. Needless to say we were a spectacle for many reasons, you learn to love people gawking at you.

Practice tonight and game against Chinese national team tomorrow evening.



June 09

Alright so this blog is coming to you via my family as you are not able to blog in China… the government will not let me open up the blogspot website. How do people live here??

This morning after another fantastic breakfast we found out the sponsor who brought us over to China and was paying for us to play the Chinese team left or went away so we had 40 minutes to pack up and leave. We knew it was all too good to be true. We moved hotels and not quite as nice … Jordan and I showered in really really brown water today. I have some pictures it is really nasty and when we tried to explain the problem they brought us new towels and bottled water! The problem did clear up after lunch we ran the shower for a good 5 minutes and it eventually cleared up and we both re showered. Lunch today consisted of peanut butter and steamed rice, toast with peanut butter and half a protein bar!!

The game is now postponed until tomorrow evening and we are practicing twice today. I was up at 430 this morning with a little case of jet lag so I am heading for a nap!