National Team 2014 - Journey to Taiwan - Day 2

Well day 2 has come and gone and it was a fairly busy day.

I woke up at 5AM because I was asleep by 8:30 last night. I checked some emails and did some reading until about 7 then I got up to shower. Headed down to breakfast after this and it was standard bacon, eggs, ham and hash browns. I didn't veer too far off that path this morning. Had some coffee and it was very good. 

After breakfast I came back to work on my practice plan and catch up on some emails. Once I was finished I decided to venture out into the humidity for a short walk around the area. Lots of interesting things to see and there was a neat little park right beside us. Here it is.

In the park there is a neat little pond area and some benches to sit on. There are some really interesting plants and trees and I even made a new friend

After my walk I cam back to the hotel and we had a team workout at 11:30 in the hotel workout area. Not much space or equipment to work with but our physiotherapist Patrice did a great job

We had lunch at 12:30 and it had pasta (not the best), a fried pork dish which was good and then lots of other mystery items and rice. I tried cream chowder. Not clam or corn or seafood but plain cream chowder. It was excellent and I suspect it leaned more towards the corn chowder taste. A little mango ice cream for dessert was nice. 

After lunch we headed off to practice. It took us almost an hour to get there through another thunder and lightning storm. Traffic was heavy and the scooters were everywhere. 

We got to the stadium and it wasn't a bad gym however we decided to have a stinker of a practice. They tried to do some things well but most of the practice was a grind and the girls struggled to communicate. I discussed this with them afterwards and talked about letting it go. This is the national team level and if they want to be on senior teams in the future they must learn the mental skills along with the physical skills. 

We sprinted through the rain to get back to our bus and settled in for the hour long trek across the city to our hotel. Along the way I just observed Taipei through the windows of the bus. I have seen a lot of interesting things through the windows of a bus through the years. Taipei is very clean and LOTS of little businesses. In some places it is almost like one little "stall" type shop after another. They sell everything with many shops devoted to scooters and helmets. We did see numerous starbucks, mcdonalds, KFC and burger king though. I guess they are everywhere. 

When we got back home I went straight to the shower. The humidity had gotten the best of me. A quick rinse and we were scheduled for supper. Cream chowder again, a very nice pasta, some whipped potatoes and a beef and mushroom dish. Curry chicken was also on the menu. I sampled a little bit of each and it was a great meal. 

Our staff decided to meet at 7:30 to go for a walk and we headed about 15-20 minutes away from the hotel. We went to a mall that had a nike and adidas store along with some other neat shops. I didn't find anything to buy but maybe that will happen at the night market later this week.

The humidity was high so the minute I got back to our room I jumped in the shower. It felt good to have a cold shower. It might be a struggle to live here year round with this humidity.

So now it is time to head off to bed. Get some rest for game day tomorrow. 
We have a shoot around at 10AM and then we play our first game at 5pm. I have nothing on live stats or webcast so I will update the scores via twitter and here on my blog. Looking forward to getting started but a little worried as the other teams look experienced and good. Guess we will wait and see. 

Until tomorrow.......