Day 2
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Straight into the court sprints after breakfast this morning, had a hitting session just doing drills and trying to get the timing right, then did some running which we all struggled with a little bit, getting used to the burn in the lungs (it's such a great feeling!). It was a good session, even though it was hard - can feel ourselves getting stronger and more used to it already! The court we used was on the Penthouse floor of the second tower of our hotel - there's a swimming pool and a gym up there as well as the penthouse! Here's a photo of the court, that we all found pretty funny... Don't try and hit a corkscrew! (Take a look at the top left hand side of the front wall...)

Was a pretty uneventful day aside from the hitting (which is what we are here to do so that works out ok!), we just came downstairs and had lunch... the food at the restaraunt here is pretty good - all the food in Ecuador isn't actually too bad, we haven't found anything too repulsive yet!

After a couple of hours of lunch/downtime we headed off to the club again for our practise session (each team gets 2 hours per day of practice times at the competition venue) where we just played some matches, Paul vs Lance and Michael vs Bryce. Michael and Lance came out on top for today in 5, but far out, they were reallly hard, the altitude makes a few rallies seem like a whole match - get tired pretty quickly. Getting better though already I think, we will be good as normal soon! The court we played on (we didn't get a photo of it unfortunately) had a wooden plank (about 50cm x 50cm) on the front wall on the forehand side about halfway between the service line and the tin - they are covering up a hole they are going to reseal - but every time we hit the plank we had to play a let on the ball coz it was just bouncing crazy!!!

Watched some other teams training and everyone looks alright, we think we can take them though!! Not really too sure yet where everyone stands, just getting a feel for how things are looking for a start so yeah.

Back to the hotel for dinner and a relaxing night doing nothing - however got one last photo of doing the washing today... unfortunately, we can't find a laundry so we did our washing today by use of the bathtub and some water/washing powder! We also made a swear jar up which consists of any word that could be negative pretty much - so its $1 US if anyone swears!!! (Not that any of us will or do) but I can say that Bryce got off to a flying start... cheers mate!

Our Spanish is starting to get really good now, we are almost fluent!
So, adios for now, buenos noches...gracias... that's about all we have got so far, si!
Hope everyone back home is well :)

Cheers (more tomorrow!) - PS: PLAY STARTS ON TUESDAY - (will add our times in tomorrow)

Day 1
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Woke up and had breakfast - then headed straight off to Quito Tenis y Golf Club for our first training session at altitude. Jumped in a taxi outside the hotel - found out the club is about half an hour away from the hotel (we were thinking, oh no, it's gonna cost heaps for a taxi...) which cost us $6 (USD). Really cheap - but crazy drivers! People all over the road, tooting everywhere, getting through tiny gaps and it was weird because all the roads are the opposite way round, driving on the right!
Facilities are pretty good - squash courts are nice but FAR OUT - never seen a ball bounce how it does here, and they even give us special altitude balls. Was pretty weird jumping on the court and starting to hit, trying to time the ball right when it is so fast took a bit of getting used to but it's good conditions for the way we want to play - really easy to make mistakes as got to aim so low on the front wall so if we can eliminate mistakes from our game, our opponents will make them for us. Can see some really tough battles coming on - so hard to get winners so rallies will just go on and in the end it could come down to who is the most mentally tough as to who wins matches.

Altitude is the weirdest thing - it still feels the same to breathe (it's not like there's no oxygen) but once you start moving around a bit it starts to get tough. Anthony says we will adapt and it'll be just like normal after a few days - can't wait for that coz we all got the lungs going doing rotating drives/tramways today!


Anthony had a game as well - getting straight into the altitude! We might try get away with passing him off as a member of the team...

The rest of our day was spent going up to the lookout at the top of the Volcano, Pichincha - 4,100m high! So we took a cable car to the top and got some amazing views of Ecuador (which is HUGE!!!) and had a good time.

That was our day - apart from that we went to the supermarket etc, enjoying Ecuador so far - will update tomorrow!

The Flight

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Well well, we got to the Hotel 24 hours after leaving Auckland Airport on Thursday (somehow it was only 9pm here and we had left at 5pm... who knows!) - an extremely long 24 hours considering we couldn't really sleep on the first plane (11 hour flight to Santiago, Chile) and then after spending a couple of hours wandering around Santiago airport we jumped on another plane bound for Quito, Ecuador (via Ecuador's largest city, Guyaquil) - a 7 hour journey! We promised not to sleep on this flight (even though it was about 3am NZ time if I remember) and we were absolutely knackered and struggling to keep our eyes open - the idea was that we would be tired enough to sleep through the night in Quito so we could straight away be adjusted to Ecuadorian time.A lot happened along the way - Bryce made a new friend on the plane from Auckland to Santiago...

Anthony made friends with an ex-war vet whose son was flying the plane - unfortunately we didn't get a photo with him because he got moved up to first class (pfft!).
When landed in Chile we were a bit taken back when we saw a huge mountain right next to us. Took a photo (unfortunately it was a little bit hazy which made it hard to see, but it was quite pretty!).

When we got onto the second plane, we were a bit gutted to find out that there was NO TV's in the back of the seats! It was a long journey without being able to check out the in flight entertainment - especially how tired we were, playing games would have been something that could keep us awake! There were a couple of times people started to nod off to sleep and we even got a photo of Bryce just after he passed out - he wouldn't let us put it up though (fair enough, looked terrible!).

Bryce and I (right at the back of the plane) were lucky enough to have a rockstar sitting next to us. It was pretty cool to get some insight and wisdom from him (joke). Here's a photo of him (I hope he isn't watching this blog...)


Made it to Quito (finally) and Customs at the airport has a good system - every time one of the customs officers is free, they press a button and it tells the passengers which one is free so it works fastest. HOWEVER, they decided to connect this button to a terrible loud beeping noise - everytime one of the ten officers were free we got to hear it again (after 20 hours, it wasn't nice!). Thanks Quito Airport for the headache! Here's Paul and Michael waiting in line...


Thanks for reading if you've made it this far... more soon about our first day in Ecuador!
Cheers,

Paulo, Fernando, Alejandro, Antonio and Miguel
(Paul, Bryce, Lance, Anthony and Michael)

Welcome!

Hi, welcome to our blog of the World Junior Boys Championships in Quito, Ecuador - 27th July-7th August 2010.

We are leaving tomorrow (Thursday 22nd July at 4.40pm) for 20 hours of travelling till we reach our destination where we are sure to play some amazing squash!

Be sure to check back regularly to follow our progress as the tournament goes on - about our games and what Ecuador is like! (Check the time above/posts to see what time it currently is in Ecuador, we are 17 hours behind NZ!)