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)