WARNING: LONG BLOG ENTRY!
...apologies in advance if you were in the middle of something!

Dear blog and all of you that have been following and waiting for this entry,

I am sorry we haven't written to you in a while - we have had a hectic few days which are now over - unfortunately!!!

I'll start from the beginning (Day one of the tournament) we all have to take different buses to the club due to our different game times - Bryce with the early game left on a brutal 7.30am bus with Anthony to make the 40 minute journey to the club for his 9am start against Canadian Arjun Gupta - a battle which he unfortunately lost in a close 3 - the altitude proving a little much against a really tough drawn out first round opponent.

Next up was me at 11.15 - I managed to come out on top with a convincing win over Daniel Prato from Venezuela - a good confidence booster leading into my next round against one of Pakistan's top juniors Farhan Zahman in the afternoon...

Even managed to get interviewed for Ecuador TV - had to talk really slow so they understood me!! NZ is now on the map in Ecuador...

Paul played a young Ecuadorian guy Sebastian Larrea and won in 3, pretty convincingly leading him through to the next round in the afternoon - against 3rd seed Lucas Serme from France.

Lance got to have a good sleep in (good stuff Lance!) and caught a 2pm bus for his 4.30 game in the afternoon for his second round tussle with Kuwait number one Yousef Saleh.

Bryce was up first for his first round of the plate against German Simon Vaclahovsky - a really tough battle which he unfortunately after 2 0 up - (dominating) ran out of steam with the altitude and just missed out on the win - another tough draw even for the plate when we looked around to see some of the other games on. He worked really hard and was unlucky not to come out with the win.

Lance was up next and took out Yousuf Saleh from Kuwait in straight games, the Kuwaiti was fit and a fighter but Lance proved too strong - fighting back as he does from 10 8 down in the second to break the guys spirits to take the third comfortably. Well done Lance for moving into round 3, into the top 32 in the world!

I played next, getting on against Pakistani Farhan Zahman and having a good warm up - unfortunately though the pace was intense, never having played or seen a Paki play, it was just too fast and I couldn't keep it up and ended up losing 3 0 - luckily enough he is still in the final 8 - I'll be cheering for him, just so that I can say I lost to the winner!! Unfortunately into the classic plate for me.

Paul then went on (it was quite good how it worked, we played one after another which meant we could all have Anthony for each game - which was handy, we could have all been scheduled on at the same time!) to play talented young Frenchman Lucas Serme who (after some huge, close rallies!) managed to get there 3 0 to put Paul and I in the same boat going into the classic plate - up to Lance to keep flying the individual flag for New Zealand against Aditya Jagtap from India.

Wednesday night marked the night of the Opening Ceremony - and we were pretty unsure about it - seemed like a weird idea to have it on the first night of play - after two rounds there were only 32 people left in the main draw which you can imagine makes for some upset players - a couple of upsets throughout the day and big games such as (unluckily) unseeded Andrew Schnell, Canada's number one player vs Mohammed El Sherbini from Egypt - a battle that Sherbini came out on top of in a close 4 - was the first real tight game we got to watch and it was of a huge standard - was great to see.

The opening ceremony consisted of all the countries dressing up (I must admit we looked pretty swish - unfortunately didn't have a camera with a memory card with us so can't upload the photos that we took during the night without a cord) and getting in a line and then walking through to the event room while getting photos taken - kind of like the countries at the Olympics opening ceremony - just with less people and unfortunately (coz we weren't in NZ!) hundreds of thousands of people taking photos of us! Was a good night though, heard some speeches, had some food, drinks (non alcoholic obviously) and chats with other teams etc.

As soon as it finished, we bolted to the first bus (it was about 10.30, 11pm by this stage and we are tired as) and got on and then left for hotel - thankfully didn't have to wait around too long. Got no idea what time our games are the next day yet - they hadn't done the draw for the Classic Plate that Paul and I were in or the Conso plate that Bryce was in - all we knew is that Lance was playing at 12:45 I think, till the next morning...

We set a time to wake up and Anthony rang us then and said could go back to sleep coz we did have enough time - weren't playing til 12! (thanks organisers for the notice) didn't know who playing or anything either - makes for a pretty rough preparation for a game.

Paul started it off against Andrew Schnell - probably the toughest guy in the classic plate (I mentioned him just before, lost to Sherbini - if I can add an entry from today (which is Friday) this guy is down to the last 4 in the Classic plate and I don't think he has dropped a set apart from the one that he lost to Paul in this game - was a close 4, unfortunately Paul just missed out on the win - was a massive rally in the 4th that I can't really explain but it involved a ridiculous amount of running and retrieving on Pauls part - and at the end of it he was absolutely stuffed! Was a good effort though - everyone would agree!

Straight after this, Lance is on against Indian 6th seed Aditya Jagtap for his spot in the last 16 - which I missed (see below why..) but Lance didn't quite make it - close scores but unfortunately no result today - was pretty disappointing for Lance and for all of us, we all wanted him to do well :( so day 2 is getting pretty depressing so far!

At the same time as Lance's match, and the reason I wasn't there supporting him is because we had a game time clash! I had to play the top player from Wales Sam Fenwick - and lost in 3 (I'm gonna blame Bryce's coaching in between games... joking, thanks Bryce I did appreciate it sorry I couldn't win for you!). Was mega close and I probably should of got there but was one of those days - so that was me out as well - now all that is left is to get ourselves amped for teams which we are all really excited about - its what we came for!

Pretty upsetting for the boys to be all out of the tournament, but Bryce still had a game to come at 3ish against a Welsh boy as well. Unfortunately he battled out another huge five setter - and managed to lose in a really close tussle that could have gone either way - so the guys were all a bit down - but time to refocus now for teams event, do a bit of training and watch some good squash! Fortunately the South African ref had a soft spot for Bryce and her words are that "he has the biggest heart she has ever seen" - so thats positive! I'll try and get a photo of them together in the next couple of days so watch this space!!!!

OTHER SQUASH MATCHES! Have been pretty decent! It's great to watch real good match ups - some of the highlight matches so far were Nick Sachvie from Canada (17-32 seed) take out 5th seeded Danish Atlas Khan of Pakistan in a massive 5 set grueller - was a gutsy effort and great to watch!! Charles Sharpes of England vs Egyptian (Sherin, can't remember first names!) in the last 16 games to make the final 8 as well - which Charles Sharpes took out in 4. Today (Friday - day 3 of competition) we went to the big shopping centre (it really is big...) and watched the quarter finals on the glass court. The end result being 3 Egyptians in the top 4 and one Pakistani - the guy that beat me - the other survivor.

• (1) Amr Khaled Khalifa def Aditya Jagtap of India 3 - 0
• (9-16) Marwan el Shorbagy (brother of Mohammed el Shorbagy - 2008 and 2009 winner) def (17-32) Ali Ashraf El Karargy of Egypt 3 - 0
• (9-16) Farhan Zaman (Pakistan) def (17-32) Mohammed El Sherbini (Egypt) 3 - 1
  
• (2) Ali Farag def (8) Charles Sharpes (England) 3 - 0

Funny story time, this made me not understand why we chose to go up the cable cars - thanks Ecuador engineering! Where the glass court is in the mall (it's 4 stories) there is a stand behind it for people to sit and watch the game - quite a small gallery but it's all good - anyhow we were sitting in the gallery and it's pretty rickety - untill between the 3rd and 4th match (after Zaman and Sherbini played - as Sharpes and Farag were warming up) we heard a big bang and a massive squeal/screams... me and Bryce are thinking OH NO, someone has fallen through (it's pretty high) and everyones just bolted off the seats in a matter of seconds...

Turns out no one was hurt - but the steel beam that was holding up one side snapped in half and folded over onto itself so all the seats caved in and were lucky not to just snap completely. I took some photos of the mayhem!!!

Everyone got to watch the end of the game from around the different levels of the mall - luckily the referees still got a seat...

Well, that's all I have for now. Tomorrow is going to be a big day - training at 10.30am and then again at 4.30 and we were thinking to mix it up in between we are going to do the thing that you would expect anyone coming to Ecuador would want to do at some stage - going to see the centre of the earth!! There is a spot 20 minutes from the club we are playing at just out of Quito where there is ZERO longitude, and ZERO lattitude - this is known as the dead centre of the earth!! It is also (obviously) on the equator so we will be able to stand on the equator. Really looking forward to the experience - on one side, the water apparently goes one way, on the other side, the water spins the other way! Weirdly enough... in the middle it goes straight down! I'm not sure how it works, but I'll try get photos.

I'll also try be on this more to update more regularly, sorry to keep you all waiting, this one has been a long time in the making!!!

Hope you aren't all too upset with us losing - we were all disappointed but we can only refocus now on teams event - seedings are done tomorrow so fingers crossed everything goes well for us, we'll see how everything pans out and let you know.

Thanks very much, and thanks for reading if you have made it this far...............
:)