What a whirlwind of a few days!!
I had a great flight over - no delays and nice and quiet so I could sleep :) I had lots to do Tuesday night so I didn't start packing to midnight - got to bed about 4am - up again at 6am - so I was well and truly ready to sleep! I had company to fly with as I am here with another Aussie umpire which is always nice. We met up with 4 of the other umpires at our 4 hour stop over in Santiago - made it go quickly and it was lovely to catch up with them all.
It's a much shorter trip to Argentina than it is to Europe! Just the 14 hour flight from Sydney to Santiago, Chile and then 1 hour flight across the border to Mendoza. A nice change from the 2x 12 hour flights and 1x 1 hour flight to Glasgow in July.
Most of the umpires arrived here the same time as us on Wednesday. Get how funny this is - I left Sydney on Wednesday 26th at 11:50am and after a 20 hour journey, arrived in Mendoza at 4:30pm on the same day!!! Makes my head spin when I try to think about it. A good discussion for when we are talking about time zones in Maths.
I umpired a practice match on Thursday morning between New Zealand and Germany - was good to get the legs moving and get a feel for the pitch. All of us then did a fitness session followed by a long briefing (a meeting when we talk about the rules and how we are going to work as a team).
I showed my video clip on Thursday night that some of you helped me with lol - everyone loved it :) I will upload the whole thing when I get the chance.
Friday included more fitness and more meetings including a meeting about how the video umpire process is going to work. My roomie Sarah from Scotland and my good friend Annelize from South Africa (you might remember them both from Comm Games) went for a walk after lunch to the supermarket down the road. A pair of stray dogs came and laid next to us while we had lunch and then followed us to the supermarket. I was a little scared and tense that they'd attack us but it seemed they just wanted to keep us company. We tried to lose them along the way, e.g. crossing the road and going into shops but they just followed us across the road and back again and waited outside the shops for us. It was extremely weird!! THEN ... anyone that passed at got chased or barked at! Could not believe what we were seeing. They even ran onto the road in front of cars to bark at people on bikes and scooters haha. They were like our personal body guards.
We are 14 hours behind here. So while it is about 3:30am back home in Sydney on Sunday morning and I should be fast asleep - I am eating a ham and cheese toasted sandwich in the hotel lobby for lunch on Saturday. Can't eat too much because I am too nervous for my game tonight.
As most of you know Miss Russell got married yesterday!! So exciting!! My Mum went and face-Timed me from the Church so that I could watch Miss Russell walk down the aisle and come back down it as Mrs Dew. It was beautiful to watch. I was very sad not to be there though. Mum got a great photo of Mitch and Tom lol. All this was happening at 1am in the morning for me so I am a bit tired this morning.
I umpire my first game tonight at 7pm (9am Sunday morning for you in Sydney) - Argentina vs. Germany. It is a HUGE game for my first game ... the butterflies are swarming around in my stomach. It is the home team so I will have thousands of screaming Argentinean fans to keep happy. If you have chance - get on the FIH YouTube channel and look at how many people come to watch me umpire (haha I mean watch Argentina play)! https://www.youtube.com/user/fihockey All the games are streamed live and should be put up as clips after they are finished so you should be able to get on whenever and watch bits of games. Wish me luck :)
Have a wonderful day and I will update the blog again when I get a chance. Enjoy the photos.
From Miss Seymour
Day 1 fitness session - bit bright so I am squinting lol. There's myself on the right and then Carol from Ireland, Roachy from Australia, Fanneke from the Netherlands, Sarah from Scotland, Steph from USA, (and now the bottom row) Mercedes from Argentina, Mariana from Argentina and Annelize from South Africa. Cheiko from Japan and Kelly from New Zealand are missing because their flights were delayed. They are in the photo below.
The whole umpiring team before we went out to dinner last night. Cheiko is in the purple jumper at the front and Kelly is next to her in the black singlet. The lady on the far right in the green shirt is Louise from England and she is one of the Umpire Managers. The other umpire manager is called Renee and you can sort of see her head at the back in the middle behind Carol.
Me watching Miss Russell walk down the aisle on FaceTime haha
Picture Mrs Rolfe sent me of Father Sarkis and Mr and Mrs Dew!
Mrs Rolfe also sent me this picture of all the beautiful teachers at Mrs Dew's wedding reception :)
I have a couple more photos but my iPhoto is being painful. Will upload them later :)
