First of all I would like to thank the Hills family very much for this trip. It is the first time the whole Duke Tennis guys and girls teams are travelling together, and it is the first time we have had a chance to have such a great time in preparation for the spring season. Hawaii has been an absolute paradise so far, and we have only been here for one day.
Today was our first official practice day. We started the day with an awesome breakfast with a lot of fruits and a few new local dishes. Everybody was starving, probably because by then it was 1PM in Duke’s time zone. We headed straight from breakfast to practice where we hit for around an hour and a half. The weather is awesome to play and most of our players were playing shirtless exhibiting their muscles, specially our muscle monster Jared Pinsky (NOT). The courts are pretty slow and the ball bounces pretty high, very different from the indoor courts we are used to playing on this time of the year in the East Coast. So it was great that we got here early in the week to adapt.
After the morning practice we split the team in two groups to get lunch, some went to Subway and the others went to a local sandwich chain next door, which supposedly was amazing (of course I was in the Subway group). After lunch we headed back to the courts for our second practice where we played a few points to start getting into the dual match state of mind.
This afternoon after practice we had free time to do whatever we wanted. We divided in a few groups but most of us ended up going to the beach and the swimming pool to work on our tan and try and get into the Hawaiian lifestyle. At 6:15 we met up in the lobby to eat dinner in the Lu Lu’s restaurant.
Being from Brazil it was great playing tennis in the warm weather again and getting my Brazilian color back. It is a little weird to walk around and listen to everybody speaking English since I am so used to going to the beach only in Brazil, where everybody speaks only Portuguese. Also it is the first time I got to chill in the beach with my teammates, which was also great.
I hope this blog shows you guys a little bit of the insights of our amazing trip. It would be great if you guys could be here to enjoy these moments with us. This is all for today,
Alain Michel
No comments:
Post a Comment