When I met up with my contact here (a consultant working with my company named Brian) we ate lunch at a food court under his apartment and along the Yarra river. I had a hand carved roast beef sandwich. We chatted for a while and then started walking down the Yarra River towards the sporting grounds, where apparently the 2007 FINA World Championships have been taking place all last week and ending on Sunday (at this point it is still Saturday in my story). Most of the swimming competitions where held in the Rod Laver Arena seen here...
The Rod Laver Arena is very close to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) where they play AFL aka Australian Rules aka Footies, a version of foot ball. I hope to get to see a game live there next weekend.
After walking along the river, I decided that I would see to purchase a ticket to some of the swimming competitions before checking into my hotel. What I found when I went to purchase the ticket was that the most convenient event for me to see would be the Women's Water Polo Bronze and Gold/Silver Finals, but more importantly, the teams bouting for first or second place were the Australians and the USA!!!
I checked into my hotel, where you have to leave your key card in a slot inside the door or else none of the electricity will work, and the bathroom has a retractable clothes line over the tub. I don't have a photo of it, but since I will be back in that hotel Wednesday night I will take one then.
After dropping off my stuff and FINALLY freshening up after being on the plane for so long, I was a going to be a bit late for the Russia vs. Hungary water polo game. I went down into the lobby, found a table of FINA representatives, and inquired as to the exact location of the venue, what I found was that the water polo was in a pool far away from all of the other sports venues. They told me which Tram to take, and I was off
While waiting for the tram, I had to again find coinage for the ticket machine, which was done courtesy of the 7-11 directly across for the stop. (7-11's are all over the place here, but I hope that that will be the one and only stop in an American store while here). With change and while waiting for the Tram (the stop is in the middle of the street, by the way) a guy in a truck pulled up besides me, noticed my Blues Shout track jacket and started talking to me about blues music. Rumor now has it that there is a blues music festival of some sort here next weekend, I have not verified this yet.
I took the 112 tram to the water polo tournament and noted that I was sharing the Tram with several of the Cuban swimming team. This fit well with having noticed athletes earlier in the day from Ecuador, Iran, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.
I got to the game and watched as intently as one unfamiliar with the rules can as Russia beat Hungary and then the US and Aussies ("Lets Go Aussie, Lets Go" was one of the chants echoing through the venue). Coincidentally I have a digital camera video of the game winning goal... GO USA!!! (the score was 6-5). After the game came...
...the raised flags...
...and the medal ceremony...
I, of course, had to sing along with the US National Anthem, bith before and after the game. This act caused the Brits sitting in front of me to turn around and start conversation. We had a very enjoyable time talking about the various sports played in Australia and how competitive, apparently, the Australians are in ALL sporting endeavors.
After the game, I left the stadium, ran into the other USA supporters present and learned that the team consists of girls all but one from So. Cal and many attending USC. The parents were all flown down all expenses paid for 10 days to be leaving the next day. Many of the parents were very excited to know that there was at least one American in attendance who was not family to the athletes.
I road the Tram back to my hotel, and started blogging post 1 below, and that was Day 1.
No comments:
Post a Comment