Today was another awesome day in London. Natalie and I woke up around 12pm (slept for 12 hours!) and it still felt like the middle of the night when we woke up. We were famished, so we went to the P&G house to get some food. We were different people in this time period; more like walking zombies than our usual selves. We arrived there at around 3pm and pretty much made a B line for the buffet. After eating we were back to our usual selves. We, again, saw a lot of Olympic athletes in the building and also saw Shawn Johnson on the way out in what's called the Borough's Market. We had to go pick up our tickets from a lady who works at USA Water Polo by 5pm, so we headed to the Olympic park to meet her. This was a little stressful because we went to the wrong Starbucks and did a little wild-goose chase to get to the tickets. Eventually, we found them and were good to go. We ran into Genai Kerr (Olympian in 2004 and 2008 and UCI Alumni) and he directed us to the Olympic Park entrance. We found out that we received an extra ticket and were able to give it to John Speraw who is the former mens volleyball coach at UCI, the current assistant coach for the men's indoor volleyball team, and Dan's roommate. After exploring the Olympic Park for a bit, it was finally the moment we had been waiting for-THE QUARTERFINAL GAME! The venue is unbelievable. This is one of the only times water polo has had it's own arena separate from the swimming pool. The girls won against Italy 9-6 and played an awesome game. After the game we got to visit with the team, their families, coaches, and fans just outside the venue. After visiting with everybody for a while, Dan took me and Natalie on a walk around the park. He showed us some pretty cool things that we probably wouldn't have seen if we were just wandering by ourselves. We went down a path by a river in the park that had these water falls that spelled out words (pictures will help explain.) We also visited all the other venues such as track, field hockey, swimming and the basketball arena. We just looked at the outside of them. We cant go in without a ticket to one of the events, but hopefully that will be happening! We grabbed a bite to eat at a Mexican food vender and then started to head back to the Tube. However, Usain Bolt had just ran a race at the track and floods of people were also heading to the Tube. It was jam packed and there was a huge line to get on the Tube so we decided to go to a coffee shop and wait until the crowd died down. We had a nice chat and coffee and it was nice to just relax and spend some time with Dan. After the crowd had dwindled, we made our way to the Tube and hopped on it to get back to our flat. Now its 2:30am and, unfortunately, I am not the least bit tired. We have to wake up relatively early tomorrow to obtain mens indoor volleyball tickets that John Speraw hooked us up with so that should help us get more used to this time schedule. I am looking forward to exploring tomorrow, doing some shopping, and going to the men's indoor volleyball game! Below are some pictures from this exciting day. Enjoy :)
Kelsey
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