Sugar Loaf

 Copacabana Beach Walk

Sunday, August 24, 2008                         

Hello  from Brazil…. 

We are in RIO again today … and it is a MUCH better day today ..
the sun in out and things are back to normal….

Breakfast today was interesting … SOME of the late night people had a difficult time getting up this morning … (imagine that…. Stay out late and it is difficult to get up the next morning… hmmm … I hope this is a learning experience for them… PS.. we have all been there…)

Everyone was there for breakfast …. But not everyone was functioning at full speed…

The girls were to meet at 9am WITH their  HIGHLINE COLLEGE WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL SHIRTS… 2 of them forgot and had to go back the rooms to get them…. (the math…. 2 girls times 1 set of lines per minute late times 5 minutes… = 10 sets of lines…) another girl suddenly WOKE UP and realized that she too did not have her shirt… off to her room she went (another 6 sets of lines) AND THEN … another girl realized what was happening and ran up to her room to get here shirt… (another 10 sets of lines) ..

After breakfast we headed out for our tour of SUGAR LOAF MOUNTAIN.. It is very near our hotel … but it was a 40 minute walk there (good exercise for our morning crew…)  We arrived about 9:45am and took the first cable car up to the 1^st rock … several of the girls (me too) are not especially comfortable with heights…The cable car is hanging by what seems to be a thread several hundred feet above the ground… As we arrived to the first rock you could hear a few sighs of relief as we touched foot on terra firma.  We walked around to the other side of the rock and to the dismay of the… height concerned players … there was an even larger and HIGHER cable car ride… We all waited in line for the cable car to take us up to the TOP OF THE ROCK…. (the cable car holds 70 people at a time … it is huge … the players who still had a little trepidation about going up stood in the middle of the car so as to be blocked by the other people and could not really see how high we were off the ground.  2-3 minutes later we were at the TOP… The first thing we did was to take some photos with our HIGHLINE COLLEGE WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL SHIRTS on … and Corcovado and Copacabana Beach in the back ground… then the girls had free time on SUGAR LOAF… From the top the views were amazing .. you could see the airplanes take off and land at the St. Dumont airport (local airport for Rio.  You could see almost the entire city laid out below you… Copacabana beach, Ipanema beach, the city of Nitori across the bay..  WOW!!!

After about 30-40 minutes it was time to head back down the cable cars to the safety of …. Sea level….

It was another 40 minute walk back to the hotel .. but seemed not to be quite so far as everyone was now awake…

 At 3pm the girls went to watch our local guide (and friend) Wellington play AMERICAN FOOTBALL … in the sand on Copacabana Beach.  That is …. Tackle football… no pads… in the SAND….  The game was entertaining… and we had fun watching Wellington (he specialized in kick return)…

Between the quarters … the girls had to WORK OFF their DEBT … by running and diving in the sand….. I was going to have them only do ½ of the lines … but they wanted to get them done…. (RATHER than do them on the newly re-surfaced indoor floor at HCC…) …

 The wind started kicking up a bit and the night was setting in…. IT was a bit too cool to sit around in a wet swim suit…. All of the girls went back to the hotel…

 WE had a meeting at 6:30pm to set our dinner plans … AMAZINGLY ….EVERYONE was on time… !!!  The girls had been GRAZING at each of the beach vendor’s snack shops on the way back to the hotel … so they did not want to go out to eat…   

Since LAST NIGHT was a  late night for most of the girls…. It was an early night…. 

Tomorrow … Christ the Redeemer Statue and our FIRST live Scrimmage …

Bye from Brazil …

John Littleman
Head Coach
Highline CC Women's Volleyball Team

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