Oh What a Night!

Finally, at long last, it was our crazy dress and hair night. After hours of planning, purchasing and designing it was game time. But first some circuits in the morning followed by a few km run and stretch, and then it was showtime! The coaches had booked a few lanes of bowling for 2 hours.






But first we had a treat for our birthday boy chris. I hope you like it as much as we did.









We allowed ourselves to be heckled at dinner, and of course wrestlers love the attention. And we took a 2 km walk in all our finest regalia to the alley.








We got there and screamed, bowled, danced and generally made the best fools of ourselves we could. So much fun!









To end our perfect night we took the wrestlers to McDonalds, and no, nobody had a Kronenberg with their meal. Everyone was pretty physically wasted from all of our physical hyperactivity and silliness. More fun team bonding at the res and to bed at 11. We have a full day in Berlin tomorrow! Today's message is brought to you by Ms. Robyn Nicole Lee.






Eyes closed!




Eyes open!

Guten tag family and friends,
I am really enjoying Germany so far, almost as much as Poland. Hehe. The training sessions aren't as intense but I'm finding the accommodations are much nicer here. Tonight was our crazy hair/clothes/makeup night. We spent the last couple of days preparing our costumes which all turned out better than planned (note the pictures!). Then as a surprise the coaches took us out bowling for a few hours. And you can imagine all the looks and homes we got from passerbys! After we finished bowling we walked to a McDonalds a couple km away and I think Ali and I have ended up with diaper rash as a result! Overall the night was a lot of fun and I think the coaches were impressed with our enthusiasm and costumes! Tomorrow we have another busy day planned for Berlin. We have to get the most out of our last couple of days here:(
Miss you mom, dad and George! Xoxo ~Robyn

Location:Stendaler Straße,Frankfurt,Germany

Which way to the Beach?

Apologies to everyone as this school has an unusual wifi policy. I am unable to post blogs or chat or email through their server due to privacy regulations. If you read this it means I actually found somewhere with unprotected Internet.



Today was another off day. Off day in Europe definitely is different in meaning then Canada. Our kids think it means lie in bed, but to Europeans that means training instead of on the mats, such as climbing a mountain or as in today's case, weight training. All of our kids were surprisingly adept at the weight training exercises, with the exception being the abdominal workouts.



After lunch, the school had two vans transport us to a lake and beach area. Plenty of fun was had including beach wrestling, swimming out to a dock and of course the obligatory bellyflop contest. No sunburns I believe but we'll see how things go tomorrow...



A nice light supper and then preparation for our crazy hair /clothes day on friday that seems to have been postponed a million times. Another couple sessions scheduled for tomorrow and their is a rumor that our younger athlete has a birthday tomorrow...


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Krakow and beyond

The time seemed to pass so quickly in Zakopane and suddenly it was Monday, and time to go. We got up early and bid some tearful goodbyes to our newfound Polish friends.



Mat men coach Merak set up a tour for us at a centuries old salt mine in Krakow. It was a little long, but I think the kids all enjoyed realizing the historical significance of this site, as well as the underground ballroom, chapel and restaurant there. At parts we were over 100 m below ground and there were quite a few stairs to climb down. Not quite a mountain, but getting close.

After this


we all had about 4 hours free time to do some souvenir shopping in Krakow and see the city. The castle and churches were beautiful, and the old city was gorgeous. Then the fun part began.



We spent about 11 hours on a bus to Frankfurt, Germany. No, not THAT Frankfurt, a smaller version on the Oder river, near the Poland border. Our host Dieter met us and brought us back to a facility almost opposite to the Polish one we had just spent a week at. This was a state of the art university type campus with fridges in each room, two single beds and a cable tv.



We got a couple tough training sessions in with the Germans. The good news is our girls seem to be on par with their counterparts. The bad news is the boys attending the camp are only here for Greco! Uh oh. But our boys are pretty excited about learning an alternative style and did fairly ok at our sparring session.



We have an off day tomorrow with swimming and TBA in the afternoon. Wi fi is virtually non-existent here again and long distance phone cards are nowhere to be seen. I have to sit in the hallway on the opposite side of our res to get any signal. Ah, we Canadians have it so soft!




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Location:Kieler Straße,Frankfurt,Germany

Which way to the beach?

A nice light supper and then preparation for our crazy hair /clothes day on friday that seems to have been postponed a million times.  Another couple sessions scheduled for tomorrow and their is a rumor that our younger athlete has a birthday tomorrow...


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2 days of Insanity

Things are crazy busy here. So busy I actually didn't have time to update this blog yesterday.






Look mom and dad, I'm wearing my mouthguard!

It all started with one of our athletes throwing up. And then it was chaos. Some Polish virus ripped through about 3/4 of the team. Not fun flu and the most heart-breaking part of it, had to be when Tia started to cry when we told her she couldn't train or attend the wrestling session of yesterday.



But we persevered, made a few room changes to quarantine the sick, save the healthy and we survived. Bad news was the sick also missed the water park with wicked waterslides! We did make it up to them with a 2nd visit today.






Did I mention we walked up a second mountain today? Nowhere near as big but definitely steeper! Poor Robyn and Sarah had to take the cable car up because their blisters were so bad. It only took about an hour, and at the top was a small village of tourist attractions/shops/restaurants. We were treated by coaches Sebastian and Christian to a slide ride down half the mountain. Pretty cool!

















Lots of fun and then our final session with our coaches. We bid farewell to the president of our host club the Krasnik Suples and booked a bus for Frankfurt, Germany and a day visit to Krakow tomorrow. We will then travel overnight to Germany so apologies if I can't get wireless before then.



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Mountaineering

Climbed a mountain today. That's right. A mountain.






The kids were pretty excited because they had no morning run or sessions today so they all considered it a day off.






Alison and Sarah struggled with walking almost right away. These two had blisters that were some of the hugest I've ever seen. We did some quick first aid on their feet allowing them to continue. We started at 9 am and didn't get back here until 5!






It was a long hike with incredible scenery, peaking to about 2000m above sea level. Pretty scary both on the way up with narrow trails, rocky outcroppings and delicious, icy mountain streams. Chains were set up along the narrow, steep pathways to help us climb both up and down.






The view at the top was both beautiful and scary. I was fine taking pictures at the edge but when people were lining up to climb down, my stomach started doing flip-flops and I had to back away.







We had a blast, but were all exhausted after an 8 hour hike. We got back to our hotel/hostel, had a quick bite and changed quickly to get in the sauna. Intense heat for 5-10 mins. 10 second ice bath. Repeat. Chris wins the prize for being most resilient and lasting well over a minute in the icy water.






Tomorrow we return to the runs, a wrestling session and a workout in the swimming pool. I'm thinking the kids will be exhausted tonight from our big adventure.















Today's guest blogger is Chris McIsaac.









Poland is an excellent country with great people and a strange culture.at first I didn't think I was going to like any of the food( which is great). The coaches are really good and cool and I'm glad we got this opportunity. The wrestling is the best with different people and techniques. Especially with the national team yesterday! It was really fun to practice with and meet them. The hike up the mountains was incredible and great for bragging rights. Now I can say I climbed up a mountain! :P










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