Well, we made it here to the OTC in Chula Vista!! 6am we had our very first Dragon boat practice (paddling pell-mell with about 1.5 square feet per person, but we moved pretty fast) in Mission Bay, San Diego; then onto Chula Vista, thanks to Susanne for driving us! We (literally) screeched into the parking lot and raced down to the dock just in time to catch the girls going to warm up. Carrie Johnson, the only female on the US Olympic team for canoe and kayak, Emily Wright (check out her blog, "The Wright's Tuff" - try googling it - the address is different than the name...), Emily Mickle, Jen Burke, and Sophia from Sweden, who is one of the top 10 K1 women paddlers in the world. Assan, from Senegal was training also. What a group to watch! Giulia and I got to go on the coaches boat with Nathan Luce, one of the coolest coaches, in my humble opinion :-) . He visited Oahu for a while last year and came by for a day as a guest coach for Le Jardin Academy's ILH kayak team, we were so happy to have him work with the paddlers (I was assistant coach, Mom (Kathy) is the head coach).
Back to here and now, though... lucky us, we're going on the water with the group here in a few hours! We're going on a K2, which is fortunate because we're racing it at nationals and we've never paddled K2 before. This atmosphere is great - we only just got here, but it has a really good feel - how amazing to be able to train with so many talented, driven athletes! (Plus, there's lots of good food)
Yesterday we checked out UCSD (Giulia is going to be a senior at Iolani this year: the college search is ON!). Some cool pieces of info: if you are invited to train here at the OTC, and want to go to school nearby, you will be considered a California resident, so lower tuition. Also, athletes can qualify to go to school at UCSD part time by petitioning their training as a part-time job. There is a carpool system so the athletes drive in together for schools farther away (like UCSD: approx 45 min drive), but there is also a community college about 10 minutes away.
This is so much fun :-D
Kati
P.S. Giulia says she'll write soon.
