Last night was a very low key night. After the morning practice Brittany and I walked around the streets of Szeged exploring the town with two of our fellow team mates Franzi and hildren. Brittany and the girls got themselves iced coffees and an ice cream(I had a bite or maybe two of Brittany's!) it was a great flavor chocolate, caramel and hazelnut all in 1 ice cream scoop After that it was time for dinner with the team and relaxation. Dinner was fun we hung out with Bella, Coach Mike's littlest one for dinner and had her try everything but she only ended up liking the Chicken Noodle Soup...
We had our second practice this morning. The bus pulled up and yet again the Iranian team was on the bus. This time there was the Mens team at the front of the bus and a Womens team at the back of the bus. We moved ourselves on to the bus grabbing whatever free space there was mingling with our future competitors. Everyone woman Iranian loved the men on the team and even said "WOW, look at him (Grant)"! It made me smile and Grant as well! We got to the race coarse and it was time to get to work again, we loaded up in the 20 man and shoved off. After about 40 minutes of timing drills and starts we cleared off the water and let the masters team started their paddle. We all hung out in the team rallying area, discussing things from paddling technique to which woman in Szeged had the pinkest hair, because of the Paprika of course! A couple of the guys were hitting on the women from Iran(Let's see how that works out for them), and giving the Iranian men English pick up lines. Jimmy (for those who do not know Jimmy is a great friend, who actually got me into Dragon Boating) had about a 15 minute conversation with the men and got a picture with him and I and part of the mens team. Come the end of the masters practice we all met up and had a team meeting in the shade.
We ate lunch at the race coarse like we did yesterday. It is quite a thing to eat lunch at an Olympic race course every day of your trip. During lunch We met up with the Iranians again, the women and the men still seemed to be separated but on equal footing. While waiting in line for lunch I heard a loud commotion, as it turns out Jimmy was showing the Iranian men all of his card tricks. He then went on to show them 3 card Monty a game they all thoroughly enjoyed. Jimmy suggested that they bring money into the game, for which one of the elders quickly rebuked him. He then continued his games. An Iranian woman came over to see the game and Jimmy invited her with a high five, all of the men stood up and said no touch and the elder woman came in to rush her away. For all of this when Jimmy finally got his food he was greeted with a new nickname Ahma"Jimmy"dad.
Lunch was pork covered in some form of polenta or potato and cheese, and a poppyseed fig cherry bread. This is how we found the Hungarians plans to win, give us an opioid so we fail the ICF drug test and break the Iranians Halal diet so God will strike them down.
After returning home on our partially segregated bus, we decided that today we should go check out the Turkish bathes and relax for the whole afternoon. We arrived there with 8 of our teammates and one of their wives. The bath was fonded in 1896, and has been updated beautifully with modern therapeutic devices. We all started out in the eucalyptus steam room, then to the cold Mineral water. We then decided to try the Swedish spa which was turned up to 95 degrees centigrade(keep in mind water boils at 100). I then thought back about all of the ribs we had smoked at far lower temperatures and felt a little bad for them.
Then it was on to the mineral baths, this is where I must point out when you walk around with 8 american athletes on a national team we can be pretty loud and possibly off putting to the locals, so when we walked into the mineral baths there was a very very large angry looking Hungarian set up at one of the chess tables in the middle of the pool, yes you can play chess while soaking in mineral water. Jimmy (of Ahma"Jimmy"dad fame) sat directly across from him and returned his disgusted gaze. He then challenged the over sized man to an arm wrestling competition which immediately made him laugh!!! HAHAHAHAHA They then shook hands and he introduced himself as "Ivan" and Jimmy now calls him Ivan the Russian. We all then circled him as a team and he started to smile and laugh even more, he especially had eyes for the women on our team! We will enclose a picture of Ivan of course! :)
We have received quite a few questions from people about what the weather here is. Every day since Brittany and I have arrived it has been about 85 degrees and screaming blue sky's with no humidity. It goes down to about 60 at night, so the weather here has quite literally been perfect, and we are very excited and hoping for this weather come race days!
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