University of Minnesota Athletics
China Blog #4 from Katy Etterman
1/16/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Swimming & Diving
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The Gopher diving team has made it back to the U.S. safe and sound and already completed our first practice back home. We couldn't have asked for a better ending to our training trip in Beijing. We had our second day off of practice on Sunday but still managed to get in a great workout as we climbed the Great Wall. The stairs were endless but the experience was amazing. We had such fun exploring the ins and outs and taking silly pictures in various areas-we definitely got a few funny and astonished comments from onlookers as the women posed in handstands and the men did synchronized back flips. We are sure that we made Wenbo proud though as we were getting dry land training in even on our day off!
Monday greeted us with our final double practice, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. After completing that day, we knew we just had one more tough practice around the corner and then it was time to go home. Tuesday was our final platform practice, many of us were tired and it was definitely a challenge, but we are all very happy to have done our optionals in a different pool before championships roll around.
Our final evening we had a get together with many of the Chinese divers. I think we can all agree that one of the best parts of the trip was making so many new friends. We played games, swapped gifts and laughed and laughed until their curfew was up and they had to return to their dorm rooms. Wednesday morning we had a short dry land workout to end our trip and celebrated with our final team lunch at a restaurant of Wenbo's choosing. He ordered many interesting things and since it was our very last day, we all tried almost everything, including fried chickens feet which surprisingly weren't terrible... once you got past the fact that they were chicken's feet.
As we loaded onto the bus, the Chinese divers waited outside waving their good byes. It was a difficult one to make as we all realized we may never see each other again, even so, we cherished the memories we made and the fun we had. Overall, it was a wonderful trip. We all had the opportunity to improve our diving, train with other amazing athletes, and go on countless adventures that we will never forget. Now that we are home and the jet lag is wearing off, we are ready to turn all of our focus on championship season, working hard and looking forward to the success that all of our training will bring.
Cheers,
Katy
