Aug. 29, 2007

August 27th was a day in my life for which I had been waiting for a long time.

This past Monday the U.S. women's national team finally left for China where we will participate in the 2007 Women's World Cup for Soccer. At 10:30 a.m., we departed from California to Shanghai, China, where over the next few weeks we will have our chance to demonstrate the culmination of our past two years of hard work. Of course, we hope this will result in a World Cup Championship for the United States, and of course, a moment I will never forget for myself.

It has been a tiring few days from our victory on the 25th against Finland in a domestic friendly exhibition match in Carson, Calif., to flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and 14 hours later finally arriving in Shanghai, China. I am tired but very excited also as I feel our goal to is now in reach. We are actually here and the first game against North Korea is about two weeks away (Sept 11th)! Although it has been raining quite a bit since we landed, all the amenities thus far have been very pleasant; the food and hotel are wonderful and Shanghai seems to be an interesting city to explore.

Today our training got off to an interesting start as our practice field had close to 40 frogs on it (no exaggeration)--and when we started to try to remove the frogs like young excited children, the guard informed us not to touch them as they were "poisonous." After a few nervous laughs we moved fields and started to train. Other than the "poisonous" frogs and some jet lagged legs; it was great to get one step closer to the beginning of tournament.

Back home, I'm eager to see how my girls do in their season opening matches this weekend. I'll be checking the website for updates!

I'll check in again soon. Go Huskies!