Friday, August 16, 2013

August 16th, 2013- Erin Rooney

The first international edition of the Fordham Foreign Tour blog comes to you today from Erin Rooney, a Christchurch, New Zealand native.  Rooney, not only one of the team's most experienced NCAA athletes, also served as the team's resident expert on jet lag, which played a huge factor in the team's first day down under.  Here's what Erin had to say about the journey so far.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the team's stay in Melbourne, the time difference will be 14 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time.  For example, while it is 5 PM August 16th in the Bronx, it's currently 7 AM August 17th in our part of Australia.
 
                                                               Our seats at the Melbourne Cricket Ground

In flight entertainment screens kept everyone pretty happy on the 13hr flight to NZ. First check mark for New Zealand and we hadn’t even made it to the country. We had a brief two hour layover in NZ and then a short four hour hop over the Tasman (well it seemed short after what we had just been through).

So 31 hours after we had left the Bronx, three flights later, no August Thursday 15th 2013 (which we lost crossing the date line) we made it to our first stop; Melbourne, Australia. Touched down at 10:30am.

As per recommendations we stayed up all day with no naps. This wasn’t too much of a struggle at first. We got to the hotel, cleaned up, then headed around the corner to a local spot for lunch.

Then we had a few hours to occupy ourselves, without sleeping, before we went into downtown Melbourne for a walk around the Central Business District. Nice place, though it was very busy! This was quite possibly because so many others were in the city for the same reason as us, to kill some time before the evenings Aussie Rules football game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

Many members of the team and staff were amazed at a game that was so unlike anything they had ever seen, despite having only the most basic understanding of the rules.  Even though the game was incredible we only lasted until half time as the jet-lag and blistering cold winds got the better of us.

After calculating that it was 7am EDT, it’s no wonder we were all ready to get into bed. The thought of a good night’s sleep in a bed, and not in an upright airplane chair, is beyond words. Goodnight from Australia!

No comments:

Post a Comment