Oct. 13, 2008

With the silence saturating the air, it felt as if it was preseason in our dorm again. Fall break had started, but instead of all of us going home, we began our walk to Frericks with our extensively large bags thrown over our shoulders. This journey would consist of four bus rides, two plane rides, an unbelievable seafood dinner, a tour of Newport mansions, a visit to Salve Regina, and the most important part: two games.

We all arrived around 11:45 and waited for the bus at the side door of Frericks as usual. Once it was there, we all loaded and set off for Cincinnati airport. The trip seemed deceivingly long since I thought it was only supposed to be 45 minutes long, but it ended up that it was an hour and a half. We finally made it there, checked our bags, and set off for the gate. No one was ready for it to be the gate walk from hell, however. In order to get there, we had to go down the escalator, take a train, walk about a quarter of a mile, hop on a bus, drive that across the airport field, then finally walk about 200 yards to our gate. Imagine if we were tight on time!

Of course we took one of the smaller delta planes to Rhode Island. The good news was, however, the flight wasn't bad since I slept the whole time, something I am famous for apparently. Also, the landing was much smoother than previous plane rides we have had. Since we were tight on time, the coaches went and picked up the vans as we stayed at the airport and waited for them. After that, we ended up going straight to the restaurant, Brick Alley Pub, making it there only a mere five minutes late. I tend to eat a lot, therefore I ordered the salad bar, a cup of the famous clam chowder soup, Cajun salmon, and a side of garlic mashed potatoes. It was the most amazing meal I have ever had that literally melted in my mouth at each savoring bite. After that meal, we went to the hotel, Courtyard Marriot, where Coach Tucker assigned my roommates to be Tori and Eileen. Once we were in our room, we all showered, got ready for bed, and passed out for our early wake up of 8:15.

We ate breakfast at iHop, where I got crepes with nutella and bananas inside. They were delicious. After breakfast, we traveled to the fields for a light practice before our game later that day. From a distance the field looked nice, however, the practice fields were just above a bumpy dirt surface. We jogged for seven minutes then continued on by dribbling around and getting our legs loosened up from traveling the previous day. Then, we finished by taking long range shots off the dribble around the top of the box. Once we were done with practice, Coach Tucker wanted to show us a little bit around Newport area. I made sure that Josie, the English girl, was in our van so I could see her reactions to the mansions off the coast. She was baffled at their size and amazed that people actually lived in places like that. Apparently England does not have very many ridiculously large houses. Thankfully after the tour, we were able to go back to the hotel to take a nap before the game against University of Rhode Island.

Tori and I passed out for the entire two hour break while Eileen was being studious and wrote a paper. It seemed as if I had just shut my eyes when my alarm was already buzzing to wake me up. I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, splashed a little water on my face, put my game stuff on, and was ready to go. When we were all in the vans, we set off for University of Rhode Island.

The game started off a little hectic. The grass was long, but wet and the ball was silver, which was almost impossible to see with the glaring of the lights off of it. We started to settle down and play to feet more while the other team seemed to be chasing us. We were fortunate to have a goal in the first half by Kelly which was followed soon after by Gallow. Both shots were long range ones that chipped over the giant, Agnus from Iceland. Unfortunately in the second half, they scored off a corner. The girl seemed to be unmarked and had plenty of time to volley the ball into the back of our net. The good part was that we managed to hold them off and keep our 2-1 lead. When the game was over, we got a cool down, drank our rejuvenating shakes, and headed to the vans to go get dinner.

We decided on Chili's, I was not very hungry, so I just got a hot chocolate and ate some of the delicious chips and salsa. The coaches decided to get dessert which prolonged my sleep a bit more, most of all, I was jealous. Once we arrived back at the hotel, we showered and went to bed since we had an early wake up again.

The alarm went off at 8:15 once again and I managed to force myself to get up around 8:20. We packed all our stuff in record time and set off down the stairs to the vans. We ate breakfast at a nice little Café in Newport. We then drove to, what is known as, the Cliff Walk. It was a nice walk along the coast where we could climb rocks on our left and stare at lovely mansions on our right. We all managed to take lovely pictures, it was kind of hard not to since everything was gorgeous. When we were finished with that, we returned to the vans where we drove back to the Rhode Island Airport and awaited our bus to drive to Massachusetts.

The ride didn't seem that bad except for the fact the bus was an icebox! We watched most of Batman Begins which always makes the drive go by faster. We arrived around 3 at our new hotel, The Hilton, and had the same roommates. Thankfully, we had three hours of full time where I, of course, napped the entire time. When I awoke, it was time to go to dinner at Carabbas. It was okay, but not up to par with the previous restaurant. I had spaghetti and meatballs which I thought was perfectly fine. After our meal, we returned to our hotel. The next day, we were able to sleep in until 9:20, where we then went to Friendly's for breakfast.

Finally, after breakfast, we returned to the hotel, packed all our stuff, and departed for the UMass field. The game started off better than the previous one. Our shots were 18 to 6, but we just could not come out with one to save our lives. They scored in the first half off a corner. There were a lot of people going to the ball and it was a tackle that unfortunately ended up with a UMass player putting the ball upper 90. Overall, we just got robbed. After the game, we rushed back onto the bus since our flight was at 5:45 out of Hartford. The freshmen checked the laundry bags, which were once again over weight. We then continued to the gate which was a lot easier this time. Our flight boarded and we took off for Cincinnati, only to take another bus ride back home.