HELLO from mother russia

So I have been in Kirishi, Russia (about a two hour bus ride from St. Petersburg) for the past week playing in the World League Super Finals (a yearly tournament that includes 8 international teams).  We had quite a LONG day of travel to get here starting with a 3.5 hr delay out of LAX!  We got to the hotel around 2 am and settled in for the week and a half stay!

Our first game we played against Italy (who brought a younger team) and beat them pretty badly, which is always fun!  Next day was China, who came out strong, but we were played really well and ended up beating them as well.  After that was Russia in Russia, which was an exciting game (and very loud... many a fans in the crowd all cheering for the Russians of course), but they ended up beating us by one (12-11 in the end).  That put us first in our bracket, so we played Greece yesterday in the quarterfinals and beat them, which sends us to the semi's against Australia.  The water polo has been going well.... two games to go then we are back to the US..... I'll try to update again soon :)