Hey Bulldogs, this is Savannah Carter. I am blogging about our final day in Ghent, Belgium.
We arrived at our hotel, the Marriott, which is right on a canal. I didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m., but, hopefully, I will be able to sleep better tonight. It was nice to sleep in a bed after three days of airports and airplanes. It was definitely hard to get up this morning. Martha and I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to our music blasting, but we went back to sleep.
After I woke up, I walked down to breakfast and knew there would be plenty of bread, so I made some toast. I started walking down the line of food and saw this raw stuff I assumed was fish. I’m allergic to fish, so I decided to head straight for the fruit. Some of the food was different, but it was very good.
After breakfast, we went on a tour of Ghent. Our guide was named Theo, and he was great. He was really nice and I liked his accent. He kept me tuned in because he was very funny and knew a lot about the history of the city.
Before we left, coach assigned us places we were going to visit and to report on them in practice. Going over what we learned before and then having Theo go into more detail was really neat. I had the St. Bevo Cathedral and Ghent Altar Piece. It was really cool to see everything I had researched, especially the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb painting.
My favorite thing to see probably was the Belfry Tower. We tried to get the people up in the top of it to yell down to us. They did and we yelled back up to them.
Ghent is a busy town, and most of the people walk or ride bikes. We saw a man walking a bulldog. We tried to get him to stop and let us take a picture with the bulldog, but he ignored us. One of our hosts, Julie, went to talk to him but even she couldn’t convince him.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I came to Ghent because all I really knew about was the cathedral I researched. When I got here, I was amazed at how beautiful it was. You should really come here if you get the chance.
After visiting the cathedral, we wrapped up the tour and broke off for free time. Most of the team toured the Gravensteen Castle, but I had to go back to the hotel and finish a paper for a class.
I got my paper submitted and had a sandwich for lunch before the game. It was really good, and I think I might have to go back and get another one.
I haven’t bought any souvenirs yet. I planned to do that today, but I had to go back and get my paper turned in before the game.
Speaking of the game, we had a 45-minute bus ride to the game, and I fell asleep on the way, although I didn’t intend to. I think we are all still very tired from all the travel. When we got out on the court, we knew we had to put everything behind us and take care of business.
The team we played was a better team than we faced in our first game, but we came out and took care of business and got a 105-45 win.
We were good, but we didn’t play to our potential because we haven’t gone over a lot in practice and the freshmen are still learning. Overall, though, we were good.
I really liked the team we played tonight. They hung out with us after the game and took pictures and danced. At one point, I looked up and one of their players was battling me in dancing. Everyone said she won and they wouldn’t give me a chance. I think we are going to take her dance she did and use it in our dance in America.
I’m off to get something to eat and pack for Paris.
Talk to you later. Hail State.
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