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March 30, 2009

Ashley in Latina for $50k

Ciao!

I’m still in Latina…I signed in for a $50k over the weekend and missed the singles cut off by 2 spots which was a bummer. It’s another strong tournament this week. Fortunately I found a doubles partner today and we made the cut with our combined ranking around 590. Megan and I aren’t playing doubles together this week because she had previously committed to playing with Kathrin Woerle. I’m playing with Neda Kozic from Serbia, this will be another first time partnership. We play tomorrow at 10am against Ekaterina Ivanova & Viktoria Kutuzova. I know how Ivanova plays because that’s who Megan and I lost to last week, but I’m not familiar with her partner this time. I’m looking forward to implementing a few things I’ve been working on with Megan and Kevin in my doubles match tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes. Wish us luck!

That’s about all for now. It’s my mom’s birthday today so if anyone of you see her please wish her a happy birthday. My dad’s birthday was just 4 days ago also. Alright, time for bed. Talk to you after my doubles tomorrow.

Posted by Jack Newman at 5:02 PM | Comments ()

March 28, 2009

Ashley in Latina & Exploring Rome

Hi Everyone,

My apologies once again about not blogging the last couple days. Megan and I ended up losing our semifinal doubles match 6-1, 2-6, 6-10. We played an exceptional 1st set, it was real doubles. It was 1-1 in the 2nd set and we lost two no ad points in a row to go down 1-3 and I think that was a big momentum shift in the match. Our opponents started getting more comfortable with us both being up at the net every point. They threw in a couple more down the line shots and lobs that kept us off balance. We backed off just a tiny bit and they took advantage and stepped up their game. Going into the 3rd set tiebreaker it was back to all even, but they had a slight edge with the momentum. It was back and forth until 6-6 and they ran away with the next 4 points unfortunately. I’m bummed we lost that match and couldn’t quite close the door on them, but it was high quality doubles overall. Megan and I have the potential to be a great and unique doubles team. Before our doubles match on Thursday we worked on doubles for a couple hours with her coach Kevin. He has plenty of great knowledge and I learned some new things that will help me in my matches to come. I need to get used to certain movements and some plays to run which just takes practice. I hope we can start training more together and play as often as possible.

Megan and I decided to take Friday off and go sightseeing in Roma. It was the first day I’ve taken off since being here so I was ready to have a fun day. We traveled by foot, bus, metro(subway), and train. It took us about 45 minutes to get into the city from Latina. As I say…Rome wasn’t built in a day so we can’t see it all in one day either. We did a good job of seeing as much as we could with the little amount of time that we had. We took the metro to Vatican City first to see St. Peter’s Basilica, St. Peter’s Piazza, and the Sistine Chapel. We wanted to go inside the Sistine Chapel, but that would have required going thru the Vatican Museum also and we didn’t have time for that if we wanted to see the Colosseum. So then we took the metro to the Colosseo district, the heart of ancient Rome. We got convinced into going on an English speaking tour of the Colosseum for 45 minutes. The good thing about the tour was that we didn’t have to wait in a huge line to buy tickets to enter. I think we could have done without the tour because it was kind of crowded and we were so focused on taking lots of pictures. But we did learn a few things along the way. One being, 700,000 people were killed in the Colosseum. It was an incredible sight to see! After the Colosseum we went to Palatine Hill, but it was closed so we couldn’t get in. Then we saw the Roman Forum from the outside because that was also closed. Everything seemed to close around 5 which was a bummer. We also saw The Vittoriano Monument, Piazza Venezia in the Public Square. We walked all around the area taking tons of pictures, going into souvenir shops and eating all sorts of foods. We had a gelato, café, canoli, crepe, pasta and amazing pizza all throughout the day, we were pigs! We had to take advantage while we could, who knows if and when I’ll be back in Rome. The pizza we had was in Vatican City, they had many different kinds and you just point to which one you want and how much. They charge you per 100grams, mine was only a couple euros. We ate on the street like all the locals do. It was the first thing we ate in Rome and we should have had more because it was the best thing we had all day. Oh and we also stumbled upon Fontana di Trevi. The fountain was completed in 1762 and features a mythological sculptural composition of Neptune, god of the sea, flanked by two Tritons. It’s gorgeous, especially at night when we saw it and there were tons of people gathered around to look at it. I wanted to go to The Pantheon and the Spanish Steps, but we didn’t have enough time. You definitely need a few days to take in all the sights. We had a great time exploring Rome and it’s definitely a day we’ll remember.

I better head to bed because tomorrow they spring forward one hour here. So now I’ll be 7 hours ahead of Austin time. I’ll write again tomorrow and fill you in on what I’m doing next. Ciao!

AW

Posted by Jack Newman at 5:41 PM | Comments ()

March 26, 2009

Ashley Playing In Latina-Nascosa

Ciao!

Sorry you didn’t hear from me yesterday…I didn’t get online much at all and it was really late by the time I got to bed. I ended up losing my singles match to (3) Zuzana Ondraskova 6-2, 0-6, 1-6. I know it’s a strange score. My main focus was to come out aggressive and play to win. I think I accomplished that for the most part. In the first set I was dictating points, hitting winners, and playing relaxed. Everything seemed to be going in and I got a little lucky here and there with bounces and such. I won the 1st set 6-2 pretty easily. In the 2nd set I was going after my same shots, but barely missing them this time around. Some net tape trying to attack off of returns and missing it wide or long in the rallies. We did have some close games that I should have won, but towards the end of the set I was just making too many errors. The 3rd set should have been closer as well. I had a few game point opportunities here and there, but didn’t get them. The last two games of the match was all her, she was getting me out of position and attacking. She was more consistent than me in the last set and a half and placing her ball well. She had a nice forehand and her backhand got more consistent as the match went on. She used to be top 75 in the World and right now inside the top 200 so that’s not too bad at all. Even though I’m not happy with the end result, I am happy that I came out playing more aggressively and more relaxed than last week. Plus I found my forehand! It went missing for a couple weeks which I was getting frustrated about. I hit it well in my singles match which was good and a mini victory in itself. I also served better than last week, having a pretty high percentage of first serves and only 2 or 3 doubles faults. So there were some good things to take away from the match and build on.

Our bus ride back to the hotel was pretty entertaining thanks to Kevin. His entire wine bottle leaked out in his bag and it was getting all over the place, we had to be quite creative to clean it up and the driver wasn't too happy with him. It was funny, you probably just had to be there. Megan and I really needed to do laundry, so we did that after my singles match. It was an adventure. We followed a map that the lady gave me at the front desk which wasn’t too exact, but we found it just fine. The only thing is that it was at least a mile away and I was carrying two giant bags of laundry while Megan was rolling her stuffed suitcase down the street. It was pretty funny. The laundry is not cheap here! We paid 4-6 euro per washer and dryer and we had 2 different loads each. And we had to dry our clothes twice because the first 40mins pretty much did nothing and they were still really wet, don’t you hate it when that happens? Oh and the coin machine thing was in like 4 different languages, it was quite interesting trying to figure out how to even get our wash started. We went to the supermarket and bank while we were waiting. Then finally our clothes were clean, we folded them, packed up, and walked back. All in all I think it was at least 4 hours haha.

As far as today goes…Megan and I won our doubles 6-2, 6-1. We played against the same team I played in doubles last week that took way too many match points to beat, 7-6, 6-7, 10-7. A little different this week which was good! Tomorrow we play the semis against my partner from last week, Marina Shamayko, and Ekaterina Ivanova. We’re playing well together so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow. We’re 2nd up not before 2pm. Wish us luck! I’m off to bed, goodnight!

Posted by Jack Newman at 3:32 AM | Comments ()

March 23, 2009

Ashley Starts 2nd Tournament In Italy

Hey Everyone,

Today was a pretty good day and an interesting one for my doubles partner, Megan Moulton-Levy. I was talking to her coach online last night to find out if they got here okay and everything. He got in yesterday from the States, but Megan was playing a tournament in Egypt last week and we weren’t exactly sure when she was getting in. Her flight was suppose to get in Monday afternoon, but little did she know that the tournament started on Monday unlike a Tuesday start in the U.S. She was on the schedule for singles at 11 and doubles with me 2nd after 1pm and had no idea. Haha. So her coach, Kevin, called her ASAP obviously and she got a flight from Cairo, Egypt at 4:50am getting her to Rome at 7:30am. Then she had to find a way to get to Latina and the tournament site which is quite difficult to find in the middle of nowhere. Thank goodness she was smart taking a taxi instead of the train otherwise she would have never made it (my recommendation by the way). I arrived at the courts around 10:40 and was in relief and excited to see Megan there also, just in time for her match! We jumped on a court and I hit a few balls with her so she could be semi warmed up and awake for her match. She ended up winning 7-6, 7-6. Quite impressive under the circumstances. They gave her two hours before our doubles so we had lunch at the club. Then we worked on a couple doubles things before we went on the court for our match at 4pm. We won our match 6-2, 6-3 fairly comfortably. We were energetic and excited to play. I think we could be a really good team. I’m looking forward to playing more matches together this week and hopefully in the future. I’m sure glad I talked to Kevin last night or else I’d probably be writing about my partner not showing up for our match and getting defaulted haha. I'm glad it didn't turn out that way. Wow, what a day!

I play singles 2nd up after 10:30 tomorrow vs. (3) Zuzana Ondraskova from CZE. I don’t know anything about her game, so I will be focused on playing my A game. I’m going to be intense, dictate, and be aggressive right from the start. She is ranked quite a bit higher than me so really I have nothing to lose, only to gain. We have a day off from doubles tomorrow so maybe Megan and I will practice together in the afternoon after she gets a lot of rest from her crazy travels. I’ll let you know how my match goes tomorrow. Goodnight!

Posted by Jack Newman at 5:08 PM | Comments ()

Ashley in Latina, Italy

Howdy!

This will be a quick one because I have to catch transportation over to the courts in a few minutes. I made it to Latina where my next $10k is. I’ve just been practicing a lot and doing fitness over the last few days. We got some rain here on Friday and it’s been really cold, in the 40s. I’ve been wearing like 4 layers all day except for when I’m on the court. The tournament starts today and I play doubles only, singles tomorrow on Tuesday. Megan Moulton-Levy and I are the 4th seed and I believe we play an Italian team, I didn’t look at the draw too closely. We’re 2nd match after 1pm. Ok, I better get going. I’ll fill you in more tonight when I get back to the hotel. Have a good day!

Ashley

Posted by Jack Newman at 4:44 AM | Comments ()

March 19, 2009

Ashley Finishes Tournament In Rome-Pomezia

Hello again,

It was on the chilly side today and was supposed to rain, but it never did. I was able to sleep in a little bit today which was nice. I practiced with Maria-Teresa late morning at the courts that are kind of connected with our hotel which was convenient. I’m not really sure if we were allowed to play on them, but nobody kicked us off so I guess it was ok. They were in really good condition, much better than the ones at our tournament site. We had a pretty lengthy, solid practice. After that I grabbed a salame and cheese panini for lunch which is very common here. Then I headed over to the site to wait for our match. I got more food in the cafeteria because I was still hungry after my panini. Then I warmed up with my partner right before our match. Our doubles did not go as planned…we lost pretty badly 1-6, 2-6. I had a high energy level and stayed positive from beginning to end, but I didn’t exactly receive the same effort level from my partner. That makes it tough to win matches. However, our opponents did play very solid and put balls away every chance they got. They didn’t give us many free points or leave the door open for us to come back. We had a few deuce/no ad points and lost them all, had we won those who knows maybe it could have been a different outcome. I think it’s time to put this week behind me and look forward to playing great tennis next week!

I’ll be practicing with Maria again tomorrow morning, planning on playing a couple sets because we both need it! The transportation guy this week has been very good, he picks us up on time and takes us wherever and whenever we need to go. He’s nice enough to drive me, Maria, and her coach to Latina tomorrow afternoon. Latina is where the next tournament is and it’s about 40km away. He’s doing me a huge favor because otherwise you would probably be hearing about another train/bus/walking adventure tomorrow haha. The next tournament will start Monday just like this week, so I’ll be practicing hard over the next few days. I’m interested to see what the hotel, club, and town is like in Latina.

Alright, it’s time for me to check espn.com and get the scoop on the big dance games that started today. I’m doing a NCAA Bracket Pool with a few of my friends. I do it every year and it’s always fun to see how the bracket turns out…usually nothing like the one I chose. I’m feeling pretty good about my picks this year though. My Wahoos failed miserably to make the tournament so it’s UNC all the way now! I’ll talk to you guys from Latina, maybe in a day or two. Ciao!

Posted by Jack Newman at 5:03 PM | Comments ()

March 18, 2009

Ashley Continues Doubles Play In Rome-Pomezia

Ciao,

My partner and I squeaked out a win today in our doubles match…7-6(4), 6-7(7), 10-7. It was a match of many ups and downs. We saved a set point in the first set, but that was nothing compared to how many match points our opponents saved in the 2nd set. I stopped counting after about our 6th match point. Our opponents played well for the majority of those points, but we also had a few bad and tentative shots in the mix. After we blew the 2nd set we went down 0-2 in the 10 point tiebreaker. We refocused and relaxed as much as we could. We leveled it at 2-2 and kept trading off points until 7-7. Finally, we were able to put 3 solid points together and end the insanity. Thank goodness! I still didn’t play my best, I’m having a hard time finding a couple of my shots. I just need to be patient with myself, loosen up, and stop thinking too much! That will be my goal for tomorrow along with being more aggressive. My partner and I are getting more comfortable playing together and learning each others tendencies. We will definitely be improving on a few things from today’s match and pumped up to play better.

We play our semifinal match tomorrow not before 3:30pm against my roommate, Karolina Kosinska, and her partner Simona Dobra. I’m going to practice in the morning with Maria-Teresa and her coach to work on some singles stuff. I’ve probably spent the most time with them practicing and going to dinner together. They’re very nice and helpful. We always have quality practices with a high intensity level. We’ll probably be going to the next tournament together and I may share a room with her also. After we practice I’ll grab some lunch which I missed today because I was playing during that time. Then I’ll hit with my doubles partner right before we play so that we’re warmed up and ready to go. I’m looking forward to tomorrow! Wish us luck! Time for me to get some shut eye, goodnight : )

Posted by Jack Newman at 5:25 PM | Comments ()

March 17, 2009

Ashley's 1st Rd in Rome-Pomezia

Hi Everyone,

Today was quite disappointing. I lost my match 1-6, 6-7(4). I did not play anywhere near how I had imagined myself starting off this week. It was probably my worst match of the year actually. My opponent was left handed and had a 1 & 2 handed forehand. She had a strong backhand and was able to take both sides down the line well. She also had a wicked slice forehand/drop shot. I had a hard time reading where she was going to hit the ball and felt uncomfortable and off balance nearly every point. I was getting embarrassed and toyed around for the first 9 games of the match to go down 1-6, 0-2. Then I pulled myself together and just wanted to make it as competitive as possible and try to find my game. I started finding her weakness and developing the points a little better, but it still wasn’t going the way I wanted. I played just a tad bit better in the 2nd set and almost came up with it, but lost it in a tiebreaker 4-7. Three of the points in the breaker she won with drop shot winners and I didn’t even see them coming. I struggled with my serve quite a bit also which is frustrating because I have been working on it a lot with my dad lately. I know what I have to work on and improve to be better prepared and fine tuned for my singles next week. Like in all sports athletes must have a short term memory loss. I’m learning from this match and putting it behind me. It’s time to get back to work and practice hard the rest of the week.

I have doubles tomorrow 2nd up after 11am. My partner lost her singles match today as well so hopefully we’ll make something happen tomorrow! Turning in early tonight…talk to you guys tomorrow. AW

Posted by Jack Newman at 4:33 PM | Comments ()

March 16, 2009

Ashley Starts 1st Tournament in Italy

Ciao!

I’m back at my hotel room relaxing and have a couple hours on my hands before dinner. The restaurant next to our hotel that we all go to doesn’t open for dinner until 8pm. That seems to be the case in a lot of places throughout Europe; I wish it was earlier though. I have a roommate this week now, it’s nice to have some company and it also saves money. I’ve known Karolina Kosinska for awhile and we played doubles together at one of the tournaments in Spain last fall.

This morning I had a really good practice with Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor who I had actually lost to in the finals of my last tournament in Spain. It’s nice to see at least a few familiar faces here this week. I’ve gotten to know a couple other girls since I’ve been here and will be seeing them over the next couple weeks I’m sure. I went on for my doubles around 2pm which wasn’t too late and I had met my partner for the first time about two hours before that. She’s very nice and a good player also. We won our doubles 6-1, 6-4. It wasn’t the most spectacular tennis, but we got through it together. We came up with the shots when we needed to and won a handful of no-ad points. The best point of the match was at 5-4, 30-15 receiving and I had a couple amazing gets nearly diving for each ball and finally/luckily our opponents missed. Then we closed out the match. We will get more comfortable and improve the more we play together throughout the week. I’m looking forward to stepping it up more in our next round which will be on Wednesday against a tougher team. After our doubles I waited for transportation and on the way back to the hotel we stopped at the supermarket. We went to a much bigger market than the one I went to the other day so I got a couple more snacks.

Tomorrow I play my 1st round singles match at 10am vs. (5) Alexia Virgili from Italy. I’m anxious to play and start grinding on the clay. I don’t know anything about my opponent, but just like any other match I’m looking to use my strengths and stay focused on everything that I can control. I’m going to get ready for dinner now…I’m thinking pasta! I’ll let you know how my day goes tomorrow, wish me luck! Ciao :)

Posted by Jack Newman at 3:33 PM | Comments ()

March 15, 2009

Ashley Getting Ready For 1st Tournament to Start in Italy

Hi Everyone!

Today was a solid day of practice. I warmed up 2 people for their matches late morning and had another practice late afternoon. I was able to find someone who wanted to play points which is what I was looking for. I always feel like it’s important to get as much point play in as possible before a tournament. Everyone out here can hit a good ball and hit up the middle or cross court all day long. But when you take it into point play it can be a whole different story. Plus I like to see how I’m moving and test out all of my shots in practice points before I step out onto the court for my match. I don’t like leaving things to chance. I want to make sure I cover all areas around my game so that I am totally prepared physically, mentally, and emotionally. We ended up playing 6 games and I had won 5 of them so that gave me a little extra confidence boost going into tomorrow.

The rest of my day was pretty uneventful…I had lunch at the University cafeteria, watched some of the qualifying matches and read my book. I’m reading Tony Dungy’s second and newest book called Uncommon. I loved his first one and I’m enjoying this one as well. Oh I did do one other thing today, I made the draw with the tournament director. I picked numbered chips that were turned upside down one by one and he goes down the draw filling in the empty spaces. Some players don’t really like drawing the numbers because they’re nervous and it’s kind of like determining your own fate. I don’t mind though, it is what it is. I ended up drawing a girl from Italy, I don’t have the draw in front of me so I don’t remember her name or which seed she was. I’ll have to get back to you about that tomorrow. I don’t play singles until Tuesday, but I do play doubles tomorrow. I’m playing with Marina Shamayko from Russia. I don’t know her at all, I was going down the list of players and saw that she had a pretty good doubles ranking so I just decided to ask her to play. We’ll see how it works out. We play against two Italian girls tomorrow 3rd up after 10am. I need to get going to bed now because I’m practicing early before the matches start. Fill you in more tomorrow. Wish us luck in the doubles! : ) Goodnight!

Posted by Jack Newman at 5:00 PM | Comments ()

March 14, 2009

Ashley Weinhold in Rome-Pomezia

Ciao!

I’m starting to settle in a little more and get my bearings as my 2nd full day of being here passes. I’m surprised I haven’t been affected by the jet lag or time change. The only thing is when my alarm goes off in the morning I want to sleep for a couple more hours, but that’s pretty normal for me…I like to sleep in!

My hotel room is very simple and like a lot of places in Europe my bed is tiny. I’m not too sure my air conditioning works because it’s awfully stuffy in here right now! Breakfast is actually down the street at the other Hotel Selene that I showed up at by mistake when I first arrived. They put out cereal, yogurt, croissants and I think some meat and cheeses…a bit different from the American eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, pancakes, etc. So far the food has all been good, plenty of pizza and pasta. I’m pretty sure every lunch or dinner I eat here will consist of either pizza or pasta. I walked into town this evening and found a supermarket so I picked up a few things. They have fewer options than Spain! But it seems like there are lots of small specialty shops for meats, cheese, pasta, pastries, etc. There were a lot of people walking on the streets thru town tonight, which is different from most of the places I went to in Spain. I’m on the outskirts of Rome in a town called Pomezia. Hopefully at some point during my trip I will get to go into Rome and do some sightseeing.

So far I’ve had 3 practices and all with different players. The tournament is at a University with only 5 red clay courts which makes for crazy practices. They only have one practice court and are using the remaining 4 courts for matches. Most practice time during the day is 30 minutes on half of a court. During that time you can pretty much bet on other people coming onto your court and trying to take your slot. That’s even with a sign up sheet! It’s important to be purposeful and intense during those small windows of practice. The best time is early morning before matches or late afternoon when all of the matches are finished. At that point you can usually get a whole court and longer practice time. Today I was able to jump on a court for 30mins to warm someone up for their match. Then I waited till 4pm to practice for about 1 ½ hours and finished up my day with some on court fitness/lots of sliding!

The main draw of my 1st tournament starts on Monday. I’ll practice a couple more times tomorrow whenever I can to keep getting used to the courts and everything. The draw and schedule will come out tomorrow night so I’ll be letting you know when and who I play. I better head to bed soon because it’s getting late. Buona notte! (I think that means goodnight) I know even less Italian than Spanish, I better study up!

Posted by Jack Newman at 4:45 PM | Comments ()

March 13, 2009

Ashley Weinhold Travels to Italy!

Buongiorno!

I’m on another European adventure, this time in Italy and by myself. I will be playing 4 tournaments total and all on red clay once again. My 1st tournament will be a $10k in Rome-Pomezia, the 2nd is another $10k in Latina-Nascosa, the 3rd is a $50k in Latina, and the 4th is a $220,000 WTA Event in Barcelona, Spain. There’s a slight chance I may play a tournament or two in Belgium somewhere along the line. I won’t know for sure until I see the entry/acceptance lists in the coming weeks.

I departed Austin Wednesday afternoon and landed in Rome on Thursday afternoon. I had a layover in Atlanta and Paris on the way here. For some reason the Paris airport was a bit confusing getting from one terminal to another, but I had plenty of time since my layover was 2 ½ hours. I had one of my favorite things there as well which is a chocolate croissant and cappuccino. The real adventure began when I landed in Rome and there is no way I could have made up this story or imagined it would be this difficult to get to my hotel. After I exchanged my money and thankfully got all of my luggage I checked with a taxi how much it would cost to get to my hotel. He told me about 60-70 euros which is quite a lot so I decided to take a different route. I dragged my bags to the Leonardo Express train which is located across the way from the airport. I stood in line for awhile to buy my ticket to Roma Termini and got on the next scheduled train. It took about 35 minutes to get to Termini station and from there I had no idea where to go. I asked a couple people and they all told me to take another train to Nettuno and get off at the 2nd stop which is Pomezia. So I bought that train ticket and somehow managed to find the train among the many other platforms. I took a seat close to the doors so it would be relatively easy to get off the train with all my bags. I waited for the train to leave which took about 20 more minutes than the time I was told the train left. I guess they wanted to fill it up completely which was definitely accomplished. My train stop was about 24km away and I could have sworn it was going back the same direction I just came from the airport. I guess I had to go to Roma Termini because there were no direct routes to where I was going, similar to connecting at Grand Central Station in NYC. Once I got off that train I felt totally lost because there were only a few people around and it looked like I was in a neighborhood. I found a lady who spoke pretty good English and she told me to take the public bus and just tell the driver I need to get to Hotel Selene which is where I’m staying. So I did that and I got off the bus about 20 minutes down the road. From there I dragged my bags through a little town and down a hill where I saw Hotel Selene from a distance. I had to cross a crazy busy intersection with no pedestrian walkway, I was just praying a car wouldn’t hit me! Then I walked under a highway bridge, crossed another intersection and arrived at the hotel, sweating and out of breath. I walked into the lobby and the guy at the front desk told me I was at the wrong hotel, I laughed and thought he was joking! Supposedly there are two Hotel Selene’s and the tennis players are staying at the “Sporting” one which is about ½ mile away. Luckily the concierge drove me to the correct Hotel Selene. I checked in successfully, got to my room, and sat down in amazement and relief. Now tell me nobody could have made that story up! I’m pretty sure I made it as difficult as possible and I highly doubt anyone else came that way or else they’d be insane. After all that it only cost me 14euros, but the 60euro taxi ride sounds pretty good right now. That was definitely the hardest travel day I’ve had to date. I’m just glad I made it to the right place safely after 3 hours of confusion and disbelief.

Sorry that was such a long story, but I had to tell it. I wish someone else was with me or I had video camera to record all of that because it was hilarious. For some strange reason I wasn’t that sleepy and didn’t even feel the time change. I only got about 6 hours of sleep on Tuesday night and slept maybe 5 hours total on all 3 of those flights over here. But as soon as I sat on my bed after getting some pizza for dinner across the street I was knocked out. I’ll probably feel the time change a bit more throughout the day today. I’m about to take a taxi over to the tournament site which shouldn’t be too far away. I’m going to ask the first player I see to practice since I don’t know anybody here yet. I’ll fill you in on everything else later. Ciao!

Ashley Weinhold

Posted by Jack Newman at 11:17 AM | Comments ()