Day 4 - Bled, Slovenia

Today was very fun and exciting. It all started at 6:30 in the morning. We woke up, took a shower and went down to breakfast. We had the same breakfast but this time there was Nutella! Then we all gathered in the lobby and checked out of Czech! We quickly scurried over to the bus and loaded our stuff in it. Once we were all on the bus, we realized there were others players on the bus too! It was the Czech Junior National Team! We sat in our seat (that we would be sitting in for the next 10 hours) and our journey began. We listened to our iPods, drew and slept! We also watched Dirty Dancing in Czech. It was great, but hard to follow along with the story plot. 6 hours into the bus ride, we watched another movie, Bridget Jones' Diary. It was in English! We first stopped at a gas station to have a potty and snack break. Our second stop was the same thing but this time, we got lunch! We arrived at our hotel in Bled right up the street from the lake at around 5. We hiked our stuff up a hill to the lobby to receive our keys for the hotel room we'd be staying in for the night. We were told to grab our bathingsuits and volleyball gear and meet 15 minutes later to go swimming in Lake Bled. We began walking down to the lake at around 5:30 and once we got there we spotted bright colored floating balls in the water or as we called them "Hamster Balls". We immediately wanted to go in them. On the way to the "Hamster Balls" we met a swan who we named Calvin. We decided to feed him the Ritz crackers that Kayla had in her bag, he really liked them! Brittany then started feeding him grass. Then, we walked over to the Private Swiming Areas where the Hamster Balls were waiting. Some of the girls forgot their money, so they just bought swimming tickets. The ones who brought their money, sprinted to the Hamster Balls and bought a 5 minute Hamster Ball ticket. Watching the girls in the Hamster Balls was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my entire life! As they struggled to stand up and not flop everywhere, the other girls laughed hysterically. After a couple hours of swimming and jumping off the diving board, we had to quickly gather our things and head off to a "Friendly Match" with the Czech Junior National Team. We put our wet hair up and volleyball gear and game faces on, and started our long hike to the gym. We arrived at the gym and started to warm up. The line-up was given and the whistle was blown... our match had started. The game ended in a very close score of 21-25. The next game started poorly, but to our surprise we picked it up and ended the game 25-17. After the game was finished, we walked back to the hotel and enjoyed a very lovely meal. This consisted of starter salad, Cauliflower soup, Chicken and rice and then for dessert we had cake! The coaches informed us that we could stay out until 11 o'clock and we immediately thought to get Gelato! Some of us went back to our rooms and showered, while others were too lazy and simply put on sweats. We seperated into two groups and our group decided to take the scenic route to the Gelato Place. Once we arrived, we found out that it was closed. As dissapointed as we were, we decided to keep trying and go to another Gelato shop. We luckily found one open and also found the other girls enjoying their Gelato! We got our gelato and found out they didn't take credit cards making McKenna and Kayla pay for the group! After our gelato experience, we walked back to the hotel and went up to our rooms and fell asleep quickly. It was a great day and we hope there is more to come!

With love,

The Mad(d)i(e)'s!