china june 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th

Morning came early. we woke up at about 8 which gave us about 1 hour to eat and pack before we left at 9. breakfast was a train wreck. they served hot orange tang to drink, some dry dumplings filled with spinach which in normal circumstances would be good but they weren't, hard boiled eggs, some type of cake (not bad), and some other things i didn't recognize. after eating we all jumped into the bus that took us to the Shanghai train station. this place, like everything else in shanghai was enormous. we went through various gates and check points before we were at our gate. i had to use the restroom so i had the my teammates watch my bags. all the lights in the bathrooms were broken but there was a little natural light coming in from a couple windows here and there. it was odd because all the guys and girls were going into the same door. when you get in there is a communal hand washing area and two ways to break off, one for guys and one for girl. every public restroom that I've been in has stunk to high heavens. so much that i have to bury my face in my t-shirt. not long after the bathroom break everyone lines up and these doors open. it felt like Christmas sale where everyone was trying to beat the next person to the train. i never found out if it was first come first serve or what. we all ended up getting seats on the same cart which was nice. in the same cart was also the Jordanian team that we would be playing the next day as well as as many more people you could fit standing up. it was so hot in the train i wasn't able to sleep much on the 4 hour trip. i did have a window seat so it was nice to see some scenery outside Shanghai. it went from dense city to farming land to dense forestry, to series of tunnels that winded though the mountains. the coolest areas were the farming areas. the built the railway off the ground so not to disturb the crop so it was kind of like having an areal view of the farming land. most of it was rice patties but there were a lot of tree farms as well. we finally got to our stop. we were all really hungry so we walked close to a mile to KFC. it's always fun walking down the street with your team in china. it's a like were a traveling circus with the way people look at you. instead of giving us all our own food money the just have us line up and we order one at a time. the only thing that sucks about that is that if you don't want to eat what everybody else is eating then you kind of stuck. plus I've found out that this team in Argentina is big on team dining. good for team bonding i guess. so KFC is nothing like KFC in the states. they don't have biscuits and they sell these random tortillas filled with meat, lettuce, tomato's, a weird sauce, and corn tostada. they do have chicken and chicken sandwiches but they are odd tasting. me and the other Robert ended up sharing a bucket that regular chicken as well as some chicken wings. the bus driver was nice enough to come pick us up at the KFC and we headed off to the hotel. we thought we were close but we were wrong! we still had a 2 and half hour drive in front of us in this bus that had zero leg room! after the shock wore off we settled down and listened to music to help pass the time. we got to the city which was much smaller there for they didn't have a really nice hotel. the room felt like a prison cell. it was so small that we had to step over our luggage to get to the bathroom. and the food was just like the previous. after dinner Fabri and i went back to our room and to get some much needed sleep being that we had a game the next day. the next morning a rooster woke me (in the middle of the city!) at 4:30am! he wasn't wrong either. the sun had already lit up the sky. i guess they don't do daylights savings time here. i was able to fall back asleep got up a couple hours later to eat breakfast which was the same i had the day before; hard boiled eggs and some cake with no topping. the only thing better was they did have a chef cooking eggs for you. after breakfast we headed back to the room to watch the first half of the Laker's/Celtics game which was live at 9 am Beijing time and get ready for shoot around. the ride there wasn't long and shoot around felt great. it's the first sweat that we broke on purpose since the 27Th of may. it was a normal shoot around with stretching, shots, and offensive review. after shoot around we headed back to the hotel for lunch. normally i snack on something and eat at about 3 or 4 but the food wouldn't be out at that time. plus, i learned when we played that friendly game in Mendoza the Argentinians like to eat early and snack a couple hours before the game. after lunch we headed back to our rooms and rested till game time. we r in the middle of down town so all you hear horns honking outside your window. since there really doesn't seem to be any set rules for driving everyone just honks to let you are in their way. gets old really quick! at about 5 we went to eat a snack which consisted of cheese sandwiches that one of the assistant coaches was making for us. our translator kept asking if it was OK and if we wanted some Chinese food. we all gracefully declined. we headed out for the game not much later and were greeted at the front door with what looked to be a wedding party. I'm not sure where in the wedding day the were but he was carrying here through the parking lot and let her get down before they got to the front door, which is also when they lot this string of fire works that had to be close to 100 ft long that were made up of m-80s or bigger. by far the most impressive display of fireworks I've seen and heard! if felt like we were in the middle of a fire fight! they finally swept of the ash and we headed on our way to the game. the gym was really nice and probably had close to 2000 people there before we even got there. the gym looked like it could fit about 7000 and i think there ended up being about 4000 or so. me and a couple other guys got out early for warm ups. the first shot i took i missed everyone in the crowd went "aw!". i quickly remembered from the last time i was here how easily they were entertained and disappointed. i finally got loose and hit 7 or 8 shots in a row from a couple feet behind the 3 point line and you would have though i performed the most amazing magic trick ever! we have 4 young guys that haven't traveled outside of south America and it was fun to watch their reaction to everything. the game started slow for us and the Jordanian national team that we were playing hit a couple quick shots. we were down 4-15 pretty quickly. i felt pretty good but only took a couple shots in the first half but we were able to fight our way back and go ahead by one. the second have was a different story. we buckled down on defense and started to find our offensive rhythm. we ended up winning the game by about 15. i had 8 points on 3- of 6 shooting. the big difference was our bigs. they were more athletic but we were bigger and played smarter. after the game we probably signed a couple hundred autographs and took as many pictures. as tired as my hand and face gets from smiling i try not to ever decline a picture or an autograph after a professional player waved me off when i was younger. after the game i was so tired i didn't want to eat but i forced myself to anyways. after dinner i went back to the room and fell asleep immediately. the next morning (June 5Th) i was woke up to the darn chicken again but again was able to fall back asleep again. we ate breakfast and headed off to the next city which was about a 2 hour drive. the whole drive was off road because of construction on the highway. i wasn't at all good on the body after last nights game. this city was a little nicer than the previous but very dusty and polluted. the hotel turned out to be pretty nice. the rooms were really big, modern, and you could run almost everything in the room from this little pad on the night stand. the pre-game meal and snack were also a bit better. still not really excited to eat it but it looked more familiar. we decided not to have a shoot around since we got there so late so when we shower up to the gym it was all new. the gym itself was beautiful inside and out. we were all a bit tired from the travel and the game before but the Jordanian team (which is who we were playing again) had the same schedule as we did. the game was awful for us. we couldn't shoot to save our lives. we scored only 2 points in the second quarter!! 1-21 shooting. it was the worst quarter that I've been a part of in my career that i can remember. we end up losing the game by 17 but we were down by 30 a lot. the frustrating thing was was that we were getting good shots and just missing. i ended up with 15 and nobody else had over nine. after the game i noticed that I'd been sweating much more than usual my body was starting to stiffen up, especially my neck. i made it another quick dinner and early bed time not only because i wasn't feeling good but because we had another travel day the next day. when we woke up and went to breakfast before leaving they told us this was going to be a short trip today and a long trip on Monday. nobody really was excited about that since we had a game on Tuesday and Monday was going to be our rest day but when we got to the city we'd be staying the night at at around 1pm every bodies mood changed. the city was Nanjing, which is the countries ancient capital before Beijing. Tyler immediately grabbed a map from the hotel counter and started to make a game plan. i wasn't feeling very good but everyone was going and there was some once in a lifetime stuff to be experienced. our first stop was food at this really weird buffet. the name was something like "Chinese south American style BBQ buffet and beer house". we walk in and all the employees are dressed in old German garb and it's decorated with German flair. the food was Brazilian style where you have a salad bar and they bring out meat on big skewers. the only thing from the salad bar that was good was shredded carrot and red cabbage with 1000 isle dressing. immediately the meat started to come out. the first was chicken heart with a spicy sauce (not bad). then came an array of pieces of beef, pork, and chicken. i tried everything except the solid piece of fat that they BBQ and ox tongue (it came out whole and they shaved pieces off). i would have tried it but i couldn't get past the smell. after that unique experience we embarked on a journey that took us all over the city of Nanjing. the first stop was to the purple mountain where they various monuments, temples, pagodas, etc. the first stop on the mountain to Dr. Sun Yetsen mausoleum. the Dr. played a huge role in over throwing the Quing dynasty and soon after became the first president. he also wrote some pretty influential books and was known for being for the people. the monument consisted of close to 400 steps that spanned over a mile up to the Dr. mausoleum where you could view his coffin what was made of some sort of stone and copper on the inside. the architecture was beautiful and i guess won lots of awards for it's design. from a birds eye view the whole place is shaped like a bell. although the mausoleum was impressive, i would say that the view back toward the city just as if not more impressive. after taking the pictures and haggling with the gift shops we headed off to the site. i think they're were 7 main attractions to see on the mountain but we only had time for 2 because we got there a little late, the park closed at 6:30pm and we didn't finish the first part till 5:30pm. so the next and last spot we went to on the mountain was the linggu temple, which was an 8-9 story pagoda made of concrete that was probably 150ft tall. it was a ways from the mausoleum but there was a trolley that took us there. the trolley ride was hilarious to us and probably annoying to the locals. here we are on this ancient mountain and this Argentinian team is singing these fight songs at the top of their lungs. some people were having fun with it and others gave us dirty looks. so after the short trolley drive we start walking the trail to the temple(pagoda). the walk again was about a mile long with some old building to stop and look at on the way. the Nice thing was there wasn't as many stairs which was nice since we would be traversing so many pretty quickly to get to the top of the pagoda. it was only about 25-30 ft. wide and spiral stair case winded up the core of it. you were able to stop at each level which also had a balcony that went around the whole thing. Emmi(our back up point guard) and i stopped on the first couple floors but they all looked the same so we headed up to the top. by the time we got to the top we were a bit light headed so we took our time going to the edge to look over. the view was incredible!! hard to put into words. on the top floor there was a make shift gift shop where a guy was selling little gold statues of the temple and some guard dragons as well as a some other random stuff (the most random being a sling shot ha ha). after soaking everything in we headed down which made me more light headed than going up. when i got to the bottom some of the guys were just going up so i layed on the stairs until the got back down. after everyone was done we headed to get a taxi to take us to the city center. we were told that that was one thing we needed to see. but this time my neck had stiffened up, i had a bad headache, and i was drained but again i told myself I'd probably never get the chance to do this again. by now the sun is going down so on the taxi ride the the city light began to come on. these buildings here are incredibly unique. the designers of these buildings have to being some type of drug to be thinking that abstractly! we got dropped off and got our bearings which took a while but we would of rather not got lost in this city and plus we'd had already done so much walking that we wanted to be efficient. so we all gathered up and headed toward the "time square" of the city. it was also like everything else today, hard to describe. since I've never been to new york i can only speculate that this was what time square looks like there. all the lights, shopping, and bid buildings! we took a couple pictures and from there we headed to the subway which would get us within walking distance of our last stop of the day; a 1000 year old Confucius temple. it was a circus trying to figure out the subway but we managed and as always we getting stares like we were a traveling zoo. the subway it's self really packed. no seats available and we might as well have had a group hug we were so close. we only had to go 2 stops which was nice. after the subway we walked maybe 7 blocks to the temple which was smack dab in the middle of this shopping center. it's about 8 or 9 pm and this place was in full swing! there were restaurants, shopping, street vendors, gift shops, little boat rides in this man made lake. it all dwarfed the Confucius temple. we actually walked by it twice without knowing it was there. after taking pictures and walking around all of us were hungry. we decided to eat something familiar; McDonald's. now I'm not a big fan but it never tasted so good! and the caffeine from the coke to the edge off my headache. I'd had had enough for the night and was ready to go back to the hotel so me and half of our group took taxi's back to the hotel and the other group stayed to go on the boat ride. from what i hear a couple of them fell asleep on the boat which would have been me if i had stayed. i checked my e-mail quickly and jumped into bed. i don't remember hitting the pillow.