Team USA and Shanghai Team

Volleyball

Behind the Great Wall: In China with Dana Rettke

Long day of travel and first match

Volleyball

Behind the Great Wall: In China with Dana Rettke

Long day of travel and first match

Hey Badger Fans!

Hope all is well in the States! As some of you know, I am in China competing with the USA Collegiate National Team, and what an experience this is going to be! I'm so excited for this amazing opportunity, and fortunate enough to be able to share this with all of you! Follow along for the next 10 days as I try to bring you along this journey with me! This will be my first time in Asia, and I cannot wait!

Day 1
Today was the longest day of my life! It started with waking up at 4 a.m. and hopping on a flight to Los Angeles from Chicago. Smooth sailing for four hours, then had a layover in LA where I met up with the team and coaches. We all connected immediately and started talking and laughing as we tried to download as many Netflix shows as possible for the 13-hour flight to Shanghai. I knew right away this was going to be a fun group. We grabbed our last bit of American food, boarded the plane, and guess who had the middle seat – me! But the flight attendant was kind enough to move me to an aisle (bless her heart) so we were all good!

Now my Wisconsin teammates would agree that one of my favorite things to do on my free time is to do literally nothing. But let me tell you 13 hours on a plane doing nothing is a long time! I would think maybe we were getting close and then see that we still had six hours to go, which was very discouraging! But eventually we did land and man, I was so excited to walk around! We got through customs and right outside the customs line was a crowd of people all lined up waiting for friends and family, but you would have thought they were there to see us. People had their cameras out taking videos and pictures of us just walking through the airport. That's when I had a feeling that was going to be the theme of the trip.

As we were about to board the bus to go to the hotel, we were waiting in the concourse area and guess who walked up – the USA Men's National team, which happened to be playing in China at the same exact time. All of us kind of stood there in shock and didn't really know what to do, slightly star struck! What are the odds!!  We made a little small talk before departing for the hotel. What a great way to start the trip! By that time, I hadn't slept in over 24 hours and needed my bed as soon as possible.

Photo Gallery

Day 2
I don't think I have ever fallen asleep so fast in my life, I was OUT! We woke up for breakfast to start our day with, of course, Chinese food – fried rice, fried eggs, wonton soup, fried dough sticks, stir fry, and fruit were just some of the options available. I am a very adventures eater, and I love trying new things. That's the beauty of traveling!

Following breakfast, we had a team meeting and were off to our first team practice, which was about an hour away at the Shanghai sports institution. The athletes live on the campus and practice every day, kind of like we would do at school, they just don't have school. What a life! (Just kidding! I actually do like school; it adds an extra challenge. I'm all about it!)

We had serve and pass for an hour and then we played a game against the UBEST pro team. Talk about learning to adapt! Learning to hit off new setters, and block with new blockers is not an easy task, but we made it work in the hour that we had. I thought for the time we had we came together as a team and played really well! We pulled out the five-set win. As the game continued, we kept getting better and working out the kinks. It was really fun to watch and be a part of.

USA Volleyball Match 1 Story

After the match, we all headed back to the hotel to shower and go get dinner. We went to a market in downtown Shanghai for dinner and bargain shopping. The place was gorgeous, trim on the walls lit up all around the market. There were tons of people around, and wherever we were, there was a crowd taking pictures of us. One lady asked for a picture with me and the next thing you know there was 20 people around wanting pictures. Very funny!

We had street food for dinner which was great! Lots of dumplings and ramen. At this market was when I realized the language barrier was going to be greater than I thought. Stephanie Samedy (from Minnesota) and I were determined to find bubble tea, which is tea that has little Boba beads at the bottom of it, which are like little balls filled with juice. I get it in Madison sometimes, so it should be easy to find in China right? Yeah not the case. The workers had no idea what we were saying and so we gave up after about 10 minutes of playing a charades game.

After the market, we ventured to the river and The Bund, which had the best view of the sky line of Shanghai. There were crowds and crowds of people. The populations of Shanghai is 24 million people. Just to put that in perspective, Chicago has a population of 2.7 million. That is A LOT of people. You can definitely tell the number of people that live there too because almost every building is an apartment building. They are skyscrapers of apartment buildings as well. It's pretty crazy. The skyline that you will see in the pictures is probably the only place you won't find apartment building. We got to the river and the skyline was absolutely amazing. Everything was lit up and reflecting off the river, kind of reminded me of New York. You can check out some pictures too! This one heck of a long day, but an amazing one!

I'll check back in tomorrow!

On Wisconsin! Go USA!  

Dana

Collegiate National Team-China Schedule
May 21: Arrive Shanghai
May 22: Match vs Shanghai
May 23: Bus to Hangzhou, afternoon training
May 24: Match vs. Zhejiang in Jiashan
May 25: Match vs. Zhejiang in Pinghu City
May 26: Bus to Nanjing
May 27: Open Training; Kid's clinic at Nanjing Elementary School.
May 28: Train to Beijing
May 29: Match vs Beijing BAIC in the morning. Great Wall and Olympic Site in the afternoon
May 30: Morning sightseeing at Tiananmen Square & Forbidden City. Match vs Hebei in the afternoon (in Beijing)
May 31: Fly home from Beijing and get home the same day
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