The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
UAB Soccer Blog: Kofi Gyawu
5/21/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
May 21, 2012
The UAB men's soccer team is gaining valuable experience overseas in Holland during the month of May. Rising senior forward Kofi Gyawu will be doing a blog about his experiences. Below is his first blog entry:
BLOG ONE
Our journey to the Netherlands started off bright and early as we departed for the Birmingham airport at 6am from Bartow arena. As we were approaching take off an emergency situation occurred when a woman had a blockage (heart attack) and she passed out.
UAB head athletic trainer Mike Jones rushed to the scene and handled the situation with expert care. Paramedics soon came onto the plane and everything was taken care of.
We safely took off from Birmingham at 9:15 a.m. and landed in Atlanta at 11:15 and had a 5 hour layover. Finally our 8 hour flight to Amsterdam began.
Thankfully we arrived safe at the Amsterdam airport at 6 a.m. local time. No one on our team had been to this country before so we were all excited and looking forward to this experience.
We traveled by bus to our hotel which was in the city of Den Helder. Due to the 7 hour time change, we tried our hardest not too sleep too much when we got to the hotel so that our sleep cycle wouldn't be completely thrown off.
 The UAB men's soccer team prepares for its first game in Holland.  |
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Some of us chose to explore the city before lunch, others chose to catch up on some much needed sleep. Myself, Tucker (Stone), and Stewart (Abrahart) decided to explore the city of Den Helder and one thing that stood out was that a lot of people use bikes to get around. People of all ages were riding bikes through the city. We found this very cool because we are used to seeing people use cars to get around instead of bikes.
After lunch we had a light training session to get our blood flowing and our feet reacquainted with the ball. Following this we enjoyed more free time to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings and then a wonderful dinner in our hotel's restaurant.
For post dinner entertainment we busied ourselves with the hotel's complimentary bowling and putt-putt.
All in all, it has been one of the longest days of our lives, with some of us dearly looking forward to sleep after over 32 hours of traveling and settling in.
