On September 8th 2005, Matt, Nikki, Sharleen, Wendy, Mr Wang and myself headed off to Chenzhou, China to compete in the Asian Diving Championships. It was my third time to China but each time it blows my mind with the sheer amount of people and how different the country is to Australia. Once we landed in Guangzhou we had a 5 1/2 hour bus ride to Chenzhou, which was quite unpleasent, but we got to see some Chinese country side. The pool was brand new and quite nice, the springboards were very close together which made synchronised diving a little bit scary.
We stayed at the Chenzhou International Hotel, which was really nice, I was on the trundle bed in a room with Nikki and Sharleen. Everyday in the resturant there was interesting food on offer, this included foods such as: flavoured intestine of goose, bullfrog, ox tail soup, eel, chickens feet and head - yuk!
The opening ceremony was on the 11th of September, there were many performers and dancers, it was really quite incredible. There were musical items, singing, kung fu displays, a crazy high diving show and a group of young synchronised swimmers. Sharleen and I carried the flag for Australia, which was lots of fun. There were 10 countries competing in the Asian Championships which included: China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Korea, Kuwait, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines and Australia.
On Monday the 11th I had the 1 metre event in the morning. I dove quite well to score 250 points which is a personal best, and finished 6th. In the afternoon Sharleen and I had the womens 3 metre synchronised event. Sharleen and I dove extremely well to come 2nd and we scored 296 points which was a personal best and only 6 points behind the Chinese pair!
We stayed at the Chenzhou International Hotel, which was really nice, I was on the trundle bed in a room with Nikki and Sharleen. Everyday in the resturant there was interesting food on offer, this included foods such as: flavoured intestine of goose, bullfrog, ox tail soup, eel, chickens feet and head - yuk!
The opening ceremony was on the 11th of September, there were many performers and dancers, it was really quite incredible. There were musical items, singing, kung fu displays, a crazy high diving show and a group of young synchronised swimmers. Sharleen and I carried the flag for Australia, which was lots of fun. There were 10 countries competing in the Asian Championships which included: China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Korea, Kuwait, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines and Australia.
On Monday the 11th I had the 1 metre event in the morning. I dove quite well to score 250 points which is a personal best, and finished 6th. In the afternoon Sharleen and I had the womens 3 metre synchronised event. Sharleen and I dove extremely well to come 2nd and we scored 296 points which was a personal best and only 6 points behind the Chinese pair!
On the 12th of September I had the women's 3 metre event. I dove pretty good except 107C was over, in the end I scored 502 points. After our event Sharleen and I got our nails done which was lots of fun as neither of us had had acrylic nails before. Later that night was the end of competition banquet, it was heaps of fun. Each country had to perform a song or dance, we got up and did the Vegemite song with actions which was very embarrassing, and I think no-one in the room had any idea of what we were going on about.
On Wednesday the 14th we started our trip home. First we caught a train to Guangzhou which took almost 5 hours, then it was on a bus to the airport and finally we could check our bags in and grab a bite to eat, which ended up being very expensive noodles. We only had two flights with a quick stop off at Singapore. Our plane touched down at 6:30am, it was quite cold but the air was lovely and fresh. China was great fun, it was a shame we couldn't stay longer and see more things.
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