The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
11.09.2015 | Men's Basketball
Freshman guard describes our Monday schedule in Shanghai and Hangzhou.
Diary entry for Monday, November 9
(Shanghai and Hangzhou)
Freshman Guard Eric Davis
"I woke up in Shanghai and thought, 'wow.' I never would have thought something like this would have happened and given me this opportunity to go to a foreign country. It's not something honestly I dreamed of doing as a kid, but I'm extremely grateful for this opportunity. My mindset has to been to stay open-minded about everything, and I'm really enjoying this experience.
We had some American-style food for breakfast – it was similar but wasn't as good to me (laughter) – bacon, eggs, Corn Flakes type cereal and some fruit. Then we loaded the bus to drive thru Shanghai to the train station. First, I had never been to a train station. We don't have train stations in Michigan, so it was definitely something new. And we rode one of those bullet trains, it must have been going 300 miles per hour. It was kind of scary at first, and you're thinking I'm not quite sure this is safe. But it turned out to be pretty cool.
Getting on the train, you could see the city of Shanghai from a different point of view. This place is huge. To me, it's like LA (Los Angeles) and New York City combined. It took us over an hour to take the bus from the hotel to the train station, and there wasn't even that much traffic. It's a lovely city but it is huge.
The train took us to Hangzhou (where the team practiced at Alibaba headquarters), and this city is a miniature Shanghai. It's amazing how big everything is here. We took the bus to practice, and the gym was a little different than what we're used to back in the US. The baseline was further back behind the basket, and the rims looked bigger than usual. It was comforting to be back on a practice court.
After practice, we checked into our hotel here and had dinner followed by study hall. It's tough trying to keep up with what we need to do with our classes back home, but you have to be mentally tough. In this situation, you're going to be tired, but you still have things you have to do. You have to an open mind about this experience, enjoy it and embrace it. That's the mindset we're taking with this trip.
