Day 1 in Turks and Caicos

The Olivet College women's volleyball team is on a week-long trip to Turks and Caicos. While there, the players will be writing blog posts and sending them back to the U.S.A. to be posted on the website. The home page for the blog, where future posts will be linked to is: www.olivetcomets.com/sports/wvball/2017-18/turks_and_caicos_blog/

THURSDAY, AUG. 3 -- written by Jillian Johnson, Rose Kemmerling and Morgan Champion

The flight from Detroit to Charlotte was pretty successful. Jill was super nervous, but all the girls helped. Once us three got through security we noticed that Nieya had not gotten through. Later on we asked why and she told us they stopped her and looked though her bags because she had oranges in them.

While waiting for the plane to Charlotte we played heads up. We landed in Turks and Caicos and walked directly outside. It was almost as if we were celebrities or the president walking off a private jet. Jill left her passport on the plane, and three security guards had to go back and get it for me.

We checked into our villa and went grocery shopping, hung out and we all went to bed really early. We woke up the next day early and went out to the beach. Maddy had us each have a photo shoot and the pictures turned out really good! We also saw gabi running then trip over something. We later found that she had stepped on a sea urchin. We soaked it in vinegar and then Kayline and Rose tried to dig out.

We made sandwiches for lunch as a team and then drove around the island before practice. We went to the fish fry where there were food vendors and people from the area were selling bracelets, hats, and t-shirts. We are currently all sitting in the living room telling stories. We are excited for the rest of the week!!

Life here on the island is very different from the United States. They drive on the left side of the road and there are no traffic lights, only round abouts. There are also a lot of aggressive drivers, you can honestly tell the difference between the visitors and locals by the way they drive!

We knew that the prices in the grocery store would be more than at home, but it was a lot more than we expected, a case of water was $12!

Our practice was very efficient. We knew that we only had an hour in the gym so we worked our hardest and had 3 very competitive scrimmages. We had some very exciting/long rallies!

I know we are all used to Michigan summers being hot, but this is a completely different heat. I think we all now appreciate our 70/80 degree summers. The good thing is we all ended up sweating a lot during practice! There were several children cheering us on and keeping score for us when playing, it was so adorable! We noticed none of us had been keeping score, and then we heard the kids shout out the score.

Click here for today's photo gallery.