We have arrived at Manly for our 10 full on days of training and we are pumped after our 'lull' Suz described!

After making friends with the kindly man sitting next to me on the plane, we found out that we were all heading to Manly beach and at the end of our flight he kindly offered us a ride in his Taxi! So again, the friendliness of a stranger has saved us not only money, but the struggle of maneuvering our suitcases in public transport! THANKS!

The Last month has been a very successful one for us. Our 13th in Sanya and 17th in Phuket, although due to a crazy draw we had a pretty hard cross over vs Greece (7th in the World). But that is the way the cookie crumbles! With these results our World ranking will sit at 33rd going into next year! Not too shabby coming from 62nd at the start of the year. On top of that, we have been accepted by SPARC for a grant! This has been a huge relief for us! It means that along with LG's support we can actually continue next year and we now only need to find money for a coach!!!!

First things first... sorry for the lack of blog entries since Suz's last one!

Woops, we missed last week!

I guess time flys a lot faster when we are in competition and travelling more frequently!

Last week was the first of our 8 back to back events. We played in Gstaad, Switzerland and it was BEAUTUIFUL!

Playing wise, we had a good first game and even though we lost our second, there was some really good stuff. We had to play the very experienced, crafty team from Canada. It was very close and it was a couple of our mistakes that lost it - all it takes aye.

I really like it here! The cities are quite beautiful with many gardens/parks and the people we have meet here have been very good to us! Quite a few places we have stayed at while in Germany have been at the house of people we have only meet once or not at all (a friend of a friend)! But all have looked after and welcomed us. We are very lucky that New Zealand has SUCH a good name overseas! So many people tell us that they not only love New Zealand but also that they were treated so kindly there! So THANK YOU New Zealand!! You have made our trips that much easier!

As in the Osaka event, a lot of top teams are playing in these last 2 events before World Champs. We were back in the qualifier in this event too, but unlike last year, being ranked 8^th instead of 30^th shows the progress we are making! We meet a Spanish team first, should have won in 2 sets but I have no problem in admitting that I was struggling with being quite tired as well as dealing with the midday heat! We won and had a good break before we meet a Russian team, our last game top make it into the main draw.

As Suz wrote last week we have been staying with friends in a nice city called Suzuka. But yesterday we had to leave and head to Osaka to prep for the event here starting on Wednesday.

Well our first World Tour Event of 2009 is done and dusted!!

A 17th is a good result for us in terms of our goal of qualifying for world champs at the end of June, but we were a little disappointed with our last game especially.

We are getting closer and closer to our first World Tour event in Shanghai which will start for us NEXT Thursday (instead of Wednesday) as we just found out today that we are in the Main Draw and ranked 17th! Very exciting news! Shows that we are moving up in the beach world and to start the year without having to play the cut throat qualifier the year continues to look good!

We are staying a massive beach resort here in Antalya, which is in the south west of Turkey and so we train next to the Mediterranean Sea! I can not yet say I have been for a swim in it as I am not actually a big fan of the sea, but it is more because the weather here is not that warm!

They are moving into spring and there is still snow in the mountains inland and so temperatures and weather has been similar to back home. We are training with a German team and the top Switzerland team and so far trainings have been fun and are going well.

After another very intense week of training and study! We were treated by our host Tim Wyld to a trip to the Cleland Wild Life Park! I was blown away by this park as we were able to walk into paddocks where kangaroos, emu's and wallabies were hanging out and feed and pat them! It is crazy that with the number of times i have been to Australia, I had never patted either a kangaroo or Koala! Very cool experience!