California Dreamin'

The Dartmouth women’s basketball team is embarking on a West-coast swing right before the holidays. The Big Green will be playing Long Beach State (Dec. 16) and then traveling north to take on California on Dec. 20. The team has some fun activities planned during its California trip and sophomore Nicola Zimmer is going to give you all some “behind-the scenes” action!

 

Hello from CALI! It's awesome to escape the Hanover weather for a bit, and Janelle, Milica, and Eve are especially excited to be back in their home state.  We're playing two great teams in the next week, and we've got a lot of cool things planned for our down time.  While Jessica keeps tabs on the games, I'll be updating you all on some of our off-the-court activities.

Our flight landed at LAX last night and we drove straight to the hotel from the airport, so for some of us today was our first real taste of Southern California.  Because practice didn't start until 5pm, Koren kindly hooked us up with a trip to the Long Beach Aquarium.

Hundreds of little kids, probably on some school-wide field trip, welcomed us in the modest lobby of the aquarium. Their presence, and frankly, their screaming, was less than thrilling, and the aquarium suddenly became overcrowded and juvenile (personally, I was just worried the little ones would take the prime viewing spots in front of the shark tank). However, it only took one or two sea-life exhibits before we turned into our ten-year-old selves...baby-talking to the sea otters (Faziah is guilty here), ooing and ahhing at the jelly fish, and enthusiastically calling each other over to look at the one really unfortunate, ugly fish. Ari even met a good friend in one of the tanks.  At the end of the day, our constant camera flashes and non-stop commentary undoubtedly caused more disruption than the kids.

The afternoon was capped off by a big lunch across the street at Bubba Gump's Shrimp, where we showed off our Forrest Gump impersonations (I'd have to say Morgynn, our manager, had it down best) and repeated "life is like a box of chocolates..." way too many times.

The aquarium trip was certainly a success, and practice at Long Beach State later in the day went well.  We are really excited for our game tomorrow night, and now have to rest up so we're ready to go. Thanks for reading; I'll check back in soon!

Nicola