Our trip to Chinese Taipei started at Heathrow on Friday morning. There were 3 nervous faces checking in as we only had 23kgs each in weight allowance for balls and were carrying all our clothes as hand luggage. Luckily we got a very nice man behind check-in who didn't charge us any excess baggage for our 4 balls each. To be honest the whole journey went without a hiccup. We flew for 11 hours to Hong Kong then only 90 mins to Kaohsiung the city hosting the games.
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We were greeted in arrivals by a group of volunteers allocated to different sports and ushered to the relevant coaches to be taken to the accreditation centre. Once we had filled in all the appropriate forms and received our accreditation cards and welcome packs we were taken to or hotel. The Kindness hotel will be our home for the next 4 nights and is very nice and newly renovated. As the World Games is a multi sport event there are many athletes from around the World competing in different sports, such as Sumo wrestling and Tug of War.
Today was official practise and we were expecting the conditions to be tough at Happy bowling centre. We saw the pattern before leaving the UK and the 38 foot 2:1 ratio was definitely going to be a challenge! Darren and I played all over the lane with the equipment we brought and changed surfaces on every ball. Both of us found good ball reaction as the lanes burned up and we were both using the New Brunswick Siege. It is going to depend greatly on which bowlers we are following to how the conditions develop as the fresh is extremely tough. We found the pattern changed very quickly so we are going to have to have our wits about us and make the moves quickly to keep up with the developing pattern.
We play mixed doubles tomorrow morning at 9am, so keep your fingers crossed :)
Zara
www.zaraglover.com
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