The countdown has begun

I have finally made myself a blog! It's my last week of holidays before I return back to Uni, it has been good not having class to go to and assignments to do. But my hard work did pay off last semester and i got an A+ for each paper I did - stoked! I don't really know where the holidays have gone other than catching up with family, friends and training i haven't done much. The last week has been sad after finding out a friend Simon Davidson passed away kayaking and going to his funeral last saturday. I have been training a lot on the flat water, and the Kaituna finally lowered last week which was awesome. I did a river run with Bruce Webber last week on the upper Tarawera River, which is a really good beginner run, it was a beautiful section of the river and lots of fun. However I didn't really enjoy following Bruce boosting up the gravel road in the forest to the put in.

The slalom section on the Tarawera river is still high, which is the same as most of the rivers around here at the moment. I return to Uni next Monday but only have two and a half weeks before I fly out to Europe on the 28th July, it will be good to escape the cold New Zealand winter and have a few more people to train with. The plan is to fly into Munich, drive to Bratislava and pick up my boat (I can't wait), then we train for about a week in Bratislava, then drive to Prague and train for a week before World Cup 4 which is on the 12th ,13th and 14th of August. Then we go back to Bratislava to train for the World Champs which begin on the 7th September. We have a week after worlds in Munich before we fly home, then back to uni again for me. I am still studying full time even though i miss 5 weeks of uni, I will be doing work when i am over there and catching up when i am back. So thats the plan and the countdown has begun until I leave, only 21 days until I leave Auckland on Singapore airlines. Follow me on my blog to see how my Europe kayak slalom trip and racing goes.