Empty nesting it.

Rishan, Robi and Ali left Auckland on May 7th to travel to Poznan, Poland.
First stop was Tokyo.  Enough time to go and sample some sushi was the plan although it was MacD's that they settled for.  In the air again and off to Paris to change flights to go on to Rome.
Rome was an over night stop over so they did the tourist sites.  They took in the Colosseum and one of the Fountain's and thanks to Robi who took photo's Rishan will have photo's to remind her of these.
They made the final flight, for a little while anyway, on May 9th that took them from Rome to Poznan.
It's a lot of flying time but it also made a lot of difference in cost.
Serious business started with a camp held by ICF working towards the first of the Canoe Sprint World Championships.
Rishan skyped in and told us that she let her nerves get the better of her and she was disappointed in her racing. Her best result was making a semi final.  She got pipped on the line for a place in the finals.
More time in the air leaving Warsaw to travel to Dusseldorf, Germany to attend the second of the World Champs.
Same thing happened in competition in Germany as it did in Poznan although the times between her and the others got smaller.
The reason that Rishan gave us for not being able to reguarly skype while she was in Germany was that her room was upstairs and she needed to go downstairs.  When she did eventually skype in we made her take the lapi around to show us what she could see.  Besides her room being upstairs it was also in a different wing.  Her room, she told us had an en suite as did the other rooms and cooking facilities, hobs, toaster, kettle, kitchen sink.  They stayed at a kayak club and the club was way more flasher than any of the surf clubs that we've been to.  She showed us the outdoor lap pool next to a smaller pool, the dinning room, a common room and the wing that she was rooming in well we got to see that from the window that she held the lap top out of, she aimed the lap top at her room and counted the windows so we knew which window was to her room.
From Germany there was the 4 hour car drive taking her to France where she's based for the month of June.  She's in Arras.
Thanks to the French coach she'll be training with his team, he even arranged for her have the use of the kayak that she's been using at camp and at the championships and he got it transported.
Tala and I have decided not to be so needy and aren't on her case asking her to skype in every night.  Hopefully by doing this she also won't need us to top her phone up either.

The end of another month

The year is going way too fast for me.
After NZ nationals I attended two competitions in Australia, both in Penrith.  The first one was Oceania open Champs and a training camp for other competitors that were, like me, representing their Islands.  There were four of us representing Samoa. We had a competitor that did both canoe and kayak, myself doing kayak and the other two did canoe.  There were the four Cook Island competitors, one from Guam, one from Tahiti and one from Palau.  Most of them have a background in surf ski, vaka, out rigging and or waka ama. It was good to be part of this cool group of people.
A week later it was back to Penrith where I competed in the Australian Nationals in the under 23 category.
For me it was a mixed bag of results where I came home with a gold and a silver medal.
Robi gave me a week off and this week it was back into training.
Tech is going well although a lot of the other students probably think that I wag a lot.
Next month, which is tomorrow, I'll be training and going to tech and in May there are plans to be in Poznan and Duisburg.  Hopefully by June there'll be news of what happens for me next.

It's not all been about training

In amongst the training I took four days off as my sister, Vix, shouted me to a weekend in Rotorua....... we were going white water rafting.  The weather kept us from keeping our booking and the outfit that we were booked with picked us up from outside of our hotel the next day.  The experience was awesome.
And after that it's been training on the water when the weather isn't disrupting water sessions.  Otherwise it's plan B and it's either a run or erg or both.
My next competition is Rotorua where Nationals are being held.
 I was one of eleven athlete's that were awarded with a Samoan Junior Sports Award for 2011. 
This year they had more applications then any other year.  I'm very grateful to the Samoan Sports Awards for finding that my sporting achievements were worthy of being rewarded by them.  A very big thank you to the Samoan Sports Association and congratulations to the other athlete's.