Elise Norwood
Representing Australia in the Women's Water Polo team
Hi There!!!!!!!!!
It's Elise from the Women's Water Polo here! How are you going? Many thanks for all your support and the really interesting questions.
Just giving you an update from here in the village. It gets pretty hot in the middle of the day, about 30-35 degrees celcius and doesn't get dark until about 9pm which makes it a fairly long day. As we play in the water the heat doesn't affect us as much as other sports, but we still have to drink a lot of water to make sure we are fully hydrated. In the first week of our competition our games were played in the indoor pool at the main stadium. Once the swimming was finished our games were moved to the main outdoor stadium, where the heat affected us a little more so.
The Australian spirit here is great. All of us Aussies are living in the same area in the village and we have BBQ's together every now and then. We have had a big Aussie crowd to cheer for us in the stands at the pool. My mum, dad and some friends were here to watch!
I've played water polo since I was 13. Before that I was a swimmer and netballer. Because these 2 sports gel quite well together to provide me with the skills needed for water polo, I got the knack of things fairly quickly. But, it was only through a heap of training and determination that lead me to where I am now. Natural talent can only take you so far. You also need to put in a lot of effort along the way. With water polo being a team sport also, I find the training quite fun being with a team. It makes things all the more enjoyable.
Staying in the athlete's village is great! There are thousands of athletes from every country walking around all the time. We all eat in a massive dining hall... and yes, it's all free! There are heaps of foods to choose from like pizza, pasta, Chinese, Greek, salads, fruit, Mcdonalds, yoghurt and icecreams! All the dishes display the amount of fat, protein, carbohydrates etc that they contain, so that's handy to know what foods are best to eat depending on when we are playing.
Thanks once again for your support!
Elise
