2008 UC Davis Foreign Tour Archive

By Mark Payne
Sunday, Aug. 31

Bonjour,

Today we had an early morning, getting up at 6:15. We got breakfast at the hotel and then hit the road, as we had to travel from Paris to Lyon for our evening game in Lyon. It was a beautiful drive, which made the six-hour bus ride not so bad. We got into Lyon in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. We had about an hour and a half to get off our feet and relax before we left to head to the game.

The gym we played our game in was very nice and the stands were filled with European fans. The pre-game activities in Europe are much different than college games in the States. We exchange little gifts with the opposing teams before the games, we gave them UC Davis stuffed animals and in return they gave us scarves, which was a little odd but still fun to have something to remember their team by. We then listened to both our countries' national anthems following by the announcing of the teams. The game didn't go as well as we had hoped, we played hard and pretty smart, however we just couldn't make any shots. We got an open shot every time down the floor, we just had a tough time converting. After the game, they had a room with food for all the players, filled with different meats and cheeses.

After the game we went to dinner at a pizza place near our hotel. It started pouring rain during our meal, forcing us to run about five blocks in the rain when we left to get back to our rooms. After that we all just hung out, we had a very intense game of "Spoons", a card game, in my room where Nathan Clark was the first one knocked out, forcing him to buy the rest of us ice cream at McDonalds after the game. After that it was lights out!

Au Revoir!
-Mark