University of Northern Iowa Athletics
Johnny Moran Blog - Day One in Brazil
8/2/2011 1:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
University of Northern Iowa senior guard Johnny Moran (Algonquin, Ill./Jacobs HS) will be keeping a blog throughout the Panthers' 10-day trip to Brazil.
Monday August 1, 2011
Today we landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We spent all day Saturday and into Sunday traveling. We started out on a five-hour bus ride to Chicago. It was good to be back in the Chicago area. Then we flew to Miami arriving at about 5:30 p.m. and then we 'enjoyed' an eight-hour flight from Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil.The flight was very long, but most of us spent a lot of time sleeping or watching movies. We were served dinner and breakfast on the plane and both were surprisingly good. Once we arrived in Sao Paulo, we bused over to Jundiai and dropped our luggage off at the hotel.
The hotel is very congenial. It is winter here in Brazil right now so the weather is cooler than usual, today was about 65 and cloudy, a nice change of pace from the extreme heat that we had been used to in Cedar Falls. Once we dropped our stuff off at the hotel we went to the gym where we will be playing tonight and had a workout. The guys were pretty stiff from the long day of traveling, but they seemed to loosen up pretty quick. The gym is miniature version of Wichita State's arena. After shoot around, we headed to a restaurant for our pre-game meal.
We just ate a delicious pre-game meal at one of the local restaurants and the food was sensational. It was buffet style and there was a nice variety. Surprisingly, none of the food was too different from what we would have back home. We ate beans and rice, some beef, and chicken. We have a game tonight at 7 p.m. The guys are really looking forward to getting to play against some new competition. It should be a really fun game tonight, the guys seem like they are ready to go! I will be writing again to let you guys know how the game went tonight. GO Panthers!
We just got back to the hotel for the night. We won our game 62 to 48! The guys played really well. We played better as the game went on which was a good thing to see, and we played a good second half and were able to stretch the lead a little bit and put the Jundiai team away for the victory. After the game we went to a great pizza buffet restaurant, the food was really good and it was a good bonding experience for the team. Some of the people there wanted to take pictures with us. I never thought we would have fans on another continent! We are all pretty tired from the traveling and the game tonight so we are all going to try to get a good night sleep tonight and be well rested for the game Tuesday against a talented professional team out of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Thanks for following us this summer. I look forward to checking in tomorrow.
Go Panthers,
