Day 7 – Berlin - Sunday July 16, 2006
By Kimberly Hacker

Today I woke up to my whole team coming into my room to sing me happy birthday! It is my golden sweet sixteen! We quickly got ready, got on the bus, and went to the gym where we got pizza right before we had to play. We played one of the Front Range teams first and won in 3 games. Then we played the Bavarian team and lost in 4. After we played two hard matches and we were getting off the bus, Dani fell and sprained her ankle. She was tough even though it hurt so we went back and got ready to go out to dinner.

For dinner we had pork and spaetzl which most of the girls liked a lot. There was a big spark across the room and I looked to see what it was and it turned out to be a birthday cake for me! Everyone sang happy birthday to me in English, and then the Slovenian and German girls sang it in their languages. It was really nice but I felt a little sick so I sat outside and let brook eat it. It turned out that it had nuts in it and she was allergic to it! She could feel her mouth swelling a little and immediately took some benadryl which helped a little.

Later on Cory told us about a scavenger hunt where we would mix into ten teams with one German, one Slovenian, a Northern Lights and two Front Range girls. They then had to go around the city to find clues. You had to find different things and take pictures of them with a digital camera to prove you had been to every spot. Brook and I had to sit out because we were not feeling well but it seemed like the girls that participated had a lot of fun.

When we got back, Curt and Adam let us borrow their cell phones to call our families for about five minutes each. It was really nice to be able to talk to everyone. After that, we talked to the Bavarian team for a while and went to bed.