Well what a day-Man eating Water bugs, A round the world photo shoot, a good luck dragon attack and a fireworks spectacular to finish off.
Today we mirrored the start of our first race day by having a 6am breakfast and then off to the pool for a swim.
The insect life of Darwin seemed to be quite at home in the early morning session - from a coaching 
point it was great, as soon as the swimmers would stop at the end of the pool they would be set upon by water bugs about 1cm long that would give them a friendly nip and remind them that they should probably be off swimming again now!!
Many of our team found this most disconcerting and the screams/squeals and general splashing to avoid the watery demons was quite funny to watch. The range of responses was from Kurt "Bug Tamer" Gannon who was playing happily with his new friends like some sort of insect
w
orld Lion man to Jessica "The terminator" Love who made it her mission to get as many of the bugs out of the pool as she could.
There was also quite a strong showing from the squeal and complain crowd whose names are too numerous to list but ably lead by Emma "get it off me!" Bailey. Even the Northern Territory team was squealing away, I thought they would be used to it.
Sara-Jane and I stayed at the pool for the team mangers meeting and pool orientation tour while the rest of the team hit the supermarket for snacks for tomorrow's competition.Before lunch the boys had Haka practise by the pool which drew quite a crowd but by the 4th time through I think the crowd got bored.
Lunch by the pool was followed by a team meeting to go over the afternoons plan. It's a shame I didn't draw the plan in simple crayon pictures because for the first time on this trip we were late leaving for the pool!!!!
I hate to be late! Our afternoon workout was short only 45 mins and we shared the pool with the Australian Paralympic team again. Jess must have killed all the bugs in the morning because by 
the time the afternoon workout came around there were none.
We left the pool at 3;45 and made our way to the centre of the Arafura Games at the Marrara sports hub. We were given a meal and from around 4:30 the holding pen of nations behind the main stadium started to grow.
We were surrounded by (and this is not a full list) Iran, Iraq, Great Britian, Northern Ireland , Brunei, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Macau, Indonesia, Malaysia all the Australian States and we met up with the North Shore Swimmers, some Muay Thai kick boxers from NZ as well as the NZ Paralympic athletes we met on our first day.
Claudia and Roberta were a big hit with the boys from other teams almost queuing up to take a photo with them. (could be a possible fundraiser next time?)
Emma and Eve started on a collection of photo's with as many countires as they could while Marshall made firends with (of course ) the team from the Marsahll Islands.
Cameron and Josh got to know the girls from North Shore a little better while the pink glasses brigade of Alex, James and Josh were also in demand for the photo takers.
Coach Andrew busted his French out on the New Caledonia equivalent of Weird Al Yankovich who obviously thought I could actually speak French and launched into what I am pretty sure was an earnest attempt to ask me out either that or he was giving me a recipe for quiche.
A parachute dropping from the sky kicked off the parade of Nations and I ‘m sure that the buzz from walking into the stadium will last us all for years to come. Our team were High five-ing the crowd as we marched around the edge of the oval and settled in to watch the show.
That’s when the good luck dragon allegedly attacked Claudia!!
Fireworks, music and dance filled the stadium and as we walked out at 9pm the team was buzzing.
Nothing to cringe about today folks all the team are well and sleeping soundly for our debut at the pool tomorrow.
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