Scavenger Hunt

With no training today, the U.S. team did another pool workout in the late morning (quite freezing again, but with less wind today, it was apparently bearable), then had lunch. In the afternoon, to get out of the hotel and get the legs moving, U.S. asst. coach Erica Walsh designed an ingenious scavenger hunt, except instead of collecting things, the players had to take pictures of about 40 items or tasks that they could find or accomplish in and around the team hotel. (Almost every U.S. player has a digital camera). Needless to say, in China this hunt turned out to be an adventure.

A few examples of the pictures needed:

Take a picture the Olympic rings a teammates doing headstands in front of it
Take a picture of someone squatting on the ground eating lunchMake a cab driver laugh with one teammate.Take a picture three women smoking
Take a picture with a security guardGet them to give you their hat, put it on and take a picture with it
Take a picture in a Chinese garden
Take a picture of a street-side aquarium with fish in it

It took most of the four-person teams about two hours to polish as many items off the list as they could, and amazingly, most groups got almost all of them done. (Although several groups stumbled into a local meat market where they saw some things they wish they hadn’t). Leslie Osborne reports that her group which included Cat Whitehill, Carli Lloyd and Stephanie Lopez thinks they won, but as of post time, the final results had not yet been tallied.