First, just let me say ‘wow’. It has been three days since we were able to find an internet connection. We are staying at the Belarus Olympic training center. It was built in the 1970’s, and I don’t think it has been updated since. We get fed three times a day, but we get all the left over’s from the Belarus team. It’s not too bad, and the two Canadian teams that are here got treated the same way. We get enough bread and some meat and fruit. So, basically, the living facilities are not too good. But, the wrestling is AWSOME. It is totally worth it. Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, France, and Canada are some of the teams represented here. There are nine mats for us to wrestle on. Yesterday I went two matches during the night session. I wrestled Travis Cross, a 5-time Canadian National Champion at 84 Kilos, and I whooped him really good. I beat him 3-0 with three takedowns in the first period, 9-2 in the second period, then 3-0 with three takedowns in the third period. It was awsome. For my second match, I got to wrestler the Russian who beat me in Mongolia at the 2006 University World Championships (He ended up winning Gold, while I took Bronze). It was a great three periods with both of us scoring lots of points on each-other. We run everyday at 7:45am, eat, then wrestler at 12pm and 6pm. Some days we have off the mats to rest our body, and we lift instead. Cross and I have gotten some extra drills in when we have off to work on our technique. Even though the living conditions here suck, none of that matters to me. The wrestling is great, and the training is great. I expect to win the Minsk tournament without losing a period. Till next time I come 40 miles into town just to get the internet…..

---