Sept. 25, 2003

Day 1 Photo Gallery

Maryland sophomore Danielle Malagari continues her year-long journal about the women's soccer team's travels and experiences. This journal features the first day of the Terps trip to Tallahassee when they face the rival Seminoles on Friday in the televised game.

By Danielle Malagari

TALLAHASSEE -- It was yet another early morning for us as we left College Park at about 6:30 a.m. We were off to good ol' BWI Airport to catch our 8:30 a.m. flight to Atlanta and then off to Tallahassee. It was just like any morning ... our hair was messy, our eyes half shut and toothpaste on our shirts.

It wasn't a very exciting morning because it was too early for Audra Poulin to make us laugh as she normally does. We arrived at the airport and were told we had to check in at the new "self check-in" station. Boy, was that an adventure. Same of our ID's didn't work and credit cards were misread, it was just a big mess.

The flight went very smoothly with no problems and we reached Atlanta all in one piece, or 25 individual pieces. The Atlanta Airport is so huge so a couple of us got lost trying to get from Terminal B to C. Yet again, the airport was uneventful with only stories of food, but I feel like that's all I talk about.

Our flight took off at 11:45 a.m., and we touched down in Tallahassee 30 minutes later. After an already long day, we were all tired and just wanted to get to the hotel and take a nap before practice. We succeeded in taking our naps but training quickly arrived and nipped us in the butt.

Training went rather quickly and we were anticipating dinner. We went back to the hotel to shower then we were off to Andrew's Grill. It was a very nice dinner with many options of delicious dishes. We watched the women's World Cup game between North Korea and Sweden while we were there.... So that was very nice, but do you know where we went from there?

We hopped in our team vans and headed to the mall to eat at this magnificent ice cream shop - this was the highlight of the day by far. It was called the Coldstone Creamery. It seemed like we were in ice cream heaven. The bowls of ice cream were at least two-to-three pounds of any flavor you could imagine with every topping that could come to mind.

I have to tell you about this one dish. Mallory Mahar gets the award for the biggest and most creative delicacy of the evening. She first ordered the third-biggest bowl called the "Gotta Have It." It had both sweet cream and chocolate ice cream. Then she added a full chocolate brownie, two Reese's cups and a full Snickers bar. It literally was a mountain of chocolate paradise. She proceeded to eat about ľ of it before she had to dispose of the melted leftovers.

All in all, it was a delicious dessert. It was 7:45 p.m., and we rushed back to the hotel to catch the season premier of "Friends" and "Temptation Island." I'm sitting her now watching "Will & Grace" after laughing so hard with my teammates at Friends. All I can think about now is sleep.

It has been a long day for us girls so from the Sunshine State, this is Danielle signing off. Have a good night and GO TERPS!