Draws are here.

Tuesday July 23, Helsinki, Finland

Today was a practice day. I practiced with my ETUF Essen teammate, Luisa Gouveia (from Portugal) at 8am and again at noon at a different club. We asked one of the volunteers if there was a different place we could practice and she made a call to her club, about 15 minutes away by car (we called an Uber) and booked us a court (not free…26 euros for an hour). We had a good practice there att eh Kulosaaren TennisKentat (Finnish is really hard!). Then Luisa (greeted everywhere here as returning royalty), ran into a couple of players at this small club (1 hard court, 3 red clay courts) who she knew from other tournaments or teams. One was from Helsinki and the other from Norway. We had a nice visit (did you know Norway has two official languages, new Norwegian, spoken by about 5% of the population and sort of a made-up language, and Norwegian?).

We returned around 3pm to the hotel. I had lunch and relaxed for a while, took a walk, signed up for practice courts, etc. I play second match after 9am (so could be 10, could be 12, depending on the length of the match ahead of me…or even 9, if the first match is a default). I play at a different site so am not sure if I’m supposed to leave at 8:30 with the 9am matches or maybe around 9:30 or 10.

It’s 9:58 and still light out but it’s lights out for me now.