Well we are going on our 5th day in Armenia now. We got in two great workouts the past two days with some live wrestling and matches. Today is Wednesday and we are playing basketball for workout. Curious to see how armenia plays basketball and what their rules are of the game. Should be a fun time. We are 4-5 days out of competition. Daniel Dennis wrestles on Saturday and Trent Paulson, Tervel Dlagnev, and I wrestle Sunday. There are going to be anywhere from 16-20 guys in a weight class, or at least that is what we have been told. Other than that we have just been hanging out mostly. Walking down to the outside market, which has some pretty cool things, and just been hanging out at the hotel. There is only so much you can do in another country without  a car and knowing where you are going. It could be a lot worse but we have a good set up where we are. It is kind of cool too how we have been taken care of. The mayor has two guys that come in and out of our hotel telling us that the mayor told them if we need anything or have a problem to let them know and they will take care of it. So that is pretty sweet and not something you have everyday. The food ha been really good here too which makes the time here better as well. Everything is fresh and they say armenia has the best fruit around. Daniel Dennis can vouch for that he has been trying a bunch of different fruit. Thats all I have for now and will be back with updates later on in the week.

Well the tourney is over and we did not end the tourney how we would have liked. When I go to a tourney and wrestle whether it be a dual tourney or individual one I expect to win. That is the plan everytime I step on the mat and the confidence I have in my team when they step onto the mat. But it did not workout for us this time in Khasavyurt. We ended 6th out of 11 teams. I am disappointed but we will learn from the mistakes made and move forward. There is time to fix these mistakes and better it happen now then later at next years world championships. Everyone gave their best effort but there is always room for improvement in wrestling which is always fun to look at. We are back in Moscow now for the night then Tervel Dlagnev, Trent Paulson, Daniel Dennis, and me are leaving to Armenia in the morning to wrestle on Saturday the 24th. A new tournament and some new faces at this tourney. I am expecting big things from all of us wrestling in Armenia. I think we all can win, it’s just whether each of us wants to get it done on the mat, and I see it happening. I’ll be back with results next time I get internet. I dont know if there will be much internet connection in Armenia, hopefully there is. But we are there to wrestle and bring home some champs.

We made weight today and it ended up being 3 kilo allowance because thats what was advertised all along so FILA could not change it. But weight was easy and I think we wrestle one of Russia’s national teams tomorrow first round at 9am. There are 11 teams in the tournament so hopefully we get 5-6 matches which will be awesome. Everyone is ready to wrestle and looking good. We have a good team here and can win the tournament. Not a whole lot to do here except wait around and hang out, so I am getting ancy to wrestle tomorrow. Ill be back in a few days to give updates.

We are finally in Khasavyurt, Russia and they finally got us some internet connection. There is no internet in the hotel we are staying in but the hotel is right next to the olympic training facility and one of the buildings has some internet. It was quite the hassle to figure out where we could get the internet. But anyway we had a workout today and one yesterday before we left to Khasavyurt. Good workout today with Tervel Dlagnev who is our heavyweight on the trip. We just rolled around and wrestled some live to blow our lungs out and get out bodies moving and ready to wrestle. We weigh in tomorrow and just found out that we will only be getting a 2 kilo allowance for weigh ins instead of 3 kilos. The word was 3 kilos but the FILA delegation changed it to 2. Which is really no big deal and you just go with the flow. So we weigh in at 6pm tomorrow and then get ready to wrestle on Thursday. There are supposed to be 12 teams here so we should be getting around 6 matches which will be good. Time for USA to smash some people. Not really a whole lot to do here during the day because the city is not very developed. We just hang out in our hotel mostly and watch tv series on our laptops, so that is the highlight of our day pretty much. We are all excited to wrestle on thursday and the place we are wrestling in is really cool. It feels like the crowd is on top of you so that makes it that much more exciting. The venue we are wrestling in prolly seats around 3-4 thousand and has 3 mats on a platform. So I am excited to get wrestling. Thats all for now and I will keep everyone updated.

Well it has already been a long day and I am not even out of the country yet. I am going with the United States wrestling team to Russia to wrestle in the Intercontinental Cup in Khasavyurt, Russia and then to Yerevan, Armenia the week after to wrestle in the Stephan Sargsyan tournament. But the trip started at 4 this morning when I woke up to drive to the airport in Harrisburg, PA. After I arrived in Harrisburg and got my tickets they only gave me two tickets which got me to the La Guardia airport in New York, and I was flying out of the JFK airport in New York to go to Frankfurt. I guess I did not really read my itinerary right, even though it was quite confusing because it took a while to get my tickets and it was pretty difficult getting me to where I needed to be since I live in State College, PA. So the lady told me that I would have to get to JFK by shuttle or taxi, which was fine because I have plenty of time. I was not really happy at the time because I did not want to have to switch airports since my day was going to be long enough already. But after I got to my gate and cooled down I realized these things happen when you travel and just like wrestling you are going to have obstacles. So it was not the end of the world. So I am finally here in the JFK airport waiting for my flight to leave to Frankfurt where I am going to meet the rest of the team and then we are all going to travel together to Russia and get ready to wrestle!