【好长一篇文啊,各种无力,大伙儿将就看看吧,咱只看图不说话】
Hello everybody guys! I only have ~1 hour to type up yesterday's happenings (it's busy at a Rafa tournament, you know), and yesterday was so unexpectedly good (well, any day you get to see Rafa is good, but there were a lot of "extra things" yesterday), so hopefully I can write fast enough.
As you know, I worked 9 days in a row (including a long weekend), + on-call, so that I can get this Wednesday to Sunday off work. My flight yesterday was at 8:30am, so I had to get up at 5:30am after working 9 days straight and it was not fun

, but anything for Rafa! I didn't have time to have breakfast, and just ate some small cookies and almonds at the airport lounge, plus a mini banana loaf they gave me on the plane. I got off my plane at 9:40am, luggage was very fast (it was literally waiting for me already, Porter airline is great). I rushed to get on the airport bus to get my hotel. On the bus, ladydks messaged me that Rafa is practicing at 11:00am as expected. It was already after 10am at that time, so I thought I probably wouldn't make it for the practice, so I told ladydks that I'll try to be there and she very kindly offered to buy me a ticket, as she was waiting at the gate for it to open and therefore doing nothing anyway (she saw Rafa entered the site at 10am). While I was texting her, I missed my bus stop

, but luckily the next stop was very close. So I rushed to my hotel, went to the desk to check-in, and the first lady who was serving me couldn't find my booking

She asked another person, and that person found my booking

. She said that do you want to wait because the room is being cleaned now and will be ready in 30 minutes. Hell no, coz' I have places to go you know! It was already 10:35am. So I just dropped my bag at the desk and told her I'll check in later when I come back. I took the metro and got to the site around 11:15am, picked up my ticket from Will call, and lined up to get in which took about 20 minutes.
I rushed into Centre court as Rafa was practicing there, through the entrance of my section. I was rushing down towards the bottom of the seats as everybody was pretty much down there to watch the practice. There was this mean usher guy who stopped me, asked to see my ticket, and pointed me to my section (above). I asked him "Can I go down to see the practice only?" and he said no

This reminded me of the Red Neck guy at MC.....I guess every tournament has its own version of Red Neck guy!

I walked to another section and asked the girl usher there, coz' by that time I spotted ladydks and Johanne down there, and asked her whether I can go talk to my friends (pointing down), she said "Yes sure!" So down I went and finally was able to hug both ladydks again (haven't seen her since MC), and Johanne (haven't seen her since Montreal 2011). It was very nice to meet them again

By this time Rafa was already doing his serves and volleys. Which is okay, because initially I thought I would miss the whole practice. Some pics of the practice: (let me submit this post before I lose it)