Matildas in China: Sally Shipard writes from Tianjin

Matildas Star Sally Shipard writes every week for Football in the Capital.

With the World Cup just a few weeks away Sally gives us all the news on the Matildas preparations.

Hi Guys,

It's now Thursday and we have been in camp for 1 week. We spent the first 4 days in Coffs Harbour at the usual resort preparing for our final Olympic Qualifying match against Chinese Taipei.

This was the first time we had all been together as the 'official' World Cup squad. It felt great to know exactly who your team-mates were going to be for the next month and a half during our WC campaign.

It was an exciting weekend in Coffs Harbour considering we would be leaving for China on the Monday afternoon. It was topped off by our comfortable win, 7-0 over Taipei.

We flew to Sydney, Melbourne, and Hong Kong then to Tianjin. All up, we travelled for 24 hours.

The hotel we are staying at in China is pretty flash, plus the foods fantastic (it's always a bonus).

We all have the same room-mate for the duration of this tour. I am fortunate enough to have a great gal to share with, Matildas striker, Katie Gill.

We are both studying at Uni so that works out well. Most of the free time we have we complete some kind of uni work. The majority of the time Katie is reading over her lecture notes, which in turn makes me feel guilty, so I do the sameJ

The pollution is so thick here in Tianjin and the temperature is very warm with very high humidity. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon at 3:30pm and it was still 34 degrees. We had our first training session yesterday morning. We experienced what the Socceroos must have gone through at the Asian Cup.

We play China tonight and then again this Sunday, before heading home to Australia for a short break. We then fly back to China for the World Cup in September. These two games will be beneficial for our WC preparation and will help our bodies acclimatise to the warmer weather conditions.

Stay tuned for the results.

See ya

Sal