Donald Thomas is writing daily postcards for the print edition of the Register. Here's his first entry, which appears in Thursday's paper.

Hey guys,

The trip so far has been great! Let me get you caught up on things so far. On Monday, we arrived in Charlotte about 4 p.m. I flew on the team charter with the rest of my local Connecticut teammates. Everyone else flew in from their respective states. Coach Edsall put the seniors and a couple other players up in first class while the rest of the team, staff and families slept in coach. That was great because I had never been in first class before!

When we got here on Christmas Eve, almost everything was closed but we walked around and found an open restaurant. On Tuesday, we practiced and had Christmas dinner with the team staff and families. That night we went out to enjoy the Charlotte downtown area, which was more alive.

(Wednesday) we had practice and got our bowl gifts. We all got GPS navigation systems for our cars, a camcorder and a watch. I was pretty excited about that!

(Last night) we went to the Bobcats game against the Wizards. That was fun because they gave us a shout out at halftime, and we had a 3-on-3 shooting contest against Wake in which Darius Butler, Cody Brown and D.J. Hernandez played in and won.

See you all soon,

Donald