Friday July 10th

Today we got to sleep in. Breakfast at the hotel is from 6:30 to 10:00am and yes we slept in but we did make it to breakfast. More of the same food...salads, hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, cheeses, fish, for some reason they had pasta and these cooked eggs in a marinara sauce. All of it is good but its weird having salad for breakfast. I'm sure if we ate more vegetables and salads for breakfast in American, Americans wouldn't be so fat.

After breakfast Aaron, Sergio and I walked down the beach just to take a look. Its maybe 10:30 am and the sand was hot. Very soft, white sand that is hard to walk in because it moves like silk under your feet. The sand thats near the side walk has some stones and shells and yes some trash so it doesn't look the best. But as you walk away from the hotels towards the water, the sand becomes unbelievable. There are sand volleyball courts, sand soccer courts (with goals) and footvolley courts (don't ask what it is...think about it first) right by our hotel. Now towards the water there are chairs and umbrellas for people to use. At this time there are a fair amount of people walking, running, playing, and sun bathing on the beach. We walk at the waters edge just enough to get our feel wet. The water is a bit cool as it splashes up to us. With the temperature outside reaching over 100 degrees at this time its was very nice to feel the water on our feet.

At 11:00am Sergio had to attend a coaches meeting so we headed back towards our hotel. I was talking to my friends last night and they referred to our hotel as the one that looks like a cruise ship. From a distance the hotel looks like the top 6 decks or so of a ship. Its an odd shape...I will take a picture and post it so you can see what I am talking about.

We met up with some of the guys back at the hotel and we just hung out and rested for the day. Some guys went to the pool and others walked a bit on the beach. But at 12:30pm ( even though we just had breakfast not to long ago) we grabbed a quick lunch and set out for our game against England. (We were given a booklet with 3 tickets for every day. The tickets are for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everything is included and if we miss a meal we miss that meal.)

We are all ready for the game. Everyone is in the lobby, England and US all ready to go. The bus is set to come at 1:00pm and pick us up at the hotel. Well...we sat and sat and sat...we talked to the other team and got to know them a bit. At 1:35 pm the bus showed up. We all got on and set off to the court. As we left the hotel, the bus driver almost hit a pole that holds the hotel together. Kind of funny but really scary. We all thought we were going to hit it...even the bus driver. It took us a bit to get the bus out so we were late to our own game. The best thing about going to the game with your opponent is that if your late, they are late and you don't have to forfeit the game.

We arrived at Marom Nave a little after 2:00pm. We all went inside, changed and got on the court to warm up. The facility had the actual balls we will use for the games so we used those in our scrimmage. To our surprise England wore Orange Jerseys and we were in white. Our team warmed up together and then Sergio set the line up. Aaron in goal, Josh at defense, Ian and Simon at midfield and Mike up top. (Ian Weinberg was named the captain of the team)

We start the game with the ball and start moving it around the court. We came out hard and fast and with in the first 8 to 10 minutes Ian scored our first goal, unassisted. Every player on the team got to play a good amount at this game. We all have the understanding that we will play to win and playing time in not guaranteed. 4 minutes before half time England cut through the defense and slotted the ball in the goal to tie up the game. At half time we worked out some things and pumped everyone up again to take the court.

We played a strong second half and scored again. This time it was Josh who scored to put us one goal up. England stepped up their game and works very hard to get that second goal to tie up the game. They step so far up that with one poke we get a break away and the ball is back in their net. This time the goal was scored by David so we are now up 3-1. England pushes their keeper up to get more of an attack and thats when we take advantage of the open goal with Mike stealing the ball and scoring our 4th goal to win the game 4-1.

Not bad for a team who has only played 1 game and has practice together for 1 week in Israel. I just hope this doesn't give us too much confidence and we go lightly into out other games.

After the game we get back on the bus with the England team and head to the hotel for yes another meal....We change and get ready for shabbot dinner. Now as I am getting ready to go to sleep I just heard that the girls softball team and the girls tennis team and coming to Tel Aviv to visit. I think we will be going out again tonight.

We have nothing planned for tomorrow and we were told that we could not practice because of the sabbath. I guess we will just have to go to the beach and suffer. OH WELL. Its a tough life.