Sunday July 5th

Sunday July 5th, 2009
After a nice day and bbq with the entire US delegation we wake up for our second full day in Israel. The only problem so far is that we are working on maybe 5 hours of sleep. We got back from the bbq about 12:00am and have to get up for breakfast by 5:45 – 6:00. We all stumble into breakfast a little before 6am and again have a lovely meal once again.

Yesterday we told you about the outdoor futsal facility we trained at, how nice it was even though it was a black top court and all. Today we didn’t go back to Wingate we went to Hadar Yoseph. This is one of the Olympic track and field facilities in Israel. It really is an amazing place. A huge stadium with every possible field event training ground, a nice large track, great indoor facilities but no Futsal court. The coordinators thought we needed a grass field to train and that’s what we got. So we played on the grass with goals we found in a corner. We were not happy but we dealt with what we had. We found that since we were playing on the grass with flat bottom shoes we were skating more than running. But we played and then we complained. A few guys got hurt from the field because we couldn’t cut or stop like we needed to. (This is the current injury report) Aaron Bernstein our goal keeper hurt his hand when Jesse Goldberg slipped into him. Both are fine but it did give us a bit of a scare. Also Sergio our coach over extended his hamstring and sat out of practice. He too is fine but he is taking it easy.

At the end of training it started to rain…when I say it rained in Israel it was more like when someone washes their hands and flings the left over water at you to dry them. That’s the amount of rain we had.

We jumped back on the bus and rushed back to the hotel because we had to get changed for our pictures. We put on white socks, white shorts and our blue tops for the team and individual pictures. I do not know if we can get copies but I am sure they will be available somewhere at some time.

We grabbed a quick lunch and we went on our way to Old Jerusalem. The first thing we stopped at was the Haas Promenade. This is at the top of a hill which overlooks all of Jerusalem. We took some pictures, said some prayers and got back on the bus. I must say it was a very cool site seeing all of Jerusalem from that view point.

Our next stop was the Kotel which is the Western Wall of the second temple. We got some pictures together as a team in front of the wall and said some prayers for our friends and family. And I made sure to slip one in there for the team to win big in this tournament. I figured it couldn’t hurt. We continued to walk around the wall and saw the Southern Wall and Davidson Visitors Center which talked about the temple mount and the way of life centered around it. They showed us what it would have been like 3000 years ago, the history behind the temple, the people, the community and the pilgrims. They showed us what it would have been like to come to this area, get a sacrificial animal and take it to the temple for the sacrifice. It was really neat…sort of like something out of the movies. As we were walking out we got a chance to hear the Muslim call to prayer. It was interesting.

Once we were done there they took us to the City of David where we walked through the Hezekiah’s Water Tunnel. It’s a fresh water spring that was under ground and gave water to the City of David 2700 years ago. Yes we walked in the water. Yes it was cold. And lastly yes it was dark. There were no lights in this tunnel so they gave us all flashlights. The tunnel was big enough for one person to walk at a time in a single file line. Sometimes we had to duck and other time we could stand up but at no time could we turn around. The water was up to our knees at some points and as low as our shins at others.

I did forget to mention that it was about 500 yards long…almost like Andy Dufrain in Shawshank Redemption, but we had clean water and not escaping from prison.

At this point it’s about 6:00pm. We got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel. We were all so tired that every single person on the team fell asleep. We share a bus with the men’s and women’s softball team and I was told that they took pictures of us sleeping…I told them it they played a real sport they would have been sleeping too. They really didn’t find that funny.
We got to the hotel, had dinner and were informed that from all our complaining about the pool costing us money, they would open it for all of us for 2 hours that evening. So almost everyone headed over to the pool. Some of us hung out and tried to fix the internet and as soon as it worked again I was too tired to write anything.

It was sleepy time again. This time we hope to sleep a bit more and get rested for tomorrow’s adventure.