Friday, July 10th:

Well, here we go with a very unique day in the life of our team. The day started off with a bang. Last night our Israeli Manager, who is a complete boob, told us at the meeting we would be training at 9 AM. So, I asked him what time the bus would take us to the fields and his answer was I will tell you at 10:30 PM. So, I thought (that was the wrong thing to do), that when he scheduled training times, he would have known the time. Wrong again! We waited in the lobby until he told us.....12:10 AM! This was to be the least of our problems for the day. We met at 8:20 AM (our prescribed time) to leave for the fields at Wingate. Little did we know, that the adventure was just beginning. We were told no one could ever leave without our guide/counselor being on the bus. Well, they decided not to go with us and we left anyway! Now the fun begins...we leave our hotel for a 10 minute bus ride to the field, only to have it turn into a 45 minute change of direction, Our driver did not even know which direction Wingate was and went the wrong way. The funny thing, was he was following the other bus that went the wrong way and he did a circle turn and changed his direction. Once we righted ourselves, he was lost going to Wingate, which is where Israel's National teams train. So, instead of 1 1/2 hour session (not training the last 2 days), we had a 1 hour and 10 minute session, as other teams were coming to train. We finished and returned with a new driver to our hotel for lunch.

At 3 PM the soccer coaches all went back to Wingate for a coaches technical meeting. Needless to say, no provision for return transportation was provide or thought about. The meeting, as I was told would be a fiasco with screaming and yelling at each other. There was little of that, but finally, the Israeli in charge (a very nice person) was quite dogmatic and allowed no discussion of rule changes. However, they handed all the coaches their rosters for each game, except, they only gave me 4 and we have 5 games in pool play. I asked them about it and they shrugged their shoulders and said make a copy! I guess I should have known that as well! We left the meeting and went to where the buses were parked to see about maybe getting on a bus. But, we waited 45 minutes while 3 buses and their drivers discussed it in great and intelligent detail. After waiting for 45 minutes, we finally got on a bus and thought we were finally going back to the hotel...wrong again! We were going out and stopped the bus and were told to get off and get on the original bus we were talking to in the beginning and those on that bus got off and got on ours....this is not organized chaos, but a disorganized nightmare in logistics and implementation of a plan or lack of a plan.

Well, we are finally back and getting ready for dinner and bedtime. I can't wait for tomorrow to come to see more of this planned chaos.

So, have a great week-end and laugh along with us, as the games are about to begin in our quest for Gold. Come along with the team as we try to make history for the USA.

Best regards to all,
Preston and Sean from Israel