July 12, 2013

Hello to everyone following along in the good old USA! Well, let me begin by saying we had an early morning training session of about 70 mnutes. We had to get bak to our hotel in order to eat breakfast and get reay to begin the first day of our Israel Connect Program (touring Israel at 11:00 am. Today we drove through Tel Aviv on our way to the old city of Jaffa (which is mentioned in the bible about Jonah and the Whale. Jaffa also has the 3rd largest Mosque in Israel, but is off limits to the Jewish people. We walked around the city and went to a flea market, which was interesting. We ten boarded our buses to go to Rabin Square, which is a tribute to the former Prime Minister of Israel, who was killed by an Israeli in 1995. When my wife and I visited our daughter Aly in July, 2011, while she was runnng professionally here in Israel, they were working to finish Rabin Square. Now, I got to see the finished product.

We now traveled to the Beach in Herzeliya, for 3 hours. It is a beautiful beach, but I went to a mall by the beach fo a little while, then went down to the beach and sat with my assistant coach, a player on the Futsal team and Ami Monson, the Program Director for Maccabi USA in he shade by a bar. It was a lot of fun just talking and joking around.

Tomorrow, we have training at 6:30 am and then we will leave the hotel a 1:00 pm for Latrun, where all the tanks are on display that were utilized in all he wars. Being a former tanker myself, this is always a special place for me. Then we will go to the excavation caves and see those. I will not go into the caves this time around, because of my hip. Been there, done that and never again!!

I will now post some photos from the touring today.

So, until tomorrow, take good care and stay well,

Coach G from Israel