Update October 19th!!
The First Game And Then Some
Yoni just left and let me say good riddance! No I am really kidding, it was great to have him here and we had such a
great time. Tonight he flies back to Tel Aviv, and needless to say let us all wish for peace while he is there.
Since the last entry much has happened, but I will briefly just explain the highlights.
On Sunday Yoni and I recovered from the exhaustment of 10 hours of sitting on a bus. On Monday, he went to Bristol to see a
friend, and I was able to catch up on a little reading and schoolwork. As I mentioned, the work here is endless,
but I am trying my best to not let it pile up.
On Wednesday, (no I cannot remember what I did Tuesday) we had our first basketball game. We played Luton at 2:30 at
the Janet Adekoge Leisure Centre, LSE's home court. We drew a whole 8 fans for the contest, but the feeling was no different than playing
at Las Lomas. Of course, we didn't have that many fans back then either. Coming out of the gates, we really had no way of
telling who was the better team. LSE traditionally has more American students, so, you might expect us to do better while competing in an "American"
sport. But during warmups it was hard to tell. When the game started I am happy to say that our players were just a little bit better. Though I forgot
to mention it before, we have three players, who, in one way or another, played basketball at a collegiate level in the United States.
One even played for Stanford and went to the Final Four in San Antonio, 1997.
By the second quarter the score was lopsided in our favor, and it was evident which players were more experienced. I must say, however, that
the Luton players were very competitive, some even talked a little bit of trash. They were fairly physical, and they played hard until the end of the
contest. I was able to play around ten minutes of the game, and that was plenty. More importantly, however, I was able to capture a little bit of
the action for the website, so as to share it with my readers who could not attend the game...(I guess that would be everyone, huh?)
In the end, we probably won by around 25 points, but I am not quite sure. It was just a lot of fun to play competitively again. There really is nothing like it.
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And Later On...
After the game, the team congregated at the student pub, played pool and we got to know each other a lot better. During tryouts, practice and games,
you don't get the opportunity to converse with each other and find out that much, so it was nice to be able to do that afterward. At nighttime, Yoni came back from Bristol
and we hung out for a little while at the local late night food corral, Harput.
Harput is owned by a man named Ricky, who we believe to be Kurdish. Ricky is a wonderful man, who always has a smile on his face
when you walk in, when he is working, and when you walk out. Though the food does taste good, I often think that we go there for the company as well.
This morning I had to wake up for a 9:00 Am class, by far my earliest all week. I am NOT a morning person, so this was rather difficult. I made the class on time,
but I came back and slept for another hour afterwards. After I woke up, Yoni and I went to a local pub for lunch, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good the food was.
After lunch, Yoni's friend that he was visiting in Bristol, Tali, came to my dorm with a friend of hers who is studying in France, Katy. The four of us argued for a while about what to,
and then we decided to go to Covent Garden Piccadilly Circus area for the afternoon. Of course, we ended up in soHo, but it really didn't matter.
We walked around for a little while, and then we decided to get some dinner in Chinatown. There was a man who was handing out fliers for a cheap buffet dinner, and being American,
we jumped on the opportunity to eat like pigs. (Well, that was what I was thinking anyway.) The reason I have a picture of this place is because in a matter of five minutes of eating this food, we
all became very sick and began complaining endlessly. It got to the point that Tali started catching prospective customers before they could sit down and warning them not to make our mistake themselves.
She was single-handedly successful in keeping out at least 10, maybe 15 meals of business for this place. The only lesson I can take out of this is serve a good product, but we weren't worried about
that at the time. As someone beautiful once said, "You will laugh about it later," and the truth is we were laughing about it on the bus ride home.
The last thing I wanted to say is that if you had not yet noticed, I am going to update the website with a quatation everyonce in a while, so if you have any suggestions, let me know. Have a great day!
more to come...
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