Captain's Log:
I am going to skip straight to the good stuff today.
Day Four - 22 July 07
After another awesome breakfast, our bus (Bus 15) pulled up, sucked us all inside, and then drove us to the beach in the small town on the west side of Holland. It was cold these first three mornings in Holland, so a trip to the beach was not the most ideal thing that we could have done with our time. In fact, a few of my players came to me later and informed me of just how cold the water was. I am glad I decided to avoid stepping foot on the beach at all, much less dragging myself into the abysmally cold pit known as the North Sea. I toured the small town for about 3 hours instead. After lunch in the town, we loaded up and went to the pitches where we were to have our second practice. I led this practice, and because I had so many good players, it worked out very well. We got a lot accomplished. For dinner, we went to the Friendship Village. Now, as this is the second time that I have mentioned the Friendship Village (FV) it is going to need further explaining.
The FV was a nightmare...plain and simple. It was the most unorganized place that I visited on the trip. It was a place for all of the athletes to come and eat dinner, hang out with each other, play soccer together, and just relax. For the coaches it was a horrid place that hid your players from sight, and did not allow you to find them until well past the time when they were supposed to have met up with the group to go home. In the center of the main square there was a giant stage with giant speakers that blared music the entire time we were there. These speakers nearly deafened me and left me bereft of hearing. This first night was not bad. There was only soccer athletes there, and the line to get into dinner was short. After we finally rounded everyone up, we went back to the hotel for some sleep.
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Not much to say today. I want to make sure I keep posting almost daily, so that I do not stop in the middle of my Holland story and never finish. This is only day 4 of 11. I will be back soon.
Later,
Lorimer
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