Stardate 070821.8

Captain's Log:

I have been away longer than I intended. It is time to get back to the Holland story.

Day Six - 24 July 07

Well, this was our first game day. Practice was over, and now my team got to play...finally. However, our games were in the afternoon, so we had the whole morning to tour the Ajax stadium. Ajax is the professional team of Amsterdam. Here is a shot of the stadium...

The fan shop at the stadium had the most outrageous prices, so I told my players to wait for a couple of days. We were going back to tour the inner city of Amsterdam, and they could buy the same thing for 20 Euro less at one of the small shops in the city. After we were done with the tour and we had eaten lunch, we traveled to the fields. We were to play on the same fields where we practiced. We had two games on this day. The first game was against a Dutch team called the Deadly Eleven. They killed us in the first half; 4-0. After a few changes, and some shifting of players, we held them to 1-0 in the second. My players were getting so frustrated, because we could not get a shot off. You must understand though that four of the players on the other team also played for the U-15 Netherlands national team. The rest of the players were nearly as good. I do not fault my players for losing, because the odds were very against them. On the contrary, I was quite happy with the way they never gave up. That was awesome. The second game of the day was against a USA team and we beat the 3-0. Three different players on my team scored. We went home moderately happy that night. We had dinner at the hotel that night, which was quite good.

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I have ridden my bike some in this past week, and I think that since I have some daylight left tonight, I might ride down to Nate's and see him. I will be back some time. Until then,

Lorimer