We packed up all of our stuff from the Kibbutz and made our way to Kfar Maccabiah for a final lunch with all of Team USA together. It was pretty hectic trying to get everyone from the one hotel to the other all at the same time, especially because once we arrived at Kfar, we would have to transfer all of our stuff to another set of buses - not all of which were at Kfar when we arrived.
Eventually our bus arrived and we were able to make our way to our new hotel in downtown Tel Aviv. All in all I think we arrived at our new hotel about 2 hours later than we had planned, but we got here. After staying at the Kibbutz for a week, we had built up our new hotel to be a palace, and while it is much better than where we were, I think we created unrealistic expectations for ourselves. It is a European style hotel, so the rooms are small, with not much in them, but this time I only have 1 roommate so I am not complaining.
Since we have officially moved to our downtown hotel, today's word of the day will be Malon - the hebrew word for hotel.
When we got in we were all excited to check out the pool. I went to grab my bathing suit, and assuming that it was in my laundry bag, I went looking for that bag. There was some good news and some bad, I found my suit, but I could not find the laundry bag. We called back to the Kibbutz but it was not there. It turns out my roommates grabbed it and somewhere in all of the craziness it never got to me. So alas I have already had my first casualty on this trip. Thankfully there was very little in the bag, just a few t-shirts and some boxers. It could have been a lot worse. I guess I am just a bit embarrassed that I would lose something considering how much I travel for work.
I also forgot to mention that this was not the first hiccup of the day for me. Before we left the kibbutz we were all given our official Maccabiah credentials, and after they were all handed out, 3 were missing - one of which was mine. Our coach searched all over, and talked to the necessary people to have them re-issued, when all of a sudden we got up to walk to the bus and they were under someone's bag...that time a crisis was averted.A little before dinner at the new hotel, we had a meeting with many of the other athletes from other teams and some other sports. We were introduced to the staff and told of some of the events that would be taking place throughout the next two weeks, one of which was a night at a local club. Many people on the team decided to go, as it would be one last hurrah before really getting into competition mode. We also seemed to think that Maccabiah had rented out the club for just us - this was not the case. We did get to go in without a cover and through the VIP door which was fun, and we were given 10% offour outrageously priced drinks, but that was about it. For a Wednesday night, this place got absolutey nuts especially as the night went on. We drank and danced and eventually headed back to the hotel a bit after midnight, to hopefully get decent sleep before waking up and heading back to the track.
The club was actually a lot of fun, perhaps even more fun than I expected, but now it is time to get serious, and block out many of the distractions going on around us until after the competition. Most of the team has already signed up for a rafting trip down the Jordan River on the Sunday after we compete and there are a few parties the two days following our competition, so we will certainly have plenty to do after our races.
Tonight is going to be another long night as we will head to Jerusalem for the opening ceremonies which is expected to be an amazing event. Our flag bearer is a 2 time Olympic Gold Medalist in swimming from the 2008 games who is competing for the Maccabi USA swim team. I will have more on the opening ceremonies tomorrow.
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