July 21st – Swimming, Skype, Soccer and Snacks

 
This morning we had a great training session. First I have to explain that the previous training had been done with our Israeli Taekwondo competitors training in the same room, which is stupid. Rocky and Drago didn’t train together, because they’re gonna fight each other!! Personally, its not just about me not wanting my opponent to see how I fight, but also that it creates anxiety and forces competition during training. Anyway, today it was just the USA Maccabi Taekwondo team training and it felt great. It’s always nice when the dojang has mirrors so you can see both your errors and how great you look.
We came back from training and I turned on my laptop and set up a Skype conversation with my niece Maya, because she just turned 4 and I wanted to wish her a happy birthday. It was wonderful to see both of my nieces (Maya is 4, Liat is ~9 months) and my sister. Being able to have a video conference call is infinitely better than a phone call, and I loved telling Maya about my journey and seeing her adorable face. I’ll have to do another Skype session soon.
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Again today we headed down to the pool at our hotel where I attempted to race one of my fellow teammates who was on the swimming team. She beat me lol. After that we ate some more by the pool. Everything tastes better when you eat it outside. I’m not sure why.
We then decided to support team USA and watch a soccer game. A few days prior we had watched USA play against Uruguay, and although we lossed 1-0, it was an awesome game and very entertaining. The game was full of fights, tension and loud cheers. The game that we saw that day however was Chile vs Argentina and it was pretty boring. We left halfway through, but it was nice to do something with everyone.
I’ll be honest. The food that we had at Kibbutz Shefayim was frickin incredible. The food at the Ramada is ehhh. So after dinner the team + Nir’s brother + Judo guy decided to pick up some snacks before we watched a movie in my room. It probably wasn’t a great idea since weigh-in wasn’t too many days away, but we were living carefree. We got chocolate bars, chocolate milk, chocolate cereal and chocolate bamba (Israeli snack).
After a long discussion of what movie to watch…the team decided to watch “Ted”. Movies are always better the first time. I’m picking the movie next time 🙂