Opening Ceremony

Yes, it was epic. It's nearly one and the bus leaves tomorrow for the first day of competition at 6AM. Quick run through of the day up until the opening ceremonies. Woke up very early, had breakfast, went to the course for last practice round, started out double, bogey, double, finished out the round pretty much even.

Got back to the hotel with two hours before we had to leave for the opening ceremonies. Showered, changed into our super baller outfits, went to the conference room and got ready for the trek to the stadium, where 20,000 spectators were
waiting for the arrival of the countries.

We got to the stadium via another heavy police and helicopter (two this time) escort and we for the first time got to see all of the countries' delegations at once. From my memory, the teams were: USA, Canada, Mexico, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, South Africa, and some others. The absolute highlight of the day was going around meeting all the different people from the countries and trading our gear for theirs. There were pins, hats, jackets, shirts, shorts, bags, etc. that people were trading as we were mixing and mingling. I ended up with a Venezuela hat and shirt, a warmup jacket from Argentina, warm up pants from Brazil, and lots and lots of pins. We took lots of pictures, met the young and old from everywhere and took lots of pictures.

Then it was time to make the entrance. We were one of the last countries to enter- Israel is first followed alphabetically by country with Argentina being last. The feeling of entering a stadium dressed in my country's uniform with 500 other athletes with tens of thousands of fans is honestly indescribable. We walked around the stadium and then waited and watched the other countries enter- Venezuela then Argentina. Then, it was some speeches by the president of the Maccabi games, an official from Argentina, and then the torch lighting ceremony.

I feel bad packing the past 6 hours' experiences into just a paragraph, but I do tee off in 6 hours and 37 minutes. Yikes. I will post video as soon as I can. After the ceremony we went back outside and traded goods some more and finally walked back towards the 50 some odd busses to take us back to the hotel. Here I am now in the hotel lobby stomach grumbling wondering if I can get a bite to eat or just forget it and try some sort of breakfast in the 10 minutes I'll have before the bus.

This post is kind of weak, but I hope the pictures will speak for themselves...