Blog 4 -- The arrival

Hey guys,

I'm finally checking back in after 3 months of silence. These last 3 months have been crazy to put it lightly. Being a restaurant manager is a lot harder than I thought. Working until 2am, working 5-6 days a week. It was hard because I didn't have a lot of time to spend with my friends before I left, and to make matters even worse, I got wisdom teeth pulled 4 days before I had to leave for Israel, so the last few days were a total wash.
With that said, here’s an update on what’s been going down.

The draft for the league happened about a month after I posted my last blog. I sat by my computer and watched the entire thing, and my name was never called. I was stunned. I then sat back for a second and thought about why that would happen, I really thought I was going to be one of the 45 players taken. But the more I thought about it the less it mattered to me. I thought about my tryout, and as I wrote in a previous blog, I felt I had an awful tryout. I didn't even think I was going to get signed. So as the days went on it became a lot easier to handle. I just realized how lucky I am to be in this position.

We arrived in Israel 3 days ago. The plane right was loooong. I was on the same flight as all of the other Canadians, which led to some really fun conversations on the plane. We flew from Toronto to London, and stopped over there for about half an hour. The 30 mins I saw of the UK I really enjoyed. We touched down in Israel at about 2pm on Monday, and I somehow managed to stay up the rest of the day on only 1 hour of sleep.

The place were staying at -- Kfar Hayarok, is really nice. A bit of a change of scenery from what I'm used to, especially with all of the peacocks running around. The place is very motel-style. 3 beds per room, nice big closets, bathroom with a shower, and most importantly a powerful air conditioner. I'm rooming with team and countrymates Jon Ramoo and Oren Gal. The Canadians were the first group to arrive in Israel, followed by the Australians later that day. The two groups got along great. They're all really nice guys, and its fun learning about where they come from and how its so different from where I come from.

The second day we were here all the Canadians and Aussies headed to downtown
Tel Aviv and to the beach. The scenery is stunning. I was jumping around in the ocean and swimming around in the waves, and it felt like I was in paradise. At one point I looked over to my buddy Jon Ramoo, who had never been anywhere tropical and he was having the time of his life and I said to him "Dude, can you believer we're getting paid to be here?!, AND we get to play baseball!" in my opinion, the coast in Tel Aviv is a mixture between the Caribbean and Miami, but everyone speaks Hebrew instead of Spanish.

Over the last few days more people have been coming in. There’s probably 100 players here now. The Dominican players came in last night and after doing some throwing with Oren yesterday I sat down with him, two ballplayers from the US, a ballplayer from the Dominican, and the lone Japanese player Ryoju Kihara, and we just talked baseball. It was awesome, 6 people all from different parts of the world, connected by the game that we love. From what I've seen, that is what the IBL is all about.

It was nice checking in, and I'll be sure to post again soon as the season
kicks off this Sunday. Take care everyone

OOT
Oak