Legendary, Hall of Fame of AMHSI!

Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls, are you ready to RUMBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

The start of my day was pretty normal with CORE and sequential classes, and actually most of the day was not very memorable until around 7:00 p.m. This was the time when all the boys of our group decided to go play a game of basketball. When we arrived at the court they were playing soccer, or in hebrew- Cadoor Regel- I was immediately filled with emotions. I love soccer and it is my passion, and seeing a bunch of "europeans" playing soccer was truly a dream come true. It may sound cheesy but I'm being truthful, whenever I am with my parents on vacation and we see people playing soccer, we never stop, and I usually get criticized by my dad for even wanting to stop. Dad you know its true. We all walked onto the court, and my first reaction was to join the soccer game, so I did. I asked if I could join in, and all the American boys from our group looked at me with disgust. Once I was about to play a kid on our trip named Eral started to make a ruckus. Out of all the Israel people only one knew a little bit english, so the conversations consisted of them yelling in hebrew, and us saying that we have no idea what they were saying. Also they were not the nicest of people. In order for the arguing to stop, Ely attempted to say that we will play for the court, they kind of knew what we were saying and decided to let us play same. It was one game, the first one to two goals. It was intense, after every single juke and spin and skill move, the boys in our group were going crazy after every single moment. The game was exhilarating and exciting at every moment. I scored the first goal and went crazy, we all were yelling "USA, USA, USA". The israelis thought that we were making fun of them, and a fight almost ensued due to Eral yelling "Yeah", and they thought that he was swearing at them. They then scored very nicely, their biggest guy smacked the ball extremely fast, right into the top corner. Five minutes after the scored my roommate Aaron shot from half and banged it right into the bottom corner. It was truly magnificent and everyone went crazy. The Israelis were in shock and walked off the field, they said good game to me and called me very good at soccer. It made me feel very good about myself, they didn't say good-game to anyone else though. To add to that, the big guy who scored on us spit on Eral when he was leaving. We were all pretty excited and scared at the same time. We all went to the dorm and celebrated with a good Havdalah ceremony. Also after the game we figured out that they play together, as a team, and they never lose to anyone. We all went to the cafeteria the next day and everyone knew me for some reason, and kept on coming up to me and saying that I was a legend on campus, and that we had truly made history in AMHSI. I say all of them at lunch and they were much nicer and respected us Americans, and even helped me with the cafeteria rules that I am still getting used to. I played soccer tonight, by myself, and made even more friends, my team won again. The weather is getting nicer and soccer is becoming a regular part of my schedule, so excited for the games that await. The day was truly epic.

We go to Masad, Dead Sea, and Jerusalem-old city tomorrow on our Tiyul. Everyone is excited, and so am I. It is going to a great experience to go to such a spiritually rich place with all of my new brothers and sisters.

Shalom Everyone,

Maxwell Bailey Sandler

P.s I won't be able to blog for a while since I won't have wifi in the hostel that we will be staying at in Jerusalem