Return of the rain

This week saw the return of the rain again after quite a long run of hot days and sunshine. It started off ok and Sunday and Monday coached at Rambam and Eshkol school working on 1 on 1 attacking/defending. I got my key points across to them which for defending were sideways on, on your toes and trying to push the attacker out wide away from the goal and arms out for balance. For attacking to keep the ball close and as they all like Barcelona that this is the time to try any Messi like tricks if they have any in their locker. For a warm up they did some coaches command followed by knee tag. Last week everyone was talking about the Ac Milan vs Arsenal game but this week I had a handful of kids coming up to me telling me about the Arsenal vs Tottenham game 5-2, that’s more like it! Monday at Eshkol school during one of the classes a message went over the tannoy in Hebrew of course so I didn’t know what it was but the whole class stopped to listen. I found out that it was to do with earthquake practice so the whole school had to go and meet at the front entrance.

Monday afternoon I went to the cinema with Avi, we finally saw Safe House which is a new release, we always saw the trailers before other movies and really wanted to see it so finally we did. It has Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. It’s about a young CIA agent who is tasked with looking after a fugitive in a safe house. But when the safe house is attacked, he finds himself on the run with his charge.

Tuesday was another hot day coaching at El Manara school which is the only Arabic school I coach at and 1 of 3 Arabic Junior schools in Akko. The teacher speaks very little English there and for the 30 minutes he said to come inside and eat, it’s a happy day. I wondered what he meant happy day but I said ok and followed him, he took me to a classroom full of children sitting around the outside, I soon figured out it was someones birthday. They had a table in the middle of the room with cake, drinks and sweets and everyone was sat around the edge of the room with the birthday boy sitting at the front of the class with a plastic crown on. I found out he loves football and Manchester United so was happy that I was there to celebrate his birthday with him. We soon all stood around the cake and sang happy birthday whilst clapping, the cake didn’t have candles but had 4 large more like fireworks/crackers that go off for around 30 seconds. Afterwards we sat back down whilst the teacher went around the class picking students to give him birthday wishes, one boy wished that he would get married.

Tuesday evening was when the rain started coming today heavily, this meant that the Tuesday afternoon session was cancelled. Wednesday morning it was still raining but the school I was at today does have a large indoor gym so me and Avi went along to find out that there are builders working on something in the gym so another cancellation. Around midday me and Avi went to a town nearby called Nahariyya which has a nice promenade by the sea and many high street shops, the town was also bombed by Lebanon in 2006 but it’s a very nice town with a lot more shops and bars etc than Akko. We went to a new restaurant there and both had steak, a very nice restaurant with excellent food and friendly service. Afterwards I went back home and shortly after Esti (woman in charge of the programme at UJIA) came to see how things were and take some receipts and also bring the piece of paper for the allowance to buy food at the local supermarket. By this time the rain still hadn’t stopped and Sameh phoned to tell me that the afternoon session at Mig Dalor had also been cancelled because of rain.

Wednesday evening there was an u19 game at the Akko stadium between Israel and Italy which we were going to go to but once again we decided not to because of the heavy rain so instead we went to Avi’s parents house in Akko to watch the international friendly game between Israel and Ukraine, some of his friends who I’ve met before also came to watch the game. It was quite a good game with 2 penalties and some good chances but in the end Ukraine won 3-2. I also had a few arguments/debates, one of which was what was the best league in the world, I had to say the premier league and another was apparently England have no good players so I had to go through them all with them starting with Joe Hart in goal, I told them we have plenty of good players just they can’t seem to player together.

Thursday I woke up to heavy rain again leaving Weizman school to be cancelled. So after a few weeks of nice weather this week has seen rain and left the last half of the week all pretty much cancelled. Hopefully this will be the last of the rain as I now only have 3 weeks remaining in Israel.