Welcome to the first entry. First, my brother had this blog
called the Jimmy Chitwood Diaries, and because it is an awesome name, I’m gonna
steal it. Anyway, here it is (http://www.thejimmychitwooddiaries.blogspot.com),
and enjoy. Hopefully he gets some spare time to start blogging again.
The reasoning behind the blog is fairly straightforward: I
want to document this next chapter of my life. A few weeks ago when I was packing, I came across an old
English notebook from high school, and I was fascinated with how the mind of 17-year-old
Jake worked. So, I want 40 year old Jake to know what 22-year-old Jake is
thinking. So this will be a memoir, blog, and other random stream of
consciousness I deem blog-worthy. And thanks to the feedback I got on Facebook,
apparently some people out there want to read it as well. Since I am a man of
the people, why not? I also know myself well enough to know that I’m terrible
with taking pictures of important moments in my life, I settled on words. I
will try to compliment this with a picture or video as well of course.
I think a disclaimer is in order: this will really be just
my thoughts and musings. If it’s not for you, fine, it costs you nothing, pay
me no mind*.
I do not think this will turn into a blog where I post what
happened after each game, or each practice, etc… I’m not going to be talking
about how I could’ve played better, why we won or lost, or anything of the
sort. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m going to write about after blog #1. It
will not be very in-depth about basketball. I should say, it won’t be in depth about the
basketball that I will be playing. I’ll probably write a ton about the Davidson
Cats season. I also don’t want it to be a blog that just states what I did that
day or that week. If it ever turns into that, someone tell me to stop. I
obviously want to keep track of all the places we get to travel to and stuff
like that, but that is a line I’m going to have to toe (bet you haven’t seen
that sentence structure ever before Miss English Teacher). I just want to keep
a good memoir to read back on later in life, and since people have said they’re
interested in reading it too, I might as well make it public.
Moving to Israel:
The moving itself was the easy part. The packing, the
flying, all that. Anything that had motion - cake. The hard part was when I
stopped moving and tried to sleep once I got into my apartment. The first week
in Israel was rough. None of my other teammates had arrived yet, I couldn’t
sleep, and I didn’t have practice or anything to take my mind off the drastic
changes that had just taken place in my life.
Things picked up, of course, and they’ve been going
great. As more of my new teammates
got into Tel Aviv and practices started, I could focus on something I know –
basketball. It’s been awesome getting to know my new teammates and playing a
new style of basketball. Practices are different, but I like them a lot.
Life is pretty simple, and I get to do a lot of things I
love to do. That is, I get to cook a lot (for those that don’t know, I love to
cook, and am planning on seriously expanding my repertoire in the kitchen),
play a lot of ball, play some video games and watch TV shows in my free time,
and go out to eat a lot. Is it bad half had to do with food? I don’t think so
either. The Tel Aviv restaurants have not disappointed so far.
The Mediterranean from north of Haifa:
The biggest difference so far? The driving. Oh my gosh. To
put it mildly, driving in Israel is an eye opening experience. It’s hard to
describe accurately, but it involves more horn blaring than you’ve ever
experienced, and double the lane drifting. To give the not-so-worldly a
glimpse, when traffic lights here are red, the yellow light flashes to tell you
that it is about to turn green. Therefore, if you do not accelerate at the
exact moment the light turns green, you will be honked at. After all, you were
warned.
That’s it for now. Now that I think about there are lots of
things I need to tell future Jake about, like trying to learn the language.
Anyway, I hope future posts are more entertaining, but I had to get the intro
and disclaimer out of the way. If you guys have any questions, feel free to
leave a comment.
Up next: at the end of the month we go to Belgium and Russia
for exhibition games. Two countries I’ve never been to before, so it should be
fun.
Because you guys deserve a reward for making it all the way
to the bottom, here’s a reward! I’m going to try to share all the good links I
come across, so here are a few:
for all the newsroom fans out there:
And finally, my dad just adopted a new dog! A Greater Swiss
Mountain Dog named Max.
He’s the big guy in the link. Can’t wait to meet this
chiller.
Again thanks for reading,
Jake
Footnotes:
*Hova
Keep this up my man. It's good to hear things are going well.
ReplyDelete-Big Dog
Thanks for the update. Be safe and enjoy! Keep them coming.
ReplyDelete