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For the
second straight year, a group from Jordan Brand
will travel to Europe -- this time to Vilnius,
Lithuania -- for a two-day training camp with 40
of the top prospects in the world from March
4-9. Ten players will be selected as the
Most Valuable Players from the camp and they
will travel to the United States in April, along
with six players from other regions of the world
to compete in the second annual
International Game as part of the Jordan Brand Classic
on Saturday, April 18th at Madison Square Garden in New
York City. The following is a blog and daily photo
gallery from Kevin Foley, who will be along for the
trip.
Vilnius,
Lithuania (March 5): When I left
you last, I was wide-awake at 3 am. The
positive to this? I was the first one in
line for breakfast at 7 am. However, I am
still awake 20 hours later writing my next daily
blog at near midnight. For those keeping
score, that is seven total hours of sleep (out
of the last 54) since I left Phoenix on Tuesday
morning. I actually feel great, but I
cannot wait to close my eyes in a few
minutes. I am watching The Family Guy on
TV in the background ... not as funny in
German.
Going back
to breakfast this morning, there was a fantastic
meal of croissants, meat, cheese, cereal, yogurt
and fruit. I went back two extra times to
the buffet. Did you see the ham sandwich
from last night? I did feel a little
guilty when a 6'5 guy sat at the table next to
me with only a small glass of juice and a single
hard-boiled egg. He missed out. Since
the rest of our team did not arrive in Vilnius
until the afternoon, Marc and I spent the
morning walking around Old Town taking some
photos for the blog. Feel free to look
through them below. The highlight of the
walk? Having a guy stop to ask us
directions in Lithuanian -- it marked the first
time that I was pegged as a local and not an
American tourist. A personal victory.
We
finished off the day with a group dinner at the
Helio Steakhouse, which was fantastic. I
had a buffalo mozzarella salad, beef stroganoff
(even though I ordered the beef sirloin and the
waitress told me that I was wrong and had in
fact ordered the stroganoff) and chocolate pana
cotta. It hit the spot. The
rest of our traveling party arrived from as far
as Oregon and they were feeling the jet lag by
the end of the meal. The one observation
during dinner -- watching entire tables of
diners get up to walk outside to smoke and then
to return as a group. Repeat this multiple
times.
Anyway,
all of the top players in Europe arrive tomorrow
for our training camp so we are excited to get
everything started. We have the morning
off to hopefully do a little more site-seeing
and then we will be at the facility for player
registration. As always,
feel free to drop
me an email if you have any comments,
questions or recommendations for site-seeing
here.
Stay
tuned!!!! |
