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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 4): Marc and I
landed at 12:45 pm at the Vilnius airport.
30 degrees. We got our luggage and met our
driver right outside baggage claim. He did
not speak much English but joked with us that he
at least knew the basics. That is
impressive though because I could never master
the Lithuanian language -- it is extremely
complicated. The written language is very
difficult to understand too, so we were thrilled
that we did not have to navigate through the
city in a rental car. Our driver was
enjoying his favorite radio station along the
way which was all American songs that I had
never heard in my life. They were either
from a few decades ago or never quite made it in
the U.S. After spending an hour at the
hotel, we went over to the Sarunas Academy --
run by the legendary Sarunas Marciulionis who
used to play in the NBA for the Golden State
Warriors. After taking in a
very-entertaining dodge ball game with their
youngest kids (many of whom were wearing NBA
uniforms of LeBron, Kobe, etc.), we spent a few
hours meeting with their staff and getting the
final plans in order for the event this weekend. We
got back to the hotel around 6 pm. I had
only slept an hour in the last two days so I was
ready to crash. Instead of going to the
hotel restaurant for dinner, I caught up on a
few emails and decided to order a sandwich from
room service. I figured a ham sandwich
would do it (see photo below) -- but it was a
little too literal for my hunger.
Breakfast is at 7 am.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well,
it is 3 am and I am wide-awake. I fell
asleep six hours ago hoping to make it through
the night, but my body still thinks it is 6
pm. So confusing. My hotel room has
a beautiful brand new flat screen television,
but only two English channels -- CNN
International and MTV Europe. CNN keeps
running the same speech from the British prime
minister and I do not think I would be able to
put in words how bizarre MTV Europe is at 3 in
the morning. You just need to watch it for
yourself. As always,
feel free to drop
me an email if you have any comments,
questions or recommendations for site-seeing
here.
Stay
tuned!!!! |
