JIS Rugby

Laurens made the JIS Varsity Rugby team and it has been tradition for the players to get a mohawk before their final big tournament. The tournament will take place this upcoming weekend in Kuala Lumpur and last weekend it was time for the boys to get ready and get their heads shaved.

Laurens was a bit nervous....he is pretty attached to his 'good' looks...but as a good team player should he went under the 'knife' too......

Here is the result.....

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Noah's Birthday Party

Noah's birthday was almost 2 months ago but because of
bad weather, holidays and a soccer tournament we were not able to actually have the party until last week.
It was a party in 2 stages.....First we had 4 good friends over for a sleep over and for part 2 we took 13 boys to a water park .
Fun Times !

London Day 5 Final Day

Today was our last day in London. We slept in, walked around Stamford Bridge, checked out some of the sights and headed out for the airport at 5 in the afternoon.

Special thanks to Will Julius for letting us stay at his apartment, Much appreciated !

The weather was typical English....grey and very wet. A good day to leave !

London Day 4 New Year's Day

New Year's Day was probably THE highlight of our visit. We were going to see our favorite team Tottenham playing at home against Reading. The other really good thing was that our good friend Matt Merritt, who we hadn't seen for about 2 years, was going to join us.
The match Kick Off time was 3pm but we wanted to really enjoy it to the fullest and we met up in the pub in between tube station Seven Sisters and White Hart Lane at 12:00. After all.....pre-match chatting and drinking is almost as important as the match itself. Isn't it?

What a great day it turned out to be!

In the pub we enjoyed our pints and the early match WBA v Fulham and of course it was great to catch up with Matt, who was almost more excited than Noah about his first visit to the Lane.
After the match we had to go back to the pub for post match chatting and pints and it was sweet to watch Arsenal drop points v Southampton in the late game.

London Day 3 New Year's Eve

Believe it or not but today was a day with no football ! ( apologies to my American friends but when you are in London you can't call the beautiful game 'soccer' you have the say its REAL name FOOTBALL... :-)

Guess what ..it was raining cats and dogs today. Who would have thought...London and rain??  We had no idea....
Anyway the rain didn't stop us from being really good tourists and we took this no football opportunity to go to the London Dungeon. Great attraction with kids ...as long as they are not too young.

And of course you can't go to London without watching a good musical. We wanted to go to Charley and the Chocolate Factory or the Lion King but unfortunately the first one didn't have a show on the 31st and the Lion King doesn't start until Match
So instead we went to see SCROOGE the classic Christmas Carroll . which was very good and really fitting at this time of year.

After the musical we went for a walk in central London....Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Piccadilly, etc....At Leicester Square we had a very nice Italian New Year's Eve dinner with pasta and pizza.

The last thing we did was to check out the crowds at Travelgar  Square. This is the place where usually hundreds of thousands of people get together at midnight to celebrate the start of the new year. We didnt wait that long and went home around 10.
HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

London Day 2

We woke up totally refreshed after a 9-10 hour much needed long sleep.
Today on our program was one of Noah's highlight's of the trip.....The White Hart Lane Stadium Tour.
The tour was supposed to take place from 11-1 and at 4 we had to be at Loftus Rd for the  QPR v Liverpool Kick Off.

At Tottenham it was great to see the trophy room, the press room, the VIP boxes, the player's dressing room and to be able to walk through the tunnel on to the field.
Of course after the stadium tour we had to go to the Spurs fan shop.....Noah had been saving his money to spend it HERE for the last six months or so.....

The QPR V Liverpool 0-3 was very one sided. QPR were very poor and Liverpool were way too good for them . Especially our favorite, former Ajax star, Luis Suarez was absolutely brilliant. We had fantastic seats right behind the goal in which all 3 goals were scored. We were so close to the field and to the players that we could almost touch them . Pretty cool !

London Day 1

Noah and I left the US early for a special boys football trip to London.
On Friday evening we left the States and we arrived on Saturday morning at 6:30 in London.  We were picked up by Charles a former JIS student who was kind enough to pick us up and to give us the keys from Will's apartment.  Will is another ex JIS student, who was in the school soccer team for many years and who is the son of our good friend Kristan.
Day 1 was a very busy one . After we arrived we dropped our stuff off at the apartment and we had to meet Mark Gray's niece who's Arsenal membership cards we could use to get tickets for the Arsenal v Newcastle match. After we met with her we were on our way to Craven Cottage to watch match 1 Fulham v Swansea. This match kicked off at 3:00 and ended in a deserved win for the away side Swansea 2-1. When the rain was coming down hard we had to leave this match 15 minutes early to make our way to the Emirates for match 2 Arsenal v Newcastle which had a 5;30 kick off.  Arsenal is across town from Fulham. We had to rush to get a bus and an underground train..... but we did okay and we only missed the first 5 mins of the game. The game itself was pretty amazing...a goal fest. After a 1-1 HT time score the game ended in a unbelievable score of 7-3 to Arsenal with a Walcott hattrick.
After the game we still had to drop off the Arsenal club cards before we could finally make it to the apartment. We were home by 10PM. Needles to say that we were totally knackered but also very satisfied after a great day 1.