Renee Montgomery Update From Israel

For more updates and information from Renee, visit her website at www.r21m.com.

Hello there Good People... It's been awhile since I blogged, I feel like I say that every time I blog but I guess it's true. It's been a scary couple of days for me.

I am in Israel right now playing for Macabi Ashdod in the second round of the playoffs (we are up 1- 0). Two nights ago I was eating dinner at my teammates house when I hear an alarm. I ask "what is that?" and everyone gets quiet and hears it then says its a bomb alarm. Needless to say we start freaking out and ask the only Israeli there with us what we should do and she has no idea. (When a bomb alarm goes off you have a minute to get to a safe place before the bomb hits) My other American teammate, Ambrosia Anderson (Broski), lives there and tells us that they have a "safe room" so we, meaning Ashley Robinson, Tamara James (TJ), and I, run into the safe room and TJ tries to close the door multiple times but it wont shut. I’m looking at TJ like what is going on, you need to wait for our other teammates! But when TJ had looked out the door she saw that Broski was icing a cake. No, I did not type the wrong thing. This woman was icing the cake because she said "it was fresh out of the oven and the icing melts best that way." Hearing her say this lets me know that Broski has lost her mind. Our other teammate Katia Levitsky (Ms. Lewinsky) sat on the couch and watched the news to "see what was going on" while we ran to the safe room. She too must have been drinking from the same crazy juice that Broski was sipping. We sit in the safe room for about 5 minutes and nothing happens.

Now our team owners and teammates are calling us asking us if we are ok, and also telling us that our apartment doesn’t have a safe room so do we want to stay with them. Huh? Now Im thinking, why in the world is our apartment the only one that doesn’t have a safe room. They are telling me, its no big deal I can go to the stairwell and walk down one floor and I will be ok.

Now after hearing this, I’m beginning to think that Ashley, TJ, and I are the only sane people in Israel. If bombs are coming, I do not want to be standing in a stairwell.

So things die down for A DAY and now today, I’m sound asleep in my bed taking a pre-game nap when I hear "Renee!" I jump up and Ashley is like "the bomb alarm" so I get out of bed and run out the apartment, without any shoes or socks on. (Now a lot of you don’t know me well, but I’m not a fan of germs, so for me to walk barefoot out of my apartment is unheard of). We get into the hallway and our neighbor is trying to get her children, (there were about 6 of them) into the stairwell. We were in the stairwell for about 2 minutes when we hear a boom. After the boom, all the Israeli's start leaving so we leave too but at this point I've had about enough. Our coach calls us a half hour later and tells us that our game has been cancelled and that they are moving us out of Ashdod.

I was mad that our game was cancelled because now we are prolonging our time here in Israel but I was happy to get out of Ashdod. So we pack our bags and head to Tel Aviv, and when I say pack, we acted like we were packing to go back home to America, but we are women so what do you expect? So now I am sitting here in my hotel room safe and sound. When things like this happen in other countries it makes me realize how blessed I am to live in America where we don't have to worry about war on our home soil. Below is a summary from a yahoo article about the details of what’s going on here in Israel. But I’m going to end with this... Pray for Israel and also pray for me because I’m greedy and like to receive as many prayers as I can : ) Until next time... Be Blessed

Renee Montgomery

JERUSALEM – Israeli aircraft struck the Gaza Strip on Thursday in response to militant rocket and mortar attacks, stoking concerns that a grave new round of hostilities will fill the vacuum left by an impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Two years of relative calm have been unraveling in recent weeks with acts of violence against Israelis — including a deadly bombing in Jerusalem on Wednesday that killed a British tourist — and Israeli reprisals against Gaza militants, which in one case killed four Palestinian civilians. Militants operating near the Israeli border sent at least nine rockets and mortars — including two rockets that reached the city of Ashdod — flying at Israeli communities throughout the day, drawing an Israeli airstrike in retaliation. No injuries were reported on either side.

Received from
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110324/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians