Sunday was the first full day of the convention at it was then that I realised how different it was to any juggling convention I'd been to before, or since. It is the only juggling convention in Israel each year so everyone turns up and juggles for all they are worth. And they all socialise as much as they can too. Everyone seems to go to as many workshops as they can, everyone goes to every show, and every other event. To be honest I just couldn't keep up. Everyone seemed far more enthusiastic than me about just about everything.

One thing I noticed was that the jugglers at the convention were totally isolated from the rest of the juggling world. The skill level wasn't very high compared to british and european juggling conventions but lots more people were into other skills than juggling. Diabolo, devilstick, cigar boxes, poi, staff and all those types of things were very popular.

Luke Wilson and Ilka Licht had been to the Israeli juggling convention the previous year, and don't you know, I could tell that they had! It was very weird seeing so many people influenced by one juggler, loads of jugglers were doing very Luke style juggling. I ran a workshop on creative ring juggling on the Saturday afternoon which was very well attended. By the end of the convention I saw lots of jugglers trying out my kind of ring juggling... again, very weird.

I went for a walk with Michal around the park and checked out the local wildlife. We dipped our feet in the warm water and watched some rodents, otters or mink, swimming around the pools. We also spotted some young bakini clad poi swinging ladies next to another pool. I could have spent more time watching them swing as they were pretty pleasing on the eye but Michal just made sarcastic comments about how anyone can make poi look good wearing that little.

We walked back to the fire show which was taking place on the outdoor stage area. Now I'm never the most enthusiastic person when it comes to fire shows but I stuck this one out, helped mainly by Michal and I excorcising all our cynical and sarcastic comments, and mumbling heckles under our breath. You know, the things that probably wouldn't have gone down too well if we'd shout them in Hebrew during the main shows. Nothing too insulting to the local jugglers, just healthy British cynicism.

There were several very good fire performers, I especially liked a guy who kept holding a fire staff in his teeth and doing all sorts of acrobatics. And there was one scary moment when I boy did a very small section of a "hitting myself with fire sticks while wearing a fleece jacket" until the jacket caught fire and he had to be rolled over on the floor to cool off.

As each juggler arrived at the convention they were given a pass on a piece of strings and also a small paper ticket. On Saturday night came the chance to spend this ticket by voting for the winner of the 3 Ball Open. This was a competition to see who had the most original 3 ball routine with a big cash prize. Every routine was good, most were great and a few were fantastic. I was asked to enter, even though I tried to get out of it by mentioning that I don't actually have a 3 ball routine. In the end I pretended to break my left hand and juggled lots of 3 ball tricks just in my right hand. Quite original, I thought, but probably not what the audience were looking for.

After all the acts had performed, each member of the audience put their ticket into one of the boxes, coresponding to their favorite 3 ball juggler. Scott Seltzer won and deservedly so, he was by far the best, I even voted for him instead of myself. Even though the technical level of juggling in Israel is lower than Europe, the creativity is certainly flowing well. I saw lots of tricks that I could pass off as my own once I returned to England.

Only joking.

In the evening I played with modelling balloons again. Soon there was quite a large group of people, all wanting various latex scuptures. I couldn't keep up with demand so started only taking requests from a young lady called Tal, who I recognised as a now fully clothed bakini wearing poi swinger. I was invited for a swim in the pools with Tal and her friends but we found that swimming wasn't allowed after dusk, due to health and safety and insurance matters. So we drank Egyptian tea instead and ate forbidden foods. Like bread and butter. The whole passover diet was really getting to me.

Monday.