My Poll Answer

How many days (starting 2/15) until Laura will give into good old "American" Fast food? (ex. Mc Donald's, Pizza Hut, KFC)

The votes are in!

0, already had some
9 votes (31%)

5 days
6 votes (20%)

7 days
3 votes (10%)

9 days
1 vote (3%)

the whole trip, she's tough
10 votes (34%)

Sorry to disappoint those who voted that i could stay the whole trip without it, but on day 10 i had Mc Donald's! I couldn't help myself... you can only eat so much rice! Ha ha!

Thanks for keeping up with my blog, i hope you have enjoyed it!

What's Happening Next?

So what's next you might ask?

I'm not really sure what is next for me regarding International assignments, i guess i will just have to wait and see!

But i do know what is next for me in the states:
This month (March) on the 19th i will be driving up with Bob Cunningham & Scott Bokal to Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin for The USA Hockey Central District Tier 1 Championships. I will be working youth and women's hockey through the 22nd.

Next month (April) 1st-5th i will be working The USA Hockey Girl's Nationals in Rochester, NY.

My flight back home

My Trip back home was pretty standard, Harbin to Beijing in a mid sized aircraft and from there i got on another huge plane and flew from Beijing to Chicago. One thing i wasn't counting on was the "wonderful" lady that was at the ticketing desk in Beijing. I had a small backpack and a small roller board bag. The backpack is supposed to be my small personal item which i have ALWAYS carried on every trip i have gone on, and the roller board was small enough to fit in the overhead bin. She wouldn't let me have both, she told me i could have a purse but no backpack because it was too big. As everyone might know I'm not one to carry around a purse, and most purses are the size of my backpack. So i argued that with her, but she decided to be a hag about it. So i ended up dumping half my stuff i needed into my roller board that was already stuffed with breakables and shoving my backpack into my already overfilled luggage.

On the plane to Chicago we had 3 meals and 6 movies were playing on a loop. So i watched a few movies and slept a little. I sat next to a couple of the USA Men's Hockey team and we chatted for a bit and shared stories. Man that was a long flight!

Once i got to Chicago i had a few hours to burn so i had my first real American food... Chili's! I had a chicken ranch sandwich with buffalo sauce & french fries! It was so good! Kate was not able to join me because she jumped on a flight to NY since her flight to Philly was canceled. My flight was supposed to take off around 8pm, the plane was there but the crew was really late coming from a different city. I finally was airborne at 10:30pm and didn't get to my house until midnight. If i wanted to i could have rented a car from Chicago and driven home before my plane had even arrived at the gate in Chicago.
Oh well, I'm home safe and i get to sleep in my own bed! Yea!
Now i just have to deal with getting back onto Central Time.

Traveling Back Home

Today i start my trek back home! I cant wait for the comfort of my own home and my own bed and lets not forget... FOOD! I have had the most amazing experience here and have learned a lot about the culture. I have learned that i am very lucky and fortunate to have the things that i have back home, and that women in the United States are treated a lot more equally then they are here. I'm not saying that i wasn't treated well here, quite the opposite. The Chinese volunteers and people here pretty much bent over backwards for us while we were here and made our stay very comfortable. But being able to see a different country and to be submerged in a different culture for a while makes me appreciate everything that has been given to me. On the officiating side i feel very lucky for all the experiences that i have received in the past and all of the people that have helped me along the way. This trip has been an eye opener to me and i want to thank Stacey and Matt for everything they did for me, and us as a refereeing team while we were here. 

Now that i am leaving, i hope to see most of you soon. And someone should bring me food when i get back... i need some good food. I'm still thinking of a burger, fries, buffalo wings, anything totally fattening and greasy would be great. I have lost some weight here eating rice all the time and if anyone mentions rice to me... or puts it in front of me lets just say it wont be pretty! Ha ha! just kidding!

Now i will be getting onto a fun long plane ride! woo hoo! See all of you soon!

Laura

Day before i leave

So today is the day before i leave China. I woke up late and had lunch with all the ladies before heading to the men's Final game. The game was Canada vs. Russia. It was a fun game to watch and Canada ended up losing 2-4. Russia out played them and it was a very physical game. We then went back to the hotel and packed, i have to leave at 8am in the morning for a 11:30 flight to Beijing.

When i was done packing Stacey told me i was to collect "tick" money from all the girls before we went out to dinner. To explain what "tick" money is, it is 10 Yuan for every tick mark that we got throughout the entire tournament. Now how do we get tick marks? If you fall down during a game, get hit with the puck, when the supervisor thinks someone deserves one on or off the ice, etc. They kept track on a whiteboard in our conference room back at the hotel. I collected the money for the Women and we put it all together and went out to dinner with it. The men definitely had more tick marks than the women, Matt gave out multiple ones for some people. It was funny!

So the officials all went to this huge restaurant with some of the Chinese staff and volunteers and sat at a huge long table. Then the rounds of Harbin Beer started coming out onto the table. The servers put a huge bottle (almost 40 oz.) in front of everyone at the table, i took a couple of picture of this because it kind of looked like we were drunks or something. There were sooo many bottles, there had to have been more than 30 people at our table. Then came the rounds of meat on skewers. Unidentifiable meats, chicken hearts (only found this out after i had eaten it), chicken wings, silk worm cocoons, and hot dog looking things (definitely not a hot dog). Everything was grilled and was pretty good. Every 3-5 minutes someone was lifting a glass and either saying something or just an all out "ehhhhhhhh". It started out with the Chinese guys slamming back their beer and the other male officials, then our end of the table lifted up our glasses every few minutes just to make them drink more but our end would take just a sip and set it down. It was a fun night and we took a lot of pictures. The food was good, but most of us were still hungry afterwards. We are used to eating vegetables, rice, or bread with our meals and didn't eat too much of the meat. So we went to Mc Donald's afterwards and bought some fries, burgers and nuggets and went back to the hotel and hung out for a while. I'm really glad we had a great group to go with to this tournament, everyone was really nice and fun to be around. I had a great night, not looking forward to all the traveling tomorrow....

Night!

Gold Medal Game

As you already know, i had the gold medal game yesterday evening. I didn't post a blog last night because we were all hanging out and a couple of people were leaving the next morning so i wanted to spend more time with them before they left. But let me say that the game was very exciting and was pretty packed. The arena was close to capacity at 5,500 people and was extremely loud. A lot of fans brought in those inflatable sticks that you hit together and it makes a really loud noise. Canada obviously came out on fire the first few minutes of the game, but the Chinese goalie made some great saves and didn't get scored on until the end of the 1st period. In the second period China scored on a power play, and in the third Canada scored 2 goals making it 3-1. It was a very close game and China definitely stepped it up since the first time they played Canada and lost 8-1. Satu and i worked great together and  Tara had a great game as well. It was very cool to get to do the Winter Universiade's first women's gold medal game. This year was the introductory year for Women's ice hockey into the Winter Universiade's Games. We packed up all of our stuff at the end of the night from the locker room and went back to the hotel and ate dinner. 

I found out from Matt that the televised version of the gold medal game was viewed in China by over 100 million households, probably because team China was in it, but still i thought that was awesome! 

 

I had a great time working the game and it was an awesome experience i will never forget!

Gold & Bronze Medal Assignments

So today I had a boring kind of day, I slept  in late, ate lunch, and then went to the rink to watch the consolation game (5th vs. 6th). Great Britain lost that game to Japan, but they seemed to be having fun because they knew they were going to lose anyway. I then watched Canada vs Slovakia, it was a pretty rough and tumble game but fun to watch.

The third game, my game, was very exciting and packed with fans. It was so loud in that arena that our whistles at times could barely be heard. China beat Finland 4-3 in a close hard fought game. The game was tied up twice, we thought we would be going into overtime. I worked with Helen & Tara (referee) and it was a lot of fun!

After the game Stacey went into a meeting and came out to the bus and handed us our assignments.

I am working the gold medal game Canada vs. China at 7:30 pm.
Referee: Tara Leighton (USA)
Linesmen: Laura Johnson(USA), Satu Auno (Finland)

The Bronze medal game Finland vs. Slovakia is at 4:30pm
Referee: France La Pratte (Canada)
Linesmen: Kate Connolly (USA), Helen Roy (Canada)

I am excited about my assignment and cant wait to skate hard tomorrow in a sold out game. It will definitely be louder than today and will be very exciting!

I’m pretty tired tonight, that’s all I have. I will let you know how tomorrow’s game goes!