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!

Money Money Money!

Today we had our morning meeting and sang our song in front of the supervisors, guys, and girls. We (Kate, Tara, Me, Kerri) sang a version of row row row your boat in French, and the French Canadians (France, Helen) on our team sang the English version of the song. It was fun, but I will tell you that the real version of the French song did not say row row row your boat. But no one else knew that and we all laughed about it. At our meeting we went over important stuff, then…. WE GOT PAID!!!!!! Yea! I love money! We were compensated for all of our days here, so I am happy.

We really didn’t do much today, today was just a day to relax and do nothing. We did go back to Wanda Plaza and go to the grocery store. Stacey came with us this time and we showed her the produce and meat section. Stacey looked disgusted and was freaking out about something she saw; when she finally found words to tell us what she saw in the produce section we were disgusted! She saw a lady grab a green pepper like thing from the stand and look at it, take a bite out of it and decided it was not good and threw it back into the pile!! That is gross!! We also saw people handling the meat again in the meat department and people started to stare at us because the looks on our faces were probably that of disgust when we were watching the unsanitary ways the food was being handled and thrown around.

After the grocery store we went to the men’s game USA vs Japan. Usa was winning 2-1 after the first period but then USA took a ton of penalties and Japan took the game and ran with it and won 6-3.

After that little bit of fun we went back to the hotel where we ate dinner and just hung out for a while talking. I went back to my room, packed up most of my clothes and gifts, washed some hockey socks and got everything organized. Now I’m watching highlights from all the events on tv in Chinese. Of course I have it on mute though I don’t understand a word of it. It doesn’t make sense that they are speaking in Chinese and have Chinese subtitles at the bottom. Maybe they should put English subtitles, but oh well.

I can say honestly that I am looking forward to coming home and sleeping in my own bed, eating food that I am used to that is not rice based or staring back at me, and being around people that speak English. Don’t get me wrong, I am having a great time here and this is an awesome experience for me, but I think 2 weeks is quite enough. Matt leaf was telling Kate and I at lunch one day that we were set up for different world tournaments before he told us about going to china, but those tournaments got canceled. So he was telling us if we can survive in china with the language barrier and being immersed in a different culture for a tournament we can survive in any other country because China is so crazy. Another plus about coming here is that we (Kate, Tara, and I) would have the comfort of having Matt and Stacey here to supervise us, and we would have each other. I will not always have the opportunity to have primarily English speaking supervisors who are very good at their jobs and give excellent feedback, or to have a familiar friend or face to hang out with. This is a great learning experience for me and I lucked out for this being my first international event.

Semi finals game assignments

Today we have a day off.

I just received my assignment for the semi-final round:

I work at 7:30pm on 2/26

China vs. Finland

Referee: Tara Leighton (USA)

Linesmen: Laura Johnson, Helene Roy (Canada)

Tomorrow we will find out who gets the Gold Medal game and Bronze Medal game.

Supermarket & Game day #4

 Mmmm Vacuum packed squid!

This morning at our on ice skating session  we did some relay races - North America vs the Europeans & Chinese. On the line was the losers have to sing a nursery rhyme in front of the group at our next meeting. I think we really won, but Stacey wanted us to have to sing. That is ok though, we came up with a great song to sing in both English and French (for the French Canadians). I can't put what it is on here though because some of the others might be reading this blog. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out, ha ha.

After our ice session Kate and I decided to go to Wanda Plaza. Wanda Plaza is a mall with a grocery store/wal-mart type store in the basement. We walked around the mall a little bit just to see what was there and then went to buy a few things at the supermarket. The sanitary conditions at this supermarket in the meat and fish department are definitely not what they are in the U.S. Basically all of the meat and fish sit out unwrapped on ice in the open air and people pick up and handle it until they decide which piece they want to buy. There was also some interesting meat products that you would never see in the U.S. - pigs heads, pigs feet, full chickens head and all, live turtles, etc. So gross.

After our mall trip we headed to the rink via taxi for my game. Don't ask. But during our my ride I saw a two tanks parked in front of a building and a giant boat that looked like it had been used to launch missiles or something on the top, it was empty but it was scary seeing this on the side of a busy public road. When we got to the rink the haze in the arena was especially thick. It must have been a bad day for pollution all around, the mall had a haze in it as well. I worked my game Japan vs. Canada. It was a pretty good game, Canada won 4-1.  Tomorrow we have the day off and then the semifinals are on Thursday. 

i will post supermarket pictures later!

Harbin Ice Festival

Tonight we went to the Ice Festival and when we drove up to all the lit up buildings, i felt like i was at Disney world except it was made of ice. It was so beautiful and amazing how they put all of these buildings together with huge ice blocks hauled in from the river a quarter mile away. This ice festival in Harbin is ranked #2 in the world's greatest ice festivals to see, it truly was awesome! We walked around and took a lot of pictures which i am posting now. They had 20 ice slides in two different areas of the park, the first ones we went to were shorter and you slid down on your butt or stomach. We raced down those a couple times and moved on. They had a restaurant built out of ice and a coffee bar too to warm up in. They had 2 ponds frozen over with one that had seats that looked like mini bar stools with blades on the bottoms and you used ski polls to propel yourself around on. The other was an ice bicycle that had blades in the front instead of a wheel to steer with and a bike tire in the back and you could pedal around the ice. Of course we had a race on that too. After we were done racing around we walked on and saw a white snow fox that this guy had on a table, he wanted money for us to hold it and take a picture with it but no one wanted to be near a animal that may not be tame let alone what kind of diseases it might have.

 

We did find a Bactrian (two humps) camel and for 15 yuan we could ride around on it. I had never had a camel ride and we all paid to do it. The camel was very woolly and was very sweet, its not the kind that spits at you. on the Internet it says that Bactrian camels are native to Mongolia which is the country next door, so maybe its from there. Anyway we moved on to the giant ice slide which was almost the length of a football field. We slid down on a plastic sled and you end up going so fast and its fun, but so many people go on it that at the bottom its rough and to slow down it goes up into a vertical ramp and then you end up crashing down. It was fun but the end sucked, i bit a chunk out of the side of my cheek and was spitting out blood for the next 10 minutes. Never doing that again. But everything else was great i took plenty of pictures of the castles and other building structures. The snow suits that we got as a gift from the Chinese came in handy, we were all very warm in the red suits. And we could all find each other when we wanted to leave! Ha ha. I want to go again later this week if we get time and go down the slides again, not the big one. We also want to go to the snow sculptures, but during the day. 

Tomorrow i have my game at 4pm, Canada vs. Japan, i am really excited to work this because it will be a good game.

I am getting sick of eating Chinese food, so if someone wants to cook me a big burger with cheddar cheese (have not had any cheese since i have been here), pickles, ketchup (haven't had that either), french fries, buffalo chicken wings, and maybe take me out to Fritz's to have some frozen custard, that would be awesome! i miss American food so much! I am not going to eat rice for 6 months!

Game assignments

I got my game assignment for tomorrow.

I am working:

4pm

Canada vs. Japan

Referee: Malin (Sweden) - depending on how she checks out with the doctor.

Linesmen: Ming (China), Laura

We are about to go to another flea market and to an underground shopping area. Hope i can get some good deals again! Later we are going to the Ice light Festival.

Game Day #3

So tonight i had the late game China Vs. Canada. Canada won 8-1 and it was a very exciting game the first two periods. When China scored their goal it was deafening in the arena, the place was packed. I had a good game and got some good feedback from Stacey. In the picture posted above from left to right Satu (Finland), Maija (Finland), Me.

Earlier Malin (referee from Sweden) got hit by a player and went down onto the ice. She has a concussion and we don't know if she will be able to skate for the rest of the tourney.

Tomorrow is our day off and we have a meeting and will find out when our next assignments are. Then we will go back to the flea market and look around. Later in the evening we will go to the Ice Festival and see it all lit up! I have pictures from today and will be posting them very soon. I'm off to bed, goodnight!

Flea Market fun!

Well let me start by saying i woke up scared to death this morning. I heard what sounded like bombs or gunshots outside my window going off every 5 seconds. I looked out the window and saw people down on the street staring at our hotel, i was like oh crap what is going on?! I asked our neighbors next door who are the Chinese linesmen and they said they are cannons and they were being shot off because of a wedding. Good thing it was at 8am in the morning my time, not like i needed sleep or anything...

We met up with some of the guys and decided to go to lunch at a Western restaurant that they ate at the other night. We got there and of course people stared and pointed. I had a delicious steak, chicken wings, soup, onion rings, and french fries for $15 dollars. We each spent a little extra each because it was Michael's Birthday today and we decided to pay for his lunch.

After eating we went to a flea market in downtown Harbin. It was crazy! i have been to a flea market before but this was so crowded and there was so much stuff! They have everything from designer clothes to watches, knock off sunglasses, purses, bags, little nick naks, toys, etc. We watched a couple of the Canadian referees haggle with the shop owners over the price and then i decided to try it myself. I found this beautiful carved glass vase, the shop lady wanted 75 Yuan which is like $10 US. I haggled the price down to 60 Yuan which is about $8 US. But for what i got here would cost close to $60 US, so i feel i got a good deal. I got another glass piece that was a bit cheaper but still 15 Yuan cheaper then what the shop lady wanted. I also got two wooden Chinese fans for 4 & 6 Yuan which is less than $1.

I have my game in two hours Canada Vs. China.

Game Day #2

Feb 21st

This morning we had our on ice skating session because we didn’t have any games yesterday. We played a few games to get a good skate in, and then we went over stuff that people wanted to work on.

 Me, Kerri, Kate, Tara

Today I worked the Japan vs. Great Britain with a final score of 8-1. It was a very interesting game because to start off the game we had 2 huge holes in the ice to patch because the Zamboni driver was oblivious to it, a huge hole in the net that I had to repair, and the Britain’s. When the players and coaches from Great Britain speak its “bloody e’ll” this and “bloody wanker” that. I was in front of their bench for a good period of time and I had to stand still at the line and try not to double over laughing. Stacey said that Kerri and I worked very well together and that I did a great job today. She had 2 things for me to work on for the next game, and I felt good about this one.

So we have been listening when penalties are called during the games, the announcers are hilarious! This is actually the way they announce the penalties over the loudspeaker, “numba 24 of Great Bri-tain, 2 minute fo hooking Japanese.” And when the penalty is over they say “Great Britain penalty expired, Great Britain now playing at full persons”. During the China vs Finland game they said “numba 5 of Finland, 2 minute fo checking Chinese Hard.

I also went to the mall today; two of the other officials were dying for Mc Donald’s. No comment on whether I ate there or not, I have a poll up on my blog that you should vote on and I will not reveal the answers until I get back. We went to an underground grocery store and I bought a few snacks so that I won’t be hungry in the hotel between meals.
What else… it snowed a lot today -14F, we almost slid into oncoming traffic and missed a car by half a foot which now didn’t phase me as much as the first day did. The people here seem very nice and helpful, at least in the area I’m in and I learned a few Chinese words.

My next game is:
February 22nd 7:30pm
Canada vs. China
Referee: Maija Kontturi
Linesmen: Laura Johnson, Satu, Auno

That’s all I have. Goodnight!

General Observations

I stole this from Kate, they are obesevations that we all share.


So now that I've been here for about a week I have some general observations:

-Nobody speaks any English. Even the translators, they speak only about 15 -40 words of English. That makes things really tough.
-There is only one channel on the tv that has English, and it is only in english about 50% of the time. Lots of movies and music.
-The Chinese are very nice and would do anything for us. They grab my bag the minute I walk out of the elevator. You drop a fork or chopsticks in the dining room and they are there to pick it up before you can even blink.
-Women are not equal in Chinese culture.
-Americans and western looking people in general are like a circus act. Everywhere we go they grab us to take pictures. Regular camera, cell phone camera, doesn't matter. Some even try to be sneaky about it and pretend take pictures of themselves while we are standing in the background.
-It is obvious the Chinese don't follow the surgeon generals warning because everybody smokes. The rink, taxis, vans all reek of smoke. My clothes are starting to smell too, it is so gross.
-The pollution is pretty bad. Everyone who wears contacts has had to change them and my snot is a blackish color. I am on the 10th floor at our hotel and you can just see a haze over the city when you look out the window.
-It is essential to always carry toilet paper and purell in your pocket everywhere you go. Squatty pottys...enough said.
-The coffee is apparently like jet fuel.
-Everything is dirt cheap. A 15 minute cab ride is less than $2. The merchandise at the games is all under $10. In America a pen at a sports event is $10.
-It is COLD. Freezing cold. Tara has said it feels like home to her (Fairbanks, Alaska) with the exception of the wind.
-Drivers and pedestrians are crazy. They have no patience, I'm surprised more people aren't hit and killed on a regular basis. They use their horns here constantly.
-There is no such thing as personal space here. They get in your face, push to get on and off the elevator and are always in a rush.
-This is a test event for Harbin. They are planning to put in a bid for the winter olympics in either 2018 or 2022. There is no way they could host, they would need to pretty much demolish the city and start over. I feel like they are stuck in the 1960's.

Despite all of this, it has been an amazing experience so far. I'm having a great time and this will be something I never forget.

Well said Kate!

Tiger Park!

Today we went to the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park in the afternoon. It was -10 with a little wind and we all wore our red snow suit gifts, so we felt warm. You can actually buy animals to throw out into the open area and watch it get eaten. We were going to buy a cow and split the cost which was 1500 Yuan = $200 us dollars, but they didn’t have any cows or sheep or chickens. The cost to get in to the park was 65 Yuan = $9 dollars, and for 10 Yuan= $1.20 you could by big strips of meat to feed the tigers yourself with tongs. There were concrete caged in platforms that we could walk through the park with tigers roaming all around you and hand feed them the meat with tongs. I fed 3 tigers and took a lot of pictures; the tigers ripped the meat from me so hard I thought they would take the tongs with them. We went and got on a bus that had bars on the windows so you could slide them open and take pictures and not get eaten. The tigers were huge! A little suv with bars all over it including the tires pulled out next to the bus when we stopped in the middle of an enclosure and threw meat out the door. He didn’t throw it by rolling down a window or through the bars; this dumb guy threw it by opening up his door a foot with the tiger right next to him. One even jumped on the hood of the car when he was about to throw the meat. Scary! There are over 700 tigers in this huge park with open areas where they can roam “free”. They had Siberian tigers, white tigers, snow tigers, black tigers, white lions, ligers, lynxes, panthers, leopards, African lions, and cheetahs. We were also quite the attraction there, people kept on wanting to take pictures with us which I find weird. We had a blast, totally worth it!

The tiger park is next to the Songhua River which is where they harvest the ice blocks for the ice festival. We saw the festival from far away, it looked awesome! We are going on our next day off (23rd), I can’t wait!

So I got games assignments for the next two days:

February 21st 10:00am
Great Britain vs. Japan
Referee: Maija Kontturi
Linesmen: Laura Johnson, Kerri Rumble

February 21st 7:30pm
Finland vs. China
Goal judge: Kerri Rumble, Laura Johnson

February 22nd 7:30pm
Canada vs. China
Referee: Maija Kontturi
Linesmen: Laura Johnson, Satu, Auno

February 23rd
Day off- Ice festival

That’s all I have for now, big day tomorrow have to get some rest! Good night!

My day at the rink

Today I spent the day at the rink watching some of the games, so don't get too excited... this wont be long. 

I was the goal judge for China vs. Japan, it was an exciting game and Tara who was the referee was dead on with her calls. I thought she did a great job and so did her two linesmen, the most amazing of all was the goal judges.

 Sitting in a tall chair with protective plastic all around me i did the most work off all the officials... i pushed a button! When that puck crossed the line, i was the one, the most important one to let everyone know in the whole arena that YES it was in fact a goal! I even had a back up red flag incase the button malfunctioned, i could have waved my little red flag high in the air so everyone could see it. When i lit my little red lamp with the button, it made me feel so proud to be a goal judge! ha ha, and of course you know I'm joking about being so amazing and important with this task, i just don't know what else to write other than it was an exciting game and they went into overtime and game winning shots. Japan won and China was pissed. The arena was pretty packed and very loud every time China got the puck, and went crazy when they scored. All in all, good game. Now I'm cold...

So that was pretty much all i did today! Tomorrow should be much more exciting, we have no games because its our day off. We will be going to the tiger park to drive through a safari type thing and watch them eat live animals right in front of the bus. I bet i will have very "nice" pictures from that excursion. Until then, Good night!

I took some pictures of the city of Harbin and posted them on my picture page, here is a little smoggy taste of them.

Game day & Opening Ceremony

Today I had my first game for this tournament. Finland won 4 -0 against Japan, in an exciting game. Japan was very quick and good at handling the puck, but Finland had stronger shots. I lined with Ma Jinping and we had some difficulty communicating off the ice but when it came down to being out there on the ice we had good non-verbal communication. We used hand signals and gestures that were pretty discrete so we knew who would pick up the puck or follow players. Oh by the way, the “buzzer” at the end of each period is the sound of a gong. It is not a recorded gong sound; it is really a person with a gong in the score keeper’s box hitting it exactly at the right moment. The teams are really quite good, not as good as the teams I saw at the Four Nations Cup, but they will probably be players I will see in the future for their country. It is really loud and they do it next the microphone and I thought it was funny. I have not received feedback yet though; we were rushed after showering to get back to the hotel and drop off our stuff and then go to the opening ceremony. We (the people from my game) were not able to eat because all of the confusion so I had a granola bar.

After mass confusion back at the hotel with Stacey about to pull her hair out when she was talking with the lady organizing our bus to the ceremony we finally got there before it started. We sat up pretty high and dead center in the arena. This place was being used for the figure skating venue for the games and seats a lot of people. It was packed! The ceremony opened with the players walking in with the title of their country and its flag, it looked just like the Olympics. They went through all the countries and the Chinese people in the crowd cheered for everyone except for the U.S.A. it was pretty silent and no clapping except for a few pockets of Americans in the crowd. I’m surprised no one booed. They raised the host country’s flag and then had people with the Harbin torch run into the building and out the other side, the handed it of 2-3 times and finally made it to the huge torch outside the building. The torch was handed to a curling guy (the sport curling) and he slid his curling stone down a strip of ice into this metal catcher that had a “rocket” that shot up and then fireworks shot directly down into the huge torch outside. I wish I was outside to see it but it was on the jumbo-tron and I watched and videoed it. They went through a lot of impressive theatrical dances and had singers, drums, electric violinist dancing and playing across the stage. They had peeled back the floor where the player had walked in earlier and the figure skating ice was exposed around the stage. They had props on the ice and figure skaters jumping and doing technical moves. It was really impressive and fun to watch and lasted 2 hours. They sure know how to put on a great show and I felt honored to be there. We went outside after it was done and they had a massive display of fireworks that lasted 20 minutes, we were freezing and watched the rest from the bus as we pulled away to go back to our hotel.

Matt allowed the referee’s that worked the late game to go and eat in a special room in the hotel because we were all so hungry. He joined us and we had a very nice dinner and were so happy that we were able to eat. Now I am uploading photos from the ceremony and putting them on my site, be patient they should all be on there within the next 30 minutes.

Game assignments for tomorrow: I will be goal judging for China vs. Japan.
They have goal judges for this entire event put in place by Chinese workers trained for it. But, to be un-biased they requested that the officials not working tomorrow’s games be the goal judge for all of China’s games. I will be goal judging with Carrie (Canada), so not so much excitement tomorrow but the games should be pretty good because they are rivals.

So anyway, check back soon for new photos and later for a new blog! Goodnight!

A little Referee/Rink info

In case you were wondering about the referee's i will be working with and their Nationalities besides the USA, here is a nifty little list i put together for you.

Women Officials:

China        Ming Gong           Linesman
China        Ma Jinping           Linesman
Canada     Kerri Rumble       Linesman
Canada     Helene Roy           Linesman
Canada     France Lapratte   Referee
Sweden    Malin Axelsson     Referee

Finland    Maija Kontturi      Referee
Finland    Satu Auno              Linesman
Finland    Jenni Visala           Linesman
USA         Laura Johnson       Linesman
USA         Tara Leighton        Referee
USA         Kate Connolly        Linesman

Supervisors for Men or Women's games (M, W):

Sweden     Lars G Karlsson     M
USA           Matt Leaf                M

USA           Stacey Livingston  W

IIHF Representatives/Supervisors:

Great Britain   Frederick Meredith  M
Sweden             Jan-Ake Edvinsson   W

This is the arena i will be refereeing in:

http://www.harbin2009.org/system/2008/11/27/000091157.shtml

Ice hockey Schedule:

http://www.harbin2009.org/system/2008/11/05/000087278.shtml

Presents, skating, shopping

Last night we were ready to get to bed after I posted the last blog and the welcoming committee from Harbin came to our door and dropped off a gift for both Kate and I. I already knew I was receiving a winter coat from them because they asked for our sizes before we came but I did not know I would be receiving this:

Winter coat
Winter Vest
Snow Skiing Pants
Insulated hi-top shoes
Gloves
Hat
Sunglasses
Roller board bag

They gave us a whole outfit for our gift; it was all packed in this small roller board bag, probably the size of a backpack. All very nice quality Thinsulate brand which is really warm. Everything is red and has the Harbin logo for the tournament on it. So Kate and I stayed up late putting on a fashion show (pictures above) in our room and tried on all our gear. I can tell the staff is working hard for this tournament and have been very nice and try really hard to communicate and make sure everything is running smoothly.

Today we had our on ice session at the Harbin Skating Gym of the Harbin Institute of physical Education. Before we hit the ice we were given a tour of the brand new skating facility by Lars (Head supervisor of officials for this tournament). This rink will be used for the men’s games only and only seats 2500 people. It has two sheets of ice that are literally on top of each other. The practice rink is below ground and the one used for playing is upstairs. They have a elevator for the Zamboni so that it can resurface both arenas, I thought that was cool. This place although it is new has squatty potties too, which made us sad. But then we found out that they had a handicapped person’s stall and it has a regular one in it so we were happy. Ha ha, I never thought I would be talking about toilets in a blog before… but anyway…
After the tour we hit the ice and skated for probably 45 minutes to get loosened up. The session went well and we went back for lunch.

We decided to go to a shopping mall and man was it weird. Picture a regular mall with all the stores enclosed so that they can close at whatever time they want. Well in China apparently all the stuff is out in the open and everything closes when the mall closes at 8pm. Kind of hard to explain that but, it was weird.

I found out my game assignments for tomorrow (the 18th) at the Baqu Arena which is 40 minutes from our hotel. I will be working the 4pm game Japan vs. Finland with Referee: France, LaPratte (Canada), Linesman: Jingping, Ma (China). It should be interesting working with a French Canadian, and with a lady from China. Obviously our biggest challenge will be language. It is very hard to talk to Jingping, but France is a little easier to talk to because she knows some English. Wish me luck!

Tomorrow in the evening we have the opening ceremony at 8pm and it is indoors so we don’t freeze. I will have more about that tomorrow along with some pictures.

Travel day to Harbin

Today i started off my day traveling to Harbin, which is only an hour and a half plane ride North East of Beijing. On the airplane we were able to watch via cameras in the front of the aircraft our take off, landing and even the ground under the plane while we were flying. We had personal TV’s in the seat backs so that we could watch TV, movies, play games, and watch the cameras the whole flight for free. The flight was good, and when we arrived at the airport and walked into the terminal we immediately had 2 Chinese women with the airline/winter Universidad meet us and started rushing us down the terminal followed by an escort of 3 police officers. I mean… It’s not like we stick out like sore thumbs or anything. Stacey stopped for a second while we were being escorted to take a picture of the posters and they freaked out! We were brought to baggage claim and the police officers cordoned off a section of the baggage belt and shoved people out of the way.

So after our little bit of royal treatment we got into a rickety van that probably dates back to the 70’s and started our scary drive 40 minutes to downtown Harbin where our hotel is located. I’m not kidding when I say this; we were going 90mph down this 3 lane road. And there were people on the side of the road everywhere sweeping the snow off the roads with wicker brooms! Our driver almost hit 2 people when he blared on the horn and avoided colliding into a car because we were going so fast. Stacey, Kate and I started laughing because it was so scary and crazy because we felt like we were going to die; Richard turned around and asked if everything was ok and if the driving was scaring us. We nodded and he told the driver to slow down, but it was still scary of course.

We checked in at the hotel and everything is fine except for the beds. I went to flop down on my bed and I felt like I had just flopped down onto a stack of wooden boards. It is very hard with little to no give but I guess it’s better than nothing. Lunch was good, we have 3 meal tickets a day so I don’t have to pay for food. The food is very different but it wasn’t as crazy as the ducks feet we all ate at the restaurant. In the afternoon we had a brief meeting and were told that we would get game assignment tomorrow (17th) and that we would have an on ice session. We found out that the women’s games for ice hockey are totally sold out and that the rink holds 5,500 people. I’m really excited/ nervous to work these games; I have never worked a hockey game with more than 300 people. We were also informed that the president of China is going to be at the University Games as well. This really is like a miniature Olympics here and everything is very nice and elaborate, if it’s one thing the Chinese know how to do, it’s putting on a show!

Later in the evening Kate and I were freezing in our room so we tried to tell the people at our hotel that it was cold in our room so I called the front desk and they handed off the phone to 3 different people because they couldn’t understand what I was saying. Finally they said they would come up and help. A lady showed up with a thermometer/Hygrometer and set it down on the table and looked around the furnace in our room. Then a gentleman came into our room and obviously didn’t understand what we wanted had a fancier thermometer/hygrometer and told us it was 26 Celsius, which we already knew because we have a thermostat on the wall and just want to work it. They stood there talking for a few minutes and then took our extra blanket out of room and said they’d be right back. Kate and I just looked at each other like, what just happened? 5 minutes later they came back with 2 down comforters even though our room feels cold I guess we will be warm when we sleep. The language barrier is obviously more extreme up here in Harbin as supposed to Beijing. Well that’s all I have for tonight, I’m going to go sleep on my wooden board (bed) now.

My day in Beijing

All I can start off by saying is wow… take everyday life in the US, and turn it completely upside-down and that’s Beijing.

Our driver picked us up as soon as we got through customs and picked up our luggage at 6am. It was a calm, sort of, half an hour ride to the hotel JW Marriot.
We got to our hotel and we finally got to shower! I felt so nasty after my two flights totaling over 17 hours. our hotel room is very nice. We ate breakfast and left the hotel at 8am and met up with Richard who works for the China National Winter Sport Management Center and for the Chinese Ice Hockey Association. He and his wife Claire, and the driver Leo took us to all of the places I will talk about in this blog. Richard is good friends with Matt Leaf and acted as our “tour guide” throughout the day. He spoke pretty good English, but at times we had to have him repeat himself and or just nod and act like we understood him.

So we all jumped into the van and all I can say about driving around China is people drive like crazy here! They don’t use turn signals at all… EVER. They constantly cut each other off and almost run people over. The pedestrians here are expected to yield to cars, there are no cross walks and the cars honk at each other constantly. There are a lot of people on bicycles and there are a ton of public buses. Tomorrow is a designated day that no one can drive cars in Beijing except for taxi drivers. It’s to “help” cut down pollution in the city.

We drove 40 minutes away and finally ended up at the foot of the mountains. Cutting across the mountains is the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China was amazing! I remember seeing a picture of it in a text book growing up, never did I think that I would one day get to actually walk on it. The pictures that Kate, Stacey, and I took don’t do it justice. It was so beautiful with the backdrop of all the mountains. It was a very exhausting climb, our legs were shaking at the end because the stairs were so steep, but I think every step was worth it. We think we walked a mile of the wall in our 2 hour walk. After taking many pictures and taking in how amazing the site was, we had to leave. (By the way I have posted my photos on picasaweb) We walked out and down the road to get to where the car was parked and we almost got run over, don’t worry we are ok but I don’t want to get that close to a car again!

After the Great wall, we went to the Ming Tomb in the underground palace. It was kind of cool, but I think we should have gone to the Great Wall last because it was by far was the coolest thing we saw all day. Claire bought a bag full of fruit from a farm lady and offered it to us. We said no at first but we found out we didn’t have to eat the peel (it was definitely not washed). Richard pronounced it as “Shir-ztha”. It looked kind of like an orange rotting tomato. Now when I say rotting, I’m not talking about mold and stuff, it just looked like a smushy tomato that got left on the ground for a while. It was sweet tasting and had a jelly like consistency. She popped off the top of the vine stubs for us and we squeezed it out the top and ate it. Claire ate 3, but I couldn’t finish a whole one. I don’t like jelly. So I haven’t even reached the highlight of our day, we needed to use the bathroom so when we found one, we opened the stall and there it was… The Squatty Potty. It is a hole in the ground; wait let me rephrase that, a nasty stinky hole in the ground. No toilet paper, we were pre-warned by someone who went last year and brought our own along with hand sanitizer. They have sinks but of course no soap. That was definitely an experience I don’t want to deal with again, but unfortunately I heard that the rink and some of the other venues are nothing but squatty potty heaven.

Enough toilet talk, now that you maybe feel a little sick to your stomach let me tell you what I ate for lunch! We went to a restaurant in some part of the city, when we walked in everyone was staring at us. We got seated and Richard asked us what we wanted. We didn’t know, we said rice and joked about how we were vegetarians for the two weeks we were here. So he ordered for us and we started with a first course of ducks feet and rice. Kate and I tried the duck feet, it was chewy and the texture was all but appetizing. The really nasty part about the duck feet is, the toes were still webbed and the bones were still in it. Leo was popping them in his mouth like it was popcorn. Gross! I had pig intestine too. That was pretty good, a little chewy but it was cooked in a tasty sauce with peppers. We had soup, veggies, dumplings, and chicken which still had the head on it.

After our foreign food adventure which I am still feeling swimming around in my stomach we went to the Forbidden City, and Tienanmen Square. The Forbidden City was closed when we got there but we figured it was just a bunch of buildings and we took a few pictures. We walked to the Tienanmen Square in a huge crowd of people; there were a couple of shady looking guys walking behind us so we avoided them. We got tired after walking around for a while and went back to our hotel.

Now we are all sharing pictures and writing in our blogs and just relaxing before we go to bed. I’m sorry if any of what I wrote doesn’t make sense or is repetitive, I’m really tired and about to go crash on my bed. Tomorrow we leave for Harbin at 8:30am and will have more interesting stories. Stay tuned!