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.