Many New Friends...

I thought it might be good to tell you all a bit about the people here. Everyone has been extremely nice, welcoming, friendly and helpful. I have met many people so far on my trip besides just the 29 players on the team. And, I will save the players for a later post. They are a very spirited, hard working and fun bunch of hockey players and will take more time to describe. For now, here are some of the other people I may reference from time to time.

First there is Hu Jie, "Jenny" is her english name. She is the first one I met in the airport in Beijing when I arrived just a week ago. She is like a liaison for Team China as far as I can tell. She communicates with other countries and has been helpful to me as her english is pretty good. She works for Lan Li. Lan Li oversees winter sports training in China (or at least hockey and speed skating). Also working for Lan Li, there is Mr. Fan. He is a very nice man and has been very welcoming to me.

The team leader is Mr. An. He is the logistics man for the team and he lives with us int the dormitory, next door to me. He keeps the team organized and on schedule, waking them up every morning (and after naps) with a referee whistle walking through the hallways.

Dr. Gao is the team doctor, another very nice man who understands and can speak a few english words. He takes care of the players and has kind of looked out for me. Last sunday, he arranged an english speaking teacher who now lives in Harbin to phone me to talk, as he thought I was lonely and had not ahd anyone to speak english with. The teacher turned out to be an American who has been living in Harbin for 6 years and he asked me how I liked cold weather and we chatted briefly.

There are three other coaches working here with me currently. Li Taemin is from Korea and he is on an internship of sorts through the IIHF. He is from Korea, went to college in St. Louis and is now getting a hockey coaching degree from the Vierumäki Institute in Finland. As part of completing that training, he works for a year in various places around the world as assigned by the IIHF. He will be staying in China and working the players we do not take to Finland with us next month. In January, he heads to Mongolia to coach, before returning to Harbin. He has also worked with the men's teams here in China during his stay. He speaks English, Korean and said he can understand about 50% of the chinese. The next coach is Ji Wieguang. He is a former chinese national team player who has been coaching for about 4 years in the Asian League and this is his first year with the women's team. Finally, there is the goalie coach Liu Chin. He had the distinction of being best goalie in China two years ago, and now his twin brother has that honor. It was his brother who played in goal for Harbin in the 4-1 loss to the Japanese team in the Asian league game we watched last night.

Next, there are the people in the Islanders office in Harbin. The office headed by Mr. Wang. He is not to be confused with the Islanders owner, Charles Wang who lives on Long Island. Mr. Wang is actually the father-in-law of a close business associate of Charles Wang. The Harbin Islanders Office is downstairs in the same building in which I am currently living. Mr. Wang and his staff have worked in conjunction with the Islanders and Team China to help coordinate and facilitate things for me here. They have been very helpful in that regard. The other person I have met in that office is Pei Ying. A very nice young girl who speaks some english and has helped me with getting my cell phone set up and translated some conversations for Mr. Wang and I.

Finally, we get to my new translator! He arrived today and his name is Peter. He is a 25 year old who teaches english to young kids part-time. He is very nice and has said that we will become very good friends. He even taught me the colloquial Harbin term for "very good friends" I cannot spell it, but sounded out it is: Guer-mer. He is very nice and eager for us to learn each other's accents so that we can communicate better. He sat with me and had me pronounce some hockey terms this afternoon. He even tried to get on skates to come out on the ice today, but that attempt was short lived.

Luckily, with today's schedule, the team was finished by dinner time. So, Peter took me out on the town in Harbin to show me around so that we could get acquainted. We went to "Center Street" which is the main attraction in downtown Harbin.It can be best described like Quincy Market in Boston except as one long street. There are many shopping areas, two McDonalds, two KFC's and one Pizza Hut and of course, a Wal-Mart SuperCenter!



It is a very european, cobblestone, pedestrian only street, thus safe from the crazy drivers. Peter took me all the way to the end of the street to the Songhua River. It is very low this time of year and we could barely see the water at night. He showed me that it rises what appeared to be a good 30-50 feet up and 100 yards wider than it is now in the spring time. He also took me into McDonalds for a sundae which, by the way, tastes exactly the same. It is 18 Yaun for a Big Mac Value Meal (about $2.25). We took a cab both ways and it cost about $2 each way for us both to ride. The cab driver on the way home was the craziest yet, blowing through two red lights and mainly driving on the other side of the road, but I did get back in one piece!


And just so you know that I am not sitting in Providence making up stories about China while stealing random photos off the internet, here is a picture Peter took of me in front of the oldest, most famous church in northeast China. It is a Russian Church. Much more happened today, but those stories will have to wait for another day... Signing off from Harbin, goodnight!