Chinese Telephone Game

On Friday, we did a few team building exercises in the off-ice session. We did the usual exercises including some communication challenges like the telephone game. However, I learned a new and quite fun version of the telephone game.

I am sure you have all heard of the telephone game, but for those of you who might not, you line up everyone in a row and whisper a phrase into the first persons ear. They pass the message down the line trying retain all the information. Inevitably, information gets lost as it is passed and the last phrase can be quite funny when compared with the first.

Well, the Chinese girls have a different version of the game which is even more humorous. It is the same concept, but without talking, like a combination between telephone and charades. Everyone turns their back to the front of the line. The first person selects a person or thing to describe and can only use gestures to do it. Then, it gets passed down the line in gestures only. It gets funny when the next person can not get what the charade is describing so she simply tries to mimic the gestures to the next person. It quickly deteriorates after the first person misses something. The interesting difference between this and the telephone game is that each girl who has already gone gets to watch the “message” get passed down, most laughing so hard they can’t stand up. Also, you get to see how the message gets lost as it is passed from person to person.

The girls had quite a bit of fun with the day and played their version of the telephone game long after we had finished the rest of the challenges. The human knot was quite a challenge with 20 players.

It was a relaxing day off, now back to work preparing for the final three games. From a foggy, misty Finland, frisbee golf anyone? Good night!

A tough weekend series

This weekend we closed out our series with the Blues and had our first game with Ilves. They are the second team from Tampere in the league (Tappara was the first). Apparently all of the strong players from Tampere play on Ilves, and the rest play on the Tappara team (who we beat 6-5 in OT and 5-2).

The weekend started Friday night with a trip to Lahti for Dinner with Kelly and Tim. Sunday, Kelly had to fly out to return to sunny California, and it was our last chance to get out of the “Institute” before she left. As always, Tim has to check the lighted map to see where we are located.



So we started with a trip to the ski jumps in Lahti where the Finnish jumpers train. You can see Kelly beneath the lighted jumps at night. After the ski jumps, we headed to the main drag in Lahti, Alexanterinkatu, which we found out is the long Finnish way of saying Alexander St. The first place we saw, was a nice Italian restaurant and we headed in. The waitress asked if we had a reservation, and we said no, but luckily there was ONE open table. So, we started looking at the Finnish menus. After trying to decipher those for a while, the waitress said “I will get you English menus.” That made a big difference as we were trying to avoid any more of the shrimp pizzas. Dinner was good and fairly cheap at under 40 Euros for all three of us. It was an interesting crowd in the restaurant, 90% women over 45. We are wondering if there was a special that night. We wandered around the rest of the town after dinner, checking out a few local establishments, including a strange Finnish Karaoke place, an Irish Bar with a dance floor, and an upscale place with slow service. There were lots of people out and about and it was a pretty active place that evening.



Friday night it SNOWED! It really did brighten the place up quite a bit. You can see the same view of the lake from my cabin porch looks brighter in spite of the same grey sky.



So, Saturday, we headed back to Espoo to play the Blues. The girls had a little snowball fight as we were loading the bus and they seemed to be in good spirits. However, we did not play well in the first period and found ourselves down 5-1 at the end of that period. We did finally play a little better after that and battled to an 8-4 final. Before the game, Kelly took my camera with her and took some pictures of the lake which was right behind the rink in Espoo. It was quite a site with the fresh snow. On our way in we actually saw two women SWIMMING in this lake with just a one piece bathing suit!



This morning Kelly headed home as her vacation was over. After she headed to the airport, we boarded the bus to head to Tampere to play Ilves.

We were again haunted by our recent "bad period syndrome." Today,we chose the second period. After a first period which ended with our leading scorer getting pulled off on a stretcher, we were tied at 0 and playing strong. However, the team just did not refocus after that, and although the doctor patched her up and she returned to the game, we were down 5-1 after two. We did better in the third but still lost 7-2. It has been a tough week, but we have 5 days to regroup to get ready for our final 3 games in four days next weekend before departing.

Our Chinese fan base is still holding strong! Today, they brought a Chinese flag and were cheering throughout enthusiastically the entire game. You can see the team with them below.



Tomorrow will be a relaxing day off, before we get back to work again. Signing off from Vierumaki, where the days continue to get shorter, somehow?

Finnish Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Finland! Tim and I have been trying to get the score of the famous Needham vs. Wellesley high school football game, but the news is tough to come by in Vierumaki. We had a nice dinner of Pork Cordon Bleu (yes Pork!) and some potatoes and carrots.

We had a good day of practice today and are preparing for a rematch with the Blues on Saturday, back in Espoo. So, I thought I would share some other photos that I finally had time to take off my camera. Again in no particular order...


Here is a photo Kelly took of me on the bench, in the last game, next to Zhang Ben.


Our team poses for a photo with the Chinese fans from the Tech University in Oulu.


I returned to the Senate square in Helsinki with Kelly to find someone had planted a Christmas Tree!


We stopped at another ABC on the way to Oulu for a bathroom break


However, this place was right next to the water and a little blue sky created a nice photo.


Captain Wang Linou in action on the ice against the Blues


This rest stop on the way home from Oulu had a strategically placed punching bag outside, to get out your driving aggression?


No place to put your hockey nets when not in use? Hang them from the ceiling like in Oulu.


Bus Driver Heimo, helps Dr. Gao pose for a photo during our rest stop.


Kelly and I found a nice Tex Mex place in Helsinki. The food was good, but lacking in the normal mexican spices. so it was a little odd, but had nice ambiance.


More of Helsinki was dressed up for Christmas on my second trip!

By the way, Kelly has her own blog (Cowpuppy Ranch, the link is on the right side of the page). While she is in Finland she has been taking some pictures and such also, so if you are interested, click on the link

Signing off on Thanksgiving from Vierumaki...

Lunch in Lahti

Today was another typical grey day in Finland. Yesterday, we had sun, but it was much colder with the sun than today without it, so it is difficult to decide which to route for.

Yesterday, we had a typical day with a couple of practices and an off-ice session. Tim decided to set up a little badminton tournament for off-ice training. It was immediately a hit and many of the players were actually very good.

Back to today though… We had a morning pre-game skate then Tim, Kelly and I hopped into the Ford Focus station wagon for a trip to Lahti for lunch and to find the Western Union in town. Lahti is the second largest city in Finland and is only about 30 km from Vierumaki. We walked up and down the main drag trying to decide on a Lunch location. We finally settled on the Pizza and Kebab place. Apparently Turkish Pizza places are very popular in Finland. We had lunch in Helsinki in one when Tim and I were there. As a warning to those with seafood allergies, they like to put baby shrimp on a lot of their pizzas in Finland Turkish Pizza places (and the word for shrimp in Finnish is not easily recognizable). So, today I tried the Kebab, which was excellent. It had gyro meat, pizza sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion and some hot sauce, on a calzone type sliced bread. Tim had the same and Kelly went with the Hawaii Pizza. It was a good lunch and scouting mission to Lahti. The man from Senegal at the western union was helpful too! Lahti is definitely a town to come back and visit more, as it had lots of shops and things to do.

After returning from Lahti we had a little time to rest before the trip to Espoo to play the 7-time league champion Blues. On the bus at 4:00, we had a 7:50 game time in the big rink. We struggled against the top team in the league who had all but two players who have or had played for the Finnish National Team and lost 10-1. We got out shot 61-10. So we continue to work on defense.

It is a late night and time to regroup as we head back to face them again on Saturday! Happy Thanksgiving from Finland

Oulu and that "Christmas Old Man"

So we made the long trek to Oulu, Finland which is dangerously close to the Arctic Circle. We had a tough weekend on the ice losing 6-0 the first day and 4-2 the next to Karpat, one of the stronger league teams. We played much better the second day, obviously, and had chances to win, playing the entire weekend without our first line center who was out with a shoulder injury.

I was asked by one of the girls if we could visit the home of the "Christmas Old Man" after the game. Santa Claus does apparently keep a residence here in Finland but unfortunately was still much further north, so we could not go. The trip was quite long about 7 hours on the bus.

We returned to a welcome day off on Monday. I returned to my first visitor, as Kelly had made the trek from San Jose to Finland and found her way safely to Vierumaki where she will stay here for the week! We had a fun day in Helsinki checking out the sites and having lunch before returning after dark (around 2:30 or so). We got a chance to see the site of the Helsinki Olympics, which was a pretty cool complex.

So now, we have a tough week both tomorrow and Saturday facing the league's top team, and 7 time champion, the Espoo Blues. So it is back to work in Finland!

Snapshots from Helsinki

Some pictures from the day in Helsinki. It was a clear blue sky and felt like a crisp fall day. A great day for photos. At noon the sun was still only about 30 degrees up above the horizon though.... No particular order to these pictures...

A nice wooden boat in the harbor

The road and buildings along the marina

Helsinki Train Station at night

Down the hill of the side street you can see the ocean

These were the statues next to the train station entrance. There was another pair on the other side.

The HUGE church next to the Senate Square.

The low key entrance to the University of Helsinki.

The guards at the presidential palace. We actually witnessed the noon time changing of the guards.

An interesting building on the hill near the water.

The local Helsinki fish market.

A view along the esplanade

Helsinki at night, very near our hostel

The cruise ship docked and ready to go.

The inside view of the huge church looking from the entrance.

The statue of Alexander II in the Senate Square with the Church above and beyond...

Looking back towards the entrance to the church and up to the balcony was a large pipe organ. They were playing while we were there it was quite a sound.

The shipping cranes down by the port.

An interesting day in Helsinki...I may be off for a couple days as we make the trip North approaching the arctic circle...

One Night in Helsinki

Last night, Tim and I left on the bus for Helsinki as today was a day off. Before that, while we were in the gym lifting, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and a serious wind came up. I got back down to the cabin just in time to turn on the lights as the power went out. Yes, there was no back up power in the cabins and as it was after 4:00 it was PITCH BLACK. So with some creativity, we turned on our laptops and lit up the cabin enough to change and get ready to head out. Tim had asked the lady at reception about the busses and the one to Lahti, where you change to head to Helsinki, does not run that often, but is only 5 Euros. So, he was asking about getting a ride there and she said a cab was only 16 Euros. So, we had a cab meet us at the cabins and headed out. As we looked at the meter, it was already at 17 Euros, so we asked the cabbie the price and he said 50 Euros. After some translating from the dispatcher on the cell phone, we got out and waited for the next bus. We got on the bus, transferred in Lahti and was on the next Helsinki bus in less than 10 minutes. We arrived at the Helsinki Bus Station at about 10:00 p.m. We had a couple ideas on a hotel, but no reservations. So we took a walk to the closest ones… For fun we asked at the Radisson the cost, and it was 150 Euros so we left. We headed to the nicest hostel according to the “lonely planet guide” and they were full, but recommended the place next door, which was also in our book. They had rooms and was only 50 Euros, so we were in. We headed back out the train station so Tim could make a phone call. Then we checked out the local pubs. We found a couple nice ones and even met a nice Finnish man named Jorma. He was actually living and working in Paris, but back in Helsinki on business for a few days. He gave us lots of great information and history about Finland. He was very interested in our challenge in working with the Chinese hockey team. He had played a couple years of High School hockey and football in St. Louis when he was young. We got home late and crashed in our beds.

Today, we got up and did our own walking tour of downtown Helsinki. It was an interesting and fascinating city and we both took lots of pictures. I even caught some video of the noon time changing of the guards at the president’s house.

Tomorrow, I will post a pictorial tour of Helsinki. But for tonight, here are the contents as I emptied my pockets on returning from the trip, including a passport, map and three different paper currencies (Yuan, Dollars, Euros).



Good night again from back in snow covered and frosty Vierumaki!

Photos from Piispala

Today was a pretty routine day. We gave the players the morning to recuperate and got back at it with and afternoon ice session, before a lifting session. The players then relaxed in the pool and sauna before dinner. So instead of boring you with details, here are some of the more interesting photos from our trip to Piispala yesterday.


The biggest event was the sun coming out about half-way through our trip. You can see it here just past Tim and out the bus window.


The road to Piispala was pretty much like this the whole way. If you have ever been on the “airline road” in northeastern Maine (towards New Brunswick), that pretty much describes it.


After we turned off the “main” road and onto the dirt road and traveled past the cabins and down by the lake, we arrive at the athletic complex. Here you can see the swimming pool which is in front of the hockey rink


Out back of course is the climbing wall, seen here.


I thought this picture was interesting as it shows the very vertical trees that grow here in Finland. I have seen very few trees that do not grow straight up like these and always there is some space in between each.


Blue sky over Finland, enough said!


Finally, when Tim and I were down near the lake with Coach Liu and some other girls and Tim turns to me and says, “doesn’t that look like an album cover” This picture and their positioning is what he was referring to, the band could be called “Coach Liu and the Chinettes.” The lake in the background was the lake that the Piispala camp was situated on. From left to right: Coach Liu, Jia Dan Dan (goalie), Qi Xueting (defense), Wang Linou (defense and captain) and Fu Yue (defense).

Good night again from Finland!

Anecdotes and Moments...

For me the interesting parts of the trip and the experience come down to small moments. Interesting, ironic, funny, all of the little moments make the experience. Here are a few I remember.

Jenny (Hu Jie) is our translator on the trip and the representative of China Hockey. She sometimes has trouble especially with the idiomatic hockey terms, when listening and trying to understand me. The other day Coach Ji grabbed her to talk to me about some of the players as we had been trying a few different combinations on our third line. So, he began to speak to her in Chinese and she looked back at him with a classic blank stare. After about 10 minutes of talking back and forth with him, she still shook her head as she did not understand him, in Chinese. I am guessing he was using hockey terms she did not understand, but she had no idea what he was trying to say. He finally gave up looked directly at me, said a few names, used some gestures and Chinese words that I know, and in less than 2 minutes I got his point. A classic interpreter moment.

When I came to Harbin, one of the first things that I did was learn the girls names fairly quickly. This did not help Tim that much. Wang Linou, our captain, gave Tim 10 days to learn everyone’s name. It began to stress Tim out a bit as it got closer and she liked to tease him about the deadline. It was suggested that Tim would have to do the Plyometric training series that he put the girls through, if he could not get it. She would say “You must know all the names, or you will have to do some dryland training!” A couple days ago, and a day before the deadline, Tim went around the room and said all the names. He got them all right, with only a few pronunciation flaws, which makes all the girls laugh. As he was memorizing, he came up with a some things to help him here are two of my favorites. First our captain Wang Linou (Wong Lee New Uh) he calls Wally (new uh). The other is Yu Bai Wei (You Buy Way). When she says her name, her voice goes up at the end. So when Tim says it, he goes up on his tiptoes when he says the “way” part. It always makes her laugh. She is a very sweet kid, and young at only 17. Anyway, Tim has passed that hurdle, and now we both move on to learning more Chinese in Finland (cause where else would you learn it?)

Now for the day's recap:

Today we traveled to Piispala, which is in the middle of nowhere. We traveled about 3 hours, tured onto a dirt road, went past some cabins, along the lake the dirt road ended and we turned right into a state of the art hockey rink and swimming center. It was less than two years old and had a video replay screen in the rink. They even took video pictures of all the girls before the game and showed them for lineups, goals and penalties. The town of Piispala has about 1000 residents, but the nicest arena we have been in yet.

Piispala Rink and Video Screen

We played the Finnish Under 20 National Team, who were in training camp at Piispala. We lost 6-5. We got knocked around a little in the first as this was not an olympic sheet today. I would be surprised if it was even 80 feet wide. We battled back in the second and found ourselves on the wrong side of the penalty tally. We finished strong, but could not get the tying goal today. We need a little work on our defensive coverage and backchecking.

The bad news is a potential broken collar bone of our first line center Jin Feng Ling. We will find out tomorrow when she gets x-rays.

We finally have some time off to recuperate and work on some things. We do not play again until the LONG trip north to Oulu to face Karpat next weekend in a two game series.

Good night again from Finland! Check out the Finnish Zamboni!

Finns

The Finnish people are very interesting. Most of the people I have met are nice, but very stern, stiff and not the types who normally joke around. Occasionally, if you try very hard you can get them to smile. There seem to be two types, those that are very fit and in very good shape, and those that are not even close. Strangely, there do not seem to be many in the middle. We met an American student at Verumäki who said that they appear stiff because they do not engage in any small talk. All talking has a pupose

The kids, like in most cultures are very happy and smiley people. Many little girls have been quite enthralled with our team. We had a large group of young girls looking for autographs last night. They were very interested in the Chinese characters.

The language too is very interesting. Many words are very long. I counted 21 letters in a single word the other day. I think they could streamline the language by removing repeating letters though as I saw a word with three A’s in a row the other day. I am beginning to learn a little of the Finnish language as I can sound out most words from reading them. Basically, you just have to remember to roll your R’s and sound as Russian as you can.

The other thing that we have noticed here is how neat and orderly everything in the country seems. The roads are clean and clear and we have not hit a pot hole yet. The sides of the road are neatly landscaped the streets and side walks are cleaned. It is very planned and obvious.

As I have said before, almost all of the people I have met speak at least a little English. The official language of the Hockey Coaching classes at Vierumäki is English. We have not really gotten out of Vierumäki except to play games.

Tim and I are trying to plan a trip to Helsinki on our first full day off, next Wednesday. Hopefully, we will get a chance to experience a little Finland culture away from the Institute.



Good night from Finland, the land of pandas?

Grey Skies and Goaltending...

After the brief moment of blue sky a couple days ago we have slipped back into the perpetual grey and misty rain of a Finnish fall. It has been unusually warm for this time of year in Finland also. I was told today that usually there is a meter of snow by now. The temperatures was around 7 or 8 ºC today (46 ºF or so). We are expecting snow on Sunday, but I will believe it when I see it.

As you all probably know, a good goaltender in any sport can hide many mistakes and make a good team great. Tonight, our smaller and more experienced goaltender, Jia Dan Dan (right), played outstanding, earning a 37 save shutout and leading us to a 3-0 victory. Although there were a few scary moments, like when a defender pulled a puck off the goal line, our goalie made some amazing saves, including 15 in the third period to hold on for the win. This was the best I have seen her play and the first shutout of the season for our team. We are beginning to play some better defense also, so that helped. Our top forward Sun Rui led the team with a goal and two assists today and again earned the games’ first star.

This game marked the end of the four game series with the two weakest teams in the Finnish league. Next we travel on Sunday to face the Finnish Under 20 National Team in an exhibition game, before beginning series’ with the top four teams in the league. We get five days to train before making the longest journey while in Finland, an eight hour ride to Oulu for a two-day two-game series with Karpät.

On the way home we stopped again at a market/truck stop (ABC) for some snacks and supplies. Strangely, the girls always head to the shampoo aisle when we do this. They smell each bottle and then each buy a couple bottles. It is very odd, maybe there is a shampoo shortage in China? We did find that like Brown and China, there are pandas in Finland too, below is the goalie coach, Liu Qun, posing with the panda at the truck stop.



Tomorrow morning is rest time. We will not practice until the afternoon and then watch some video. So, good night again from Finland!

No Overtime!

Today, there was again no sun, but on the bright side, tonight, we finally completed our first game in Finland in regulation time.

The day was a typical game day. We got up for breakfast and a light 30 minute warm-up skate. After there was a little time to relax before lunch. Then a team meeting before getting on the bus to head back to Tampere to face Tappara at the site of the dramatic four goal comeback in our first game.

We arrived at the rink to an increasing press presence. I gave a newspaper and TV interview, as did our team captain, Wang Linou. Our presence in Finland and two dramatic wins have created a bit of buzz and interest from the local press. In Jyväskala, I spoke with a local reporter too, and have had one other request from a Vierumäki paper. After pictures, questions and TV, it was game time!

We finally started a game at our top speed and moving the puck well. We finished the first period with a 3-0 lead, including a nice looking power play goal and a great wrap around goal by third line center Gao Fu Jin (on right). Unfortunately, the team decided that their first period would allow them to sleep through the second period and we promptly gave back two goals before settling down to come out of the second still up 3-2. In the third we got ourselves going again and after a nice one timer by Zhang Ben and the first career goal by Huo Cui (the youngest player), we finished strong with a 5-2 win.

In the stands tonight the team found a group of friendly faces. A group of about seven Chinese graduate students had heard of our arrival in the paper and came out to cheer on the team. I spoke with them at the end of the game and one of them was even from Harbin. They all spoke very good English as well as Chinese and they were just starting to learn Finnish. They were very happy to get the chance to see the team and were very enthusiastic supporters, even starting a cheer a few times during the game. They took down our schedule and promised to come back for some of our future games.

So, we got back on the bus for the 2 hour 30 minute ride back to Vierumäki. Tomorrow we have the same schedule, except that we head back to Jyväskala for a rematch of the other overtime game.

Good night from Finland and Doctor Gao on the bus!