Family, Ice & Snow and a BIG win!

It has been another couple days since I have posted. There is much going on here in Harbin to keep me busy. My parents arrived in Harbin on Friday night for a week plus of hockey and Harbin tourism. The team is competing in our second straight boys hockey tournament, this time with a little younger teams a bit closer to our skill level.

On Saturday, we lost to the Harbin boys team 7-2. We played well in the first (0-0), poorly in the second (4-0) and better in the third. After the game, we were whisked off to the Harbin Festival of Ice and Snow. A huge and amazing exhibit just north of the Songhua river. Harbin is actually most famous for this festival and people come from all over the world to see it. I will have to dedicate an entire post to it later, but for now it suffices to say it was huge and ver difficult to fully describe the magnitude of it. It is acres and acres of structures made entirely of ice and snow and lit up from the inside.

On Sunday, we won our first game since November (mostly because we have not played very many), 3-2. We defeated one of the two QiQiHar teams in the tournament. The game was an excellent finish to a mediocre performance, as we came back from down 2-0 to score 3 goals in a 5 minute stretch in the third period to win. After the game, we headed down to Center Street, the shopping/walking street in downtown Harbin. We walked down to the Songhua river. We stopped on the way for some pizza. We met up with Pei Ying and she brought us over to the famous Russian Church in Harbin, Sophia Church. And we finished the evening with a dinner. At dinner, we had some duck some vegetables some pork some beef and listened as PeI Ying and Tim made us laugh all night. They are quite the comedy team, many times with out even realizing it.

So, I leave you with the photo of the 5 of us at the Ice and Snow festival entrance. Yes, it is made entirely of ice!



Tomorrow we face the stronger of the two QiQihar teams, closer in level to the Harbin team we started the tournament with. Hopefully, if we play well, it will be a close game.