Game Day and Opening Ceremonies!

Today the games started. I was on the 1:00 game between Canada and Great Britain. The bus to get to the rink left at 11:00 so I was able to sleep in a little bit and take my time eating breakfast. Chinese breakfast is very similar to every other meal - no cereal or bagels or anything. I had a nutritious pre-game meal of an orange, 2 pieces of bacon, flower soup (kinda like wonton soup) and a piece of bread. When we got to the rink we had to go through the metal detectors and past a ton of security guards. I understand the security guards for an event like this but the metal detectors seem like a bit much. Anyway, once inside the rink we dumped our stuff in the ref room and explored a bit. The arena feels like what I imagine a big rink felt like at home 20 years ago. The nets are square, not rounded in the back. The zamboni lets off a ton of exhaust. The seating is all pretty old and the lighting isn't great. Half of the rink hallways are really hot and smell like urine. And there is the ever present smell of smoke/pollution/zamboni exhaust. However, all that said the ice was decent and our locker room wasn't bad (although the bathroom has a squatty potty). The craziest part of the rink though is what happens at the end of the periods. Instead of the typical buzzer or horn, it is a gong. Yes, a real live person banging a gong. I laugh every time I hear it. My game itself was really boring, Canada beat Britain 11-0. I think Britain got the puck out of their defensive zone about 4 times the entire game. Working with Ming was interesting as well, because of the language barrier between periods we made a rink with water bottles, purell and toilet paper to try and discuss some stuff. The other thing that was different is the clock counts up here instead of down. It is a little weird when you look up and think it should be close to the end of a period but in reality the clock says 17:00 minutes. Tomorrow I am working Finland vs Canada so that should be a much more exciting, evenly played game.

Tonight we attended the World University Games Opening Ceremonies. Think back to how amazing the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics were- now take that on a smaller scale and you have the opening ceremonies here. The Chinese really know how to do these types of events right. They took place inside (thank god because it is FREEZING) at the Harbin International Sports Center Gym which is a figure skating rink that seats probably about 12,000. The place was packed and they started off with an elaborate presentation of the Chinese colors. Then all of the countries participating and their athletes marched in. After a couple of speeches, some of which were in Chinese so I didn't understand a word, they had everyone take the athlete/judge/referee oath then it was time to light the torch. They handed the torch off to several people, the last of which ran the torch outside and handed to a guy who put it on top of a curling stone. He then slid the curling stone down tbe ice where it lit something else on fire and caused a big fire ball to shoot off about 50 yards into the big World University Games cauldron. The cauldron lit up and fireworks were shot off. It was so cool. Then they did a cultural performance inside that included singing, dancing, acrobatics, figure skating, some cirque de soleil moves and anything else you can think of. They had everything choreographed to a huge video screen and lights on the ice. They also had all sorts of different props, from making snow fall from the ceiling to having pianos on the ice and people play the violin while figure skating. The whole show lasted about 2 hours and was amazing, we were all sitting there with our jaws dropped for most of it. Because it was such a hot ticket to get all of our seats weren't together. I ended up sitting next to the IIHF representative Fredrick from Great Britain. He told me the only reason we got that seat was because is wife couldn't attend. I was joking around with him that by having me sit there he was cheating on her with a bloody american.

I have a ton of pictures to post from the opening ceremonies and will work on getting them up tomorrow. Time to pass out on my plywood (aka my bed). Good night!