Kirst Afloat

International Day

Here are James and Claire at their school's International Day.  I always find it a bit difficult to dress them in the "National Dress" of America.  What the hell is that supposed to be?  Native American get up?  Pilgrims? 

James is wearing the Red Sox uniform my brother, Bg, bought for him two years ago.  And Claire is dressed up as a cheerleader (how did I get such a girly girl???).

Reminds me a bit of Sixth Grade's Culture Day at HKIS.  Denny Wetjen, my teaching partner for two years, always wore bib overalls.  He grew up on a farm in Iowa and would dress up as "agri-CULTURE".  It would confuse our ESOL students but most of the other sixth graders would either laugh and/or groan.

Three-Peat!

From the WIHO website...

A Reference

I was looking at blogs and found a reference to me here .  That's kind of exciting, except for the fact I'm written up as Zulia Mitchell (she is the goalie for the WIHO Selects and is listed on the gamesheet).  Anyway, glad someone liked my performance!

There are some beautiful photos on the above website as well  (not these ones...)

World Ice Hockey 5's Update

The tournament was over on Sunday.  It is now a relief to be back to a relatively normal schedule although I had a great time playing hockey.  The women on the Wendigos were a lot of fun---everyone worked hard and our team really great a lot during the tournament.  Considering no one really had any expectations for our team going into the 5's, we did really well.  We lost 0-7 to the WIHO Selects, beat the Macau Marauders 4-0 and 4-0 again and then played the Macau East Asian AllStars in the Quarter Finals.  We actually won that game 2-0 and made it to the Semi's where we lost to the (Japan) Red Bullets 0-6.  However, we were 0-0 after the first period which was unbelievable. It was also unbelievable that we had to play at 6 am.  I think the Japanese team had a big night before our game---several of their team were laying horizontally, fully dressed, with eyes closed before the game. 

The other Hong Kong team, the WIHO (Women's Ice Hockey Organization) Selects had a problem---their goalie injured a ligament in her foot while at school on the Friday of the tournament.  WIHO ended up using a male goalie in their game against the Manila Ice Vixens (interesting name!).  The Manila team agreed to let the goalie play (he was the younger cousin of one of the WIHO players) and later protested his presence after the game which was completely silly as the final score was 1-12! 

Here's the other side of the story from Kae of the Manila Ice Vixens:   

"Hi! I stumbled upon your blog and read this article. I'm from the Manila Ice Vixens...I'd like to explain the turmoil of events that day.

We weren't informed the goalie was a boy. One of my teammates chatted with somebody from WIHO and told her about it. That's the only time that we knew about it.Otherwise nobody from the higher ups notified us about it. So the rest of my teammates, before the game started we attempted to talk to the referees but they (the referees) told us that the goalie was a girl and that he knew that goalie. So we couldn't do anything.

After the game that's when it was blatantly exposed to us that indeed the goalie was a boy. So my teammates kind of protested because we did try to tell the referee about it before the game.

Sorry for the confusion. I hope this clarifies things for our team ^_^" 

Thanks for your comment, Kae.  I can now understand why your team protested the game.

I was asked to play for the WIHO's in the final game against Japan.  (Adrienne Li, a WIHO defenseman who occasionally plays goalie, did so in their semi-final match against Malaysia.) 

When I arrived at the rink on Sunday, Keith (one of the AsiaSports guys) came up to me and gave me a trophy from the awards ceremony the night before.  Evidently I had been chosen as best goalie in the women's division.  Claire was thrilled when I showed her the trophy.  It's made out of glass and looks impressive.  We played the Red Bullets and they were very physical.  They kept beating us in the neutral zone.  The game was tied 0-0 at the end of the third period.  In OT, we managed to get into their zone and had a shot or two on net.  Adrienne Li then got control of the puck and scored a beautiful goal.  It was an exciting end to the game.  (And Claire was impressed with our gold medals---she wore mine to school yesterday.)

We Won!

We actually beat a team from Macau last night 4-0.  My team scored twice in the first 2 minutes which was amazing.  I was pretty bored during the game but that's okay. It was very cool to see how excited our players were.  As I probably mentioned, my team is quite inexperienced and this is only the second game we've played together.  I'm not sure if any of our women have played in a tournament before.  I think not.  We have to play the same team tonight at 1:10 am and then we're in the quarter-finals Friday afternoon.  Our winning is a good thing because I'll be able to pick James up from school.  I'll only have to find a way to get Claire home later.  I'm hoping Gloria has her kids for the first half of the weekend but I'm not sure as she just had them for the entire weekend which is unusual.

Oh, and we did lose 0-7 the other night.  I'm not sure how the game's been listed erroneously but Tom Barnes said that he'd correct it.

The Agony of Defeat

Well, actually, not really.  I played well in our first game against the WIHO (Hong Kong Women's Ice Hockey Organization Select) team.  Our team is a bit like the Bad News Bears or (perhaps more appropriately and in context) The Mighty Ducks.  None of our players (with the exception of Jen---my maid of honor who is in HK for the first time in 8 years and me) have played on full sized ice before or in a tournament.  It's also the first time that our team has ever played together in a game.  The other women are all cool---we have a couple of girls from an inline hockey team.  I don't think they've played ice hockey before with the exception of our 3 practices.

The score was 0-2 at the end of the first period.  I thought we lost 0-7 but when I checked the tournament website it was actually 0-8.  There were maybe one or two goals that weren't so hot.  I was also screened on two of the goals.  But the rest were really good.  WIHO had very strong positioning and passed well.  I saw a huge improvement from the time I last played with a Hong Kong women's team 8 years ago.  In fact, that would have probably been the team I played with in the last tournament.  A few of the faces were the same but there were also a lot of new women.

MegaBox is AWESOME except for the amount of people that were there.  There were police road blocks (and sidewalk blocks for that matter) to limit the amount of people entering at one time.  Fortunately we were able to jump the queue and take a cargo lift that is reserved for players.  The rink is not totally finished---there weren't any proper locker rooms ready and the snack bar was inoperational.  I had my skates sharpened (I honestly think they were duller afterwards) and I'll have to get them fixed tomorrow before our next game.  The skate sharpening machine only arrived yesterday and they were having trouble sharpening goalie skates.  The guy who has a clue was unfortunately playing in the game following ours so I'll have to try and catch him tomorrow.

This picture just about sums up what went wrong in our game.  Where are the blue shirts that my team was wearing?  Three players from the opposing team and me!!!  I had a great time, though.  Lots of fun.  And it was GREAT to see Jen again.

Only in Hong Kong...

or in the U.K.  James had a piece of mail yesterday from Pizza Express.  It's about Father's Day and it just made me laugh.  (We had a similar one about Mother's Day but it involved an ice cream sundae.)

Monday 4th June, 2007

Dear Junior Club Member

The clock is ticking and Father's Day on Sunday 17th June will be with us very soon.  It is always so hard to surprise Dads but one sure way that works every time is with food (especially pizza!) and drink.  So don't worry, I've got a great gift idea for you to show just how special he is.  Colour and cut out the Fathers Day Gift Tag before and add a heard warming message. Then, bring the Gift Tag to your favourite PizzaExpress restaurant along with your Junior Membership Card and pass it to the serve who will place your tag around a FREE bottle of beer for your Dad to celebrate his big day!

On Father's Day there's also the chance to win a pair of tickets to see the musical Peter Pan and other great prizes!

Bye for now

Pepe

Junior Club President

At the bottom of the paper there is what appears to be a "Do Not Disturb Sign" which you'd hang around a doorknob.  Except that it has a picture of the two kids' club cartoon kids on it, says "To Dad" with several lines where you can write a message and then there's "Love from" and a blank space to sign your name.  Obviously the sign goes around the beer which your server then brings to your dad!  Something about this just makes me laugh...