Well it's official. We have been in the great country of Russia
for two weeks! (We = Kelley and my teammate Cherie.. or Cherry as she is known
in Russia). But we will get to that later. We are playing for a team called the
Moscow Region Tornado and we play an train about an hour north of Moscow in a
small town called Dmitrov.
For those of you that told us we couldn't learn the language,
wouldn't like the food, and would dominate the hockey realm.. YOU'RE WRONG. The
first thing we learned upon landing in Moscow was that the way we were saying
"hello" (as learned from a language book) was actually "hello
hunny bunny." Thank you to the nice Russian man on the plane who told us
we were saying it wrong. He saved us a lot of embarrassment. Imagine walking
into a locker room full of 20 Russian girls you have never met and who don't
speak the same language as you.. and then saying "Hello hunny bunny."
Yikes.
In two weeks, we not only can say hello correctly, but we can
say most simple phrases (thank you, please, etc) and can even order our own
food at the cafe in the rink! Learning everyone's name was a bit more of a
challenge but we did pretty well! Our teammates had some trouble with Cherie's
name.. and they call her Cherry.. or the Russian word for cherry the fruit
(Vishna). During a long break in one of our games (confusion with a penalty),
we tried to explain how to say Cherie's name correctly to one of our teammates.
She proceeded to skate around in circles saying "Cherie.. no no no..
Cherry!" over and over. It was hilarious. So.. Cherie.. is now Cherry.
 |
| Our awesome rink located right across the street from our apartments. |
The hockey. The first couple practices with the team were definitely
rough. THANK YOU jetlag. Looking back on our first day.. I'm surprised we
weren't cut from the team immediately. After a 24 hour travel day.. we had
about 5 hours of sleep and then practiced the next day and the only person we
had met was our awesome Slovakian roommate who was definitely our Mom for the
first week or so (we love her). We walked into the locker room.. and probably
looked like we weren't very friendly because we couldn't keep our eyes open.
Most of the girls came over and said hello (in Russian, but some in English).
We got on the ice.. and struggled through a good practice consisting of some
flow drills, 2 on 1s, etc. Our team has about 10 Russian national team players
and a couple U18 national team players as well, so the talent level is great.
We are constantly pushed to compete at a high level which is awesome. There are
definitely some differences in how the game is played.. as far as systems
(forechecks, breakouts, etc) between the Russian game and the North American
game which took us some time to adjust to. But between the coaches and the
girls, everyone has been great and has been trying to help us as much as they
can. We have had 6 games since we arrived and have beaten every opponent. Some
of the teams here are weaker than others, but we have very competitive games
with UFA and SKIF. We played UFA about a week after we arrived and we are
traveling about 7 hours northeast to play SKIF at the beginning of November.
The games against these teams are face paced, very physical, and hard fought.
All of the games that we play are within our Russian league, but we have a
couple games in December against other European Hockey League teams in order to
qualify for the European Championships at the end of March. These will also be
great games and we are really excited to be able to travel and see some
different places. We may have only been here for two weeks, but we feel
settled, happy, and ready for the rest of the season!
One of the coolest things is that though most of the girls on
the team don't speak English (only about 3 speak fluently), we have found ways
of communicating with all of them and are able to laugh and joke all the time.
For example, two of the younger players love dancing and singing to any song.
So probably on the fourth or fifth day we were here, they came up to us in the
locker room (with Miley Cyrus playing the background) and started dancing and
screaming "I love Hannah Montana."
We communicate a lot through music
and dancing and acting like little kids.. which is fun! Another thing that I
think is so cool is that all the girls listen to a ton of English music and can
sing every word without knowing what they mean! So sometimes, we will walk by
someone singing Justin Bieber or Flo Rida as loud as they can.. but they have
no idea what the words mean. And I won't lie.. there are a couple Russian songs
that I find myself singing without having any idea what I'm saying. |
| One of the many beautiful buildings at the Kremlin |
On one of our off days we also go the opportunity to go into the
city of Moscow (we live about an hour north) and explore with a couple
teammates, which was so cool. The city is beautiful, with tons of history and
culture. Sometimes I have to pinch myself because I can't believe I'm so far
from home, seeing a completely different part of the world and being able to
play hockey. We are so lucky to have the opportunity to live and play here. We
got to walk around the Kremlin, which houses a lot of the Russian government
buildings (similar to our Washington D.C.) and the Red Square. We also got to
meet some pretty cool characters.. Spongebob, the squirrel from Ice Age, and
scary dudes with swords. Obviously we got pictures with all of them. There is
definitely a lot more to see in Moscow and we will be going back as much as we
can.
A
lot has happened in the last two weeks and we know there is so much more left
in store for us the rest of the season. Including lots of snow! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment