Wednesday 8th July
It was an earlier start this morning as we needed to be in the rink for before 7:00 am for the IIHF’s participants photograph as well as all the different groups’ photographs. Who takes group photographs at 7:00 am!!!???!!! Maybe it was to finish early because we were done by 8:00 am then it was breakfast time!
At 10:00 am we had that anti-doping seminar that I mentioned yesterday. All I can say about that is that it was interesting! The seminar finished at 12:00 pm and we weren’t due back until 2:00 pm so a couple of us decided to pop into the nearest town having managed to get one of our instructors to drive us! The town itself was called Lati and was nice but it was expensive! So we headed back to the campus for 2:00 pm where we headed to the auditorium for another seminar. This seminar was on the national association assistance program and to be honest, it was the hardest one yet! The first guy got up and spoke and did his thing, then another guy got up and spoke about the IIHF Audit, then another speaker more or less said what the first guy said and then another and another and it went on for four hours!!! “I just want to coach hockey, AHHHH!!!” I looked across the room and one of the Mexican guys was asleep but so were one or two of the instructors! Funny stuff!!!
At 6:15 pm we got told that there was ice time for us to play a game of “shinny.” Skates, “check”, gloves “check”, sticks “check”…here I go!!! I got back from the rink at 8:30 pm and it was great playing with all the different guys from all over the world. We played 3 on 3 and I was with two Mexicans, a South African and a Canadian via Hong Kong! The shins are pretty sore but it was worth it. I hope we get to play again before I have to leave. Its dinner time now so I had better go and that’ll be followed by bed!!!
CHOW…