Spring Fever

I have to comment/brag about the beautiful weather that we had today and this past weekend. It was 14C and February 24th! Can't say I've ever experienced that before unless I was in Mexico or somewhere hot. Talked to my sister-in-law today in Saskatchewan and she was happy with the -1C weather they were having. Well this tops that! We had an away game today about an hour from Prague, so it was pretty fun to drive with the windows down. I was craving bar-b-que of course, but unfortunately we don't have a deck or a bar-b-que that we can use, so I'll have to wait until April when I get back to Regina. I'm not sure how long this nice weather will last but it definitely has me wishing for spring to come!

Czech Hockey Weekend

Last week on Wednesday I was informed that our hockey game that Saturday was cancelled. Great, weekend off! Where should I go? Nope that wasn't the case. Instead there was going to be a Czech National Team training camp in Kralupy (the city we play in). We usually have practice Friday nights and if some of the girls are gone with the National team then we can practice with a guys team. But this time we were told that we could actually practice with the National team. It was kind of fun going out there with the girls and throwing on a Czech practice jersey. Yet it did kind of feel like a Slavia practice as there are only a couple of girls on my team that are not on the National team, minus some of the younger girls that play for us.

Then on Saturday and Sunday we were told that we were playing in games against the National team. They just threw together some players from other Czech teams and a couple of older girls who were not on the National team anymore. I actually played defence those two games with Chelsa, had a blast of course. Made a bunch of mistakes but was nice to play a little defence as I can't say I've done a ton of that this year.

We lost the first game 2-0, but played pretty well. Chelsa and I played first line with a couple other Slavia girls, one who is Slovak, one who used to play on the National team and then one who is not quite there in making it. We actually played really well and if we would have capitalized on a couple of opportunities then the score could have been closer. The following day we started out the same way as the day before. We scored on our first shift out and then on the second. So that put us up 2-0. They did tie it up so it was 2-2 going into the second. At that point we were switched down to the third line. I was okay with this as it was a fun game but our team definitely lost momentum and couldn't recover after that. So we ended up losing 5-2. I’m in positive that the National team coach did that in order to restore some confidence in his girls. Well hopefully they've gained some as they will be heading off to Latvia for the B Pool World Championships in March.

Here's a picture of Chelsa and I in our crazy uniforms that we wore for the game.

Love My Sugar Daddy!

Pan Kott, or Mr. Kott is our team's owner and who I like to call my sugar daddy! Reason being is that somehow he funds our team, I'm sure through a bunch of other sponsorships, but mainly from his company and contacts he has. He had been so kind to us providing for almost everything we need here. But specifically this week was awesome.

In our contract it states that we get a car, and it's pretty much a necessity as we practice in Kralupy a city about 30min away from Prague, so it's our means of transportation there. We had a great car, used of course but nice and got the job done. Well on Sunday he came by with a brand new car for us. That's right a brand new car! It's not a Lexus or anything, more like a Ford Fusion, but I was pretty shocked that he would give us one. It’s bright red and kind of a wagon type of car. Sara has nicknamed it the Maple Loaf, and it's very suiting as it looks like a loaf. It drives very nice, not as much power as our last car, but I'm enjoying the new car smell instead!

Then to top it off, today, Valentine’s Day, we get another surprise. We had one of our teammates, Eva, and Mr. Kott's daughter, Bara over for supper. Bara doesn't play hockey anymore but is still very good friends with the team, and speaks very good English. So along with her came free tickets to Akon for next Friday. It was funny cause Sara, Chelsa and I were talking about going, but then decided not to. Well now we can! So I was dancing around the house with excitement and failed to notice that they were in fact VIP tickets. Not sure where that will seat us, but I am pretty pumped to say the least. Not a bad Valentine's Day.

Still Working...

I haven’t talked much about the school that I work at in a long time. Well, yes, I still work there two days a week and usually every day is an adventure with something new happening. Since I’ve been back from the Christmas break the kids for the most part have been pretty good. It probably helps that for awhile we were down to about 6 kids a day compared to on average 16, as the school was hit with the chicken pox. Although, I have broken up a couple of fights, seen some great football kicks to the shins and an amazing hit to the head involving a toy tractor.

I did experience my first peeing of the pants the other day. Jonash, my favourite three year old terror was motioning to the bath room and saying something in Czech. I got out of him the word pee and was like “yes go ahead the bathrooms right there”. Well nope that wasn’t the problem, he of course peed his pants. So I proceeded to help him change out of the wet pants and underwear and into a clean pair of tights. Yes, I did say tights. It is normal here for little boys to wear tights in the winter for extra warmth. Kind of strange to me, yes, but in the end it does make sense. I then sent Jonash on his way and scrubbed my hands for the next 10mins. I am well on my way to motherhood.

Below is a picture of Jonas and his twin brother, Tobias. He wanted to wear the birthday hat the other day for some strange reason even though it wasn’t his birthday and proceeded to sing happy birthday in English for the rest of the morning...one of his cuter moments. The picture was taken on my cell phone so it’s a little blurry.



I have to confess that I messed up the other day at school as well. There were about 17 kids at the school and for the most part it’s my job to get them ready to go outside to play. Then on Friday’s we go out and play for awhile then take the local bus to the next town to go for pony rides. Well, it was pure chaos as usually with me zipping up coats, putting on boots, scarves and what not. Then asking them in my amazing Czech, where are you mitts, and everything else that they lost along the way from the boot room to the back entrance. Well poor Alesek slipped through the cracks that day and I didn’t check him before he went out the door to make sure he had everything on him. He ended up wearing his indoor sandals out to the pony rides. Good thing it was only about -5C so he survived. When I came back I just washed up those little sandals and nobody would ever know! I had to take a picture with my camera phone. He’s the kid second from the left with the bird toque (that deserves a picture in itself). You can see his one little sandal foot sticking out.

A Sad Reality

Many people have asked me in the past as to how many fans we get out to our games. I would like to tell you that we get about 2000 out per game - you know pack the house. But let's be serious here, that's not even close to what really happens. We get probably on average 50 fans. Yep that's all, but it seems like more actually. There is this crew of guys, sometimes girls, of about ten or so. They come to every home game wearing Slavia hockey jerseys and a huge drum in tow. They are usually singing Slavia songs and chanting names and whatever else. Before the game they can be found in the restaurant drinking pivo (beer). The first time I saw these guys I thought...wow...they are really crazy/stupid for coming out to our games. They must be really die hard Slavia fans, or just here for the cheap beer in our rink’s restaurant.

Well truth be told, I'm almost positive they get paid for being there. How sad I know, but it's not uncommon in the professional world of women's sports in the Czech Republic. Our friend, Erin, is the head coach of the Sparta Praha women's basketball team and have about 5-10 crazy fans as well, who in fact are paid. I wasn't sure if this was true of our fans at Slavia, but have come believe that this could be the fact. After the game this past weekend I saw our manager, Mr. Nemec, with a bunch of money outside our locker room and our super fans around him. I was going outside for my cool down after the game, so I didn't exactly stick around to see what was going to happen next but could only speculate. That only left me to guess the inevitable.


Some of our crazy fans that even came to Berlin to watch us play


The drums

Prague in the Fall

I realize that it is February and no longer fall, more like getting close to spring, but I do have some great pictures of Prague that I took back in the fall that I thought people might want to see. Finally you'll get to see pictures of Prague and understand why I love this city so much!


Wallenstein Palace, Prague Castle in the background


Sitting by the pond at Wallenstein gardens


Stalactite Grotto - a crazy wall made up out of who knows what with hidden faces and animals in it


From Prague Castle overlooking the city


Cool picture


Front of Prague Castle


St. Vitus Cathedral - a gothic church inside the castle grounds

Champions!

Back in December I had mentioned in my blog that we had won the European Hockey league that we play in (EWHL). Like I said before it came down to the games on our road trip to Slovenia and Italy as to whether or not we would win the league. But we still had one more game left this past weekend against Bolzano. Because we had already clinched the league the game was fairly meaningless except for the fact that if we won, then we would have an undeafted season. So yes we did win 3-0, and I therefore participated in my first undefeated season of any team that I have ever played on. It was great to be part of that as it was the first year my team has played in that league. Granted it was fairly anticlimatic as there are no playoffs in our league, just whatever team has the best record wins the league. Pretty crazy. So after the game we received our little gold medals and a fairly large trophy. Unfortunately we were not able to celebrate the win and the undefeated season as we had a Czech league game the next day. The celebration will have to be saved for when the season is over. Here are a couple pictures from the weekend...


The Canadians


Team Picture