February 4, 2003

Guten Morgen (as we now say in Germany) ..or good morning. The day began early once again, with a 6am call waking us all up from a very deep sleep. It wasn´t so bad, as we were all asleep by 8 pm the night before, so we had a good 10 hours. Breakfast was good, with lots to choose from.

It was great to arrive at the rink and find everything had arrived, including Charlie´s (Labonté) equipment, which had appeared in front of her hotel door some time during the night! Our first practice was pretty good, as far as first practices go. We are still adjusting to the time change, so our timing was a lttile off.

The rink is really cold, kind of like an outdoor rink, but it is an indoor rink. The big ice surface will certainly compliment the kind of game that we want to play. We made it through practice, without any major mishaps.-Everyone is healthy. The coaches put together a great practice, that really challenged us. We feel pretty confident that we will be ready to go by Wednesday night.

After lunch at the hotel, we headed off to an autograph session at Walmart! We signed in shifts and shopped......you can´t go to a Walmart and not shop. Many of us us stocked up our chocolat stash. After Walmart we headed to a much larger city, Braunschweig, which is 20 minutes from Saltzgitter. The coaches turned us loose on the shopping district of the city. It is very interesting to be walking around and not understanding what anything means. You can get the greatest french fries, served in a paper cone, with mayo. We couldn´t find any good souvenir places so we didn´t buy too much. We have 21 family members here with us, which is awesome, especially since they spent the afternoon with us.

After Braunschweig, it was back to the rink for our second practice of the day. Our timing was much better and we are really starting to gel as a team, both on and off the ice. Only one more practice before our first game. Everyone is really focused......we want to represent Canada in the tradtiion of the U22 teams that have played here before us. We received our FS (free stuff-Candian hockey apparel) today, which is great and which fits (a bonus). Our winter hats rock! You can never get too much FS. Our evening ended with a little teambuilding activity.....Tshirt painting, which was a lot of fun. Some of us needed a spell check function! Krista (McArthur) needs to learn to use less paint and write smaller. We have some pretty artistic people on this team. Many of the T-shirts look amazing.

It was a long day, so just about everyone was in bed and asleep pretty early again. The coaches decided to push back practice by half an hour tomorrow, so we are pretty psyched about getting an extra half hour of sleep! That´s all from Satzgitter...until game day tomorrow... GO CANADA GO!