china nationals

we lost to beijing 8-7 in the finals. we were up 7-2 at half. they bageled us in the second half, going on a 6 point run to take home the first ever championship title.

i'm a little bit pissed, but not as much as i normally would be...most of our turns were first pass turns by handlers...one stupid upwind hammer from handler to handler (a guy in the cup got to it first)...one dropped chest-level pass...silly mistakes that had nothing to do with me. maybe this is a bad attitude, but a kdob philosophy that i take to heart = you should change the things you can change and let the rest be.

i had an almost perfect game. i think i scored 2, assisted 2, threw 1 turn (an around backhand in the redzone that floated a bit too much--i had another backhand that got caught in the wind, but i think that was against shanghai)...no drops, no one scored on me, and the girl i was covering only touched the disc once or twice (both on dump passes). i'm pretty proud of the no-one-scoring-on-me clause, considering i was constantly playing transition d. you win some you lose some. it would've been nice to be the first ever china national champs though. and it would've been nice to actually hold a lead in the finals for once.

otherwise, the fields were much nicer than i expected. we played most of our games on a super nice turf. fields were narrow, allowing more poaching on our ho stack than we would've liked...one endzone was roughly 10 yards shorter than the other--very noticeable b/c the turf was striped lightgreen-darkgreen like a football field (one endzone had 3 stripes, the other 4). personally, i need to work on catching. i couldn't get my hands to close fast enough on saturday, prolly cuz of sleep dep, but i used to be able to catch without sleep (or it could be bad karma from commenting on yelena's blog about catching). i think i had 3-4 drops in the first two games on saturday, 0 on sunday (yay for sleep!). something else to work on: i'm much better at triangulating with a flick force than a backhand force.

food was pretty good, i ate lots and lots of baozi (a type of dumpling). saturday night, we snubbed the tourney buffet and found a restaurant built inside of a temple. there were buddhas everywhere (some headless), they even had a donation box. a donation box in front of an altar inside of a restaurant. we ordered too much food for the table (the plates wouldn't fit). i think we got 7 or 8 dishes for the 5 of us (if you count all the dumplings as 1 dish). it got to the point where waiters would bring us random food that other ppl ordered, cuz odds were, any food coming out of the kitchen should be coming to us.

anyways, there were 3 types of baozi, sweet and sour shrimp wrapped in crispy noodles, pot roast (chinese style), fish, soup noodles, and lots of veggies. when we tried to take pictures of the food (we remembered halfway thru the meal), a waiter came by to tell me pictures weren't allowed. luckily, i was the only one who understood mandarin, so jon continued snapping away (earning concerned glances from the waiter). i bargained for flashless pics, and then for pics only of the food, not of the relics (their actual concern), which i got, b/c it was pretty obvious that the foreigners were gonna do what they wanted, and this was a good face saving solution for all.

(you can even see the temple creatures in the background)

people still heckle white ppl in china, or at least in tianjin. something was even thrown out of a bus window at us (jon and i)--i'm assuming it wasn't incidental. BUT he was also the sole reason we caught our train from tianjin to beijing...the taxi wasn't licensed to drive within tianjin city limits. he took his taxi light off and made us pay before we entered tianjin. if we were asked, we should say that a friend was dropping us off. if it weren't for jon, the driver would've suspected me of "fishing", a practice wherein undercover inspectors try to trick drivers into taking them into the city, fining them for their trouble at the other end.

back to food. my favorite chinese foods are still jian bing (a crepe thing with a crunchy and an egg--still only RMB2.5!!), chinese yogurt (thick and sour), and chinese popsicles. my parents call me a peasant whenever we go back. seriously, the simple stuff's the best.


the end.