Visiting Sica in Jiujiang

At the start of May, I went to visit Sica in Jiujiang, who was there with the American women's basketball team. Getting there required trips by taxi, plane, bus, train, and subway. Also, there was a fight with a guy who tried to take me in his fake taxi. All the trouble was worth it.



When I first walked into Sica's hotel room, I thought, "This is nicer than our place in Shanghai," and right after I thought that, she said, "This is the worst hotel so far." Ha.




We went for a walk and saw this very calm dog that looked just like Kota but a bit lighter.


We also walked back into a park and found a temple-looking thing on a hill, so we went into it and saw some adults doing tai chi while a little girl with the cutest white puppy danced around. I got to hold the puppy. It was fun to try to use my meager Mandarin skills with the people there. Later, a guy asked if he could take a picture of us, but I told him no thanks. I was happily surprised that he even asked.




Sica mentioned she needed a trim, so we walked into a salon with all guys and I did my best to translate that she just wanted a little bit off and that we only had 45 minutes. The workers were amused at trying to communicate with me. When they asked why we were in Jiujiang, I tried to explain by saying that Sica was a doctor for basketball people. Ha. When I used Google Translate for "athletic trainer," they then thought she helped them work out and get strong—I hope someone comes up with a better title for Sica's job soon. I asked the guy who did the trimming if he'd cut blonde hair before and he said it was the first time. He did a good job. I think the total was like 20 kuai, which is a little more than three bucks. Nice.




It was awesome to watch Sica get the athletes ready for the game. I even got to help out by putting Gatorade powder in water, writing names on bottles and towels, and switching out the towels and water bottles as the team rotated.

Apparently Jiujiang really wants to have the Olympics there and the city has already built the arenas and is working on the athlete housing! The sports arena where the competition was played had Olympic rings in front of it. I don't know if that's allowed if you haven't actually been granted the Olympics . . .




I think male cheerleaders are cool. I was surprised that they had their stomachs hanging out, though. I guess consistency is good?




This is the Chinese team (in red) and the American team (in white) warming up. A lot of the Chinese players had horrible haircuts—the same ones that girls in middle school are required to have at a lot of schools.




The game was so much more fascinating when you kind of know the players and when you get to hear what the coach says. I was amazed when he gave pre-game and half-time lectures. He used all sorts of lingo I didn't know and showed that he had paid close attention to the other team.




The U.S. team won the entire championship. A part of Sica's job that most people don't know about is taking pictures. :) Apparently the Chinese women were taken out of regular school several years ago and they are in a sports school where they train full-time. You'd think they would have won.




These are the two tallest players, I think. People flocked to take a picture of #7 because she is part Taiwanese (I think that's right; I do know for sure that she speaks Mandarin), gorgeous, friendly, and clearly talented.




The translator kept telling us on the way back to the hotel that there's no pizza in Jiujiang, and the coach was so sick of hearing no as the answer to everything that he goaded him on, saying, "If we find out that there is pizza, will you pay for it?" and the translator agreed. So I googled it and looked it up on Dianping and showed them the results on my phone. That's when the translator (who looked like Kermit the Frog and who was very adept at jumping into pictures where he shouldn't be) backpedaled and said he thought the coach meant Pizza Hut. So the next day when we were walking around and found this cute little cafe with pizza, we had to take a picture.

Luckily, the bus taking the team to the airport in Nanchang had extra seats and I was able to catch a ride.

My First Hackathon: ESPNW at Stanford

I finally went to a hackathon. I didn't really want to go to any that were all weekend, because then when would I rest? So when I found out that the ESPNW hackathon was only Friday night and Saturday, I used my connections from Hackbright to get in (thanks, David).

Once people started talking about ideas for making apps for women in sports using the APIs that could win prizes, I had an idea. Why not an online school like Codecademy, but for women who want to learn how to play different sports from home, using video tutorials made by women athletes? I pitched my idea, and then made a rookie mistake: I assumed others would come to me, but it turns out I should have been recruiting. After doing networking with cool people from sponsoring companies, I realized that everyone had their teams and I didn't have anyone. Luckily, there was a nice guy standing nearby who said he liked my app idea and wanted to be on my team. He uses a really cool keyboard that you hold in your hand like a controller, which drew a lot of questions, but probably not as many as the woman from Google who wears a Google Glass.

That night, two things stressed me out: one, I somehow didn't notice that the cable to my new ergonomic keyboard was hanging out of the car, and it got destroyed by the freeway (BAD news for my crazy wrists). :( The other thing was the fact that I had quite a time even finding videos made by women teaching women how to play sports and went to bed really late. Most of the videos that showed up with any search were horrible--things like "hot girls playing soccer" and "drunk girls in bikinis try to play volleyball" were among the top hits. At least I realized that there really is a need for a place for clean and useful videos.

The next morning, Sebastian ended up working with the YouTube and Twitter APIs on the backend as I tried to do the frontend. Here we are, hard at work (I'm wearing the red jacket). 



After several hours of being frustrated, I found that two ESPN employees (thanks, Dheerja and Derrick) were especially adept at HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap, as well as willing to help. Apps were supposed to be done at 6. My part was done by 5:40, which left poor Sebastian only a few minutes to hook up both ends. Somehow, we got picked to be #3 to present to the judges, and up until about 30 seconds before we went up, we were still trying to make my pretty stylesheet show up. Here we are, plugging in his Toughbook on the stage so we could present:




I was so happy when we were done (after only half of the maximum 3 minutes). I didn't listen too closely to most presentations after that because I was eating dinner and icing my wrists.

But a group that included three Hackbrighters caught my attention--they had chosen a similar idea that was more specific to learning to do weightlifting, and though they only had one functionality compared to our several (they had videos compared to our 1. YouTube playlists that can be transferred to your own YouTube account, 2. video submission, and 3. connecting with other learners as well as professional female athletes using Twitter), the other member of their team was amazing with Photoshop Design. Her front page made everyone ooh and aah. It was Nike-worthy, see?




I can't compete with that. Doesn't it look awesome?! It was so awesome to see that Hackbrighters (both from the first session and the current session) could really hack it as developers--pun intended.

Here are two Hackbrighter projects (that may or may not still be up by the time you read this):

Strength is Beautiful
Does Parking Suck?
Derby Girls Events Calendar . . . private

I was glad because I thought every page of ours turned out okay (the last one, less so) and I had learned a lot. See?

Homepage:



Learn page:



Teach page:




















Connect page (no time to fix the formatting):

And I really like our name. We didn't win anything, but I did snag a few new t-shirts, some Facebook silly putty, some good professional connections, more experience with CSS, and a giant post-it note pad. Also, when I got home, Michael greeted me with the first cake he'd ever baked--quite a delicious one, in my opinion--to celebrate that I was no longer a "hacka-virgin." Ha. :)

Now back to working on my own project at Hackbright!

Real Ute Fans

You're not a real Ute fan until you have one of these lighting up your house, your life, your neighborhood:



Ever wondered where to snag yourself one of these? I'll tell you a secret that really shouldn't be a secret: my dad makes them! (The one shown is actually the biggest one he's ever made . . . so far.) And you can easily secure one for yourself from him (daveglauser AT qwest DOT net), the boutique or the boutique blog, or even through me. You will love them. And you will always see one up and flashing after a victory at my parents' house. Go Utes!

March Madness 2011

So far, I'm winning the 2011 Glauser March Madness competition, mottoed "Are you smarter than a four-year-old?" Sweet.

Have you seen the March Madness "Boss Button"--a button that brings up an official-looking screen for when your boss walks by while you're watching a game? The concept makes me laugh.

Boss button (in the upper right-hand corner):




Working screen:

Giveaway Winner and Flash Report

The giveaway winner is Crystal! Thank you to everyone who entered!

My sister Sica, who was working with the University of Utah football team, is now working with the Flash. Yeah, I didn't know what that was either. Apparently there is something called a D-League, which stands for "Development League." The NBA has players there who need to work on their game, and the Jazz's D-League team, the Flash, plays in Orem.





Here are cool things about Flash games:

• There are fewer spectators (I don't know if there are any fans besides players' families, so we'll stick with "spectators,"), so you feel more involved with the game. (Tickets are probably cheaper, too, but I wouldn't know because Sica was able to get us some.)
  
• The dancers are called the "Flash Dancers," but in order to avoid the meaning that comes with the title, the announcer calls them the "Downeast Dancers" (Downeast is their sponsor).
• The coach is 28 and a sharp dresser.
• Most of the people there are there to see the halftime show, put on by local dance companies. At least, that's the impression I got.
• Flash the Fox's "surfing the wave by longboarding across a tarp moved up over his head by assistants" trick is absolutely so ridiculous it will puzzle you, but his "throw hoola hoops over a bald man with a plunger stuck to his head" trick is hilarious.
• There are mini shop tables behind the bleachers and in the halls: Downeast, Forever Young, and some other places were there, which was kind of weird, but also kind of awesome. (Who can beat a $5 dress?)
  

And now for the best part:

• If the Flash team scores 100 points, you can get free Crazy Bread at Little Caesars! Yum, yum! I think this was not only a good marketing strategy, it really contributed to enjoying the game because people count every basket!

Plus, there's this amusing little number in the game program:





Did you think that was a girl on the left? So did several members of my family. Poor Mr. Holdaway. Maybe that picture is extra amazing proof that EXLFITNESS is awesome, whatever that is.

My Seester and the Utah Ute Football Team

I am sooooooo proud of my sister. She is one of those people who has found their calling in life. For years, she has followed school sports, taped ankles, taken score, arranged music, iced, etc. And now, she is in the Athletic Training Education Program (ATEP) at the university of everyone's dreams (or of the university that should be the one of everyone's dreams), where she has been assigned to work with the Ute football team. Wow. It's like she's sold her soul because it takes so much time commitment. But you know what? The whole family is proud of it. And for her first game of the season, she decided she'd rather be on water duty than anything else so that she could watch the entire game (and rush onto the field during time outs).

May I just tell you how exciting it is to see her on the field? Look at these! (Look for her blond hair, red shirt, white towel at the hip, khaki shorts, and a black fanny pack.)

Check her out on the sideline:



Here she is circled for your convenience:




Or how about on the field?



And circled again.




At second 25 you'll see her blonde hair right as Blechen intercepts at the sideline:




Here you'll see her emerge, celebrating with a water bottle in hand, from beneath number 75 (who is behind number 93) starting at about second 1:36 (oh, and for a laugh, check out the awesome ballet kick at second 15.):




What about at second 44, when she's jumping up and down because she's so excited?

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Or here you see her starting at second 22, walking to the right, where she ends up right behind the ref and then goes to offer someone water. Then again at 35 right behind the orange marker, again walking to the right. And another angle of her celebrating the interception at 6:03.




Oh, the excitement. You get to hear her say things like, "That was my receiver!" or, "I gave a bored football player the Cosmo bad girl special magazine to read today. He flipped through it for a minute and then said it wasn't his thing." Ha ha ha.

Then, during games, you hear things like, "Sic, give 'em better water!" or, "Just take the water! Stop ignoring her!" or, "She just gave water to Bergstrom!"

I think football just got even more interesting. Go Sica!

Ja Deutschland!

I love the 2010 World Cup song and can't hear it enough (oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!):





Good luck to Germany against Spain tomorrow!

Team Spirit

So, I feel a little bit like an idiot.

I saw this guy on ads all over the place here in Leipzig, and I thought, "Ugh. Why do they use that guy? Is no one else around who can be in an ad?" In every single ad, he could only make one face, and that face didn't please me that much.

And then, in the frenzy of the World Cup, I was reading a newspaper article about the players who wouldn't be able to play with the German team because they'd been injured. I felt bad for them, especially for Michael Ballack, the team captain, who everyone said was purposely injured by Boateng so he wouldn't be able to compete.

Then I looked closer at the picture of Ballack. Oh. Pretty sure it was the same guy as in all the ads I'd seen. That's why they chose him. The German football team captain. Oops.




Well anyway, go Germany!

Ever Heard of Laughter Yoga?

About an hour after I'd first heard of laughter yoga, I got to try it out at the annual stake Relief Society get-together.

Did you know:

• children laugh around 200 times a day and adults only 15 times?
• the brain can't discern between forced and real laughter, meaning you can fake your brain into releasing good hormones?

My main question was, how were we going to start laughing? No, the lady didn't start doing stand-up comedy. Rather, we did ridiculous things in a group setting so that we felt so stupid we had to laugh. (I'm guessing the concept wouldn't work very well by yourself.) Between each activity, we clapped our hands and walked around saying, "Hoo hoo, ha ha ha!" And every time we came across someone, we had to direct the "ha ha ha" in her direction.

We reenacted a growing flower, the breathing in and out of all the good in the world, and toasting drinks. I think the funniest was the running around after we'd "started up our lawnmowers."

Overall, I think the idea is sound. But I didn't feel like my mood was especially lifted afterwards. I had hoped to laugh so hard that my stomach and cheeks hurt (that hasn't happened in a while), but I didn't feel like my real laughter ever got started. Yesterday, while feeling down, I forced myself to laugh as I walked home from the park. And it never really caught on. But I guess there are some moods that just can't be lifted that easily.

Anyway, try laughter yoga some time.

Granny Sport

In an effort to become healthy, I've started an aquajogging class. Aquajogging? you ask? Yeah, apparently it's a water sport that the physical therapist thought would be good for my knee.

Yesterday was the first day. A whole squadron of girls showed up and giggled as we watched the last few minutes of synchronized swimming. But the giggles turned into I-feel-stupid-and-don't-know-what-to-do giggles as we strapped on these babies:




Finally a few were able to shame-facedly slip into the water and the others slowly followed, where we felt both amazed that we couldn't sink and frustrated that we couldn't seem to move very quickly. At first we were supposed to swim around and introduce ourselves to each other. I think I can only remember a few names now--Katharina with the Arena swim cap and Lisa with the nose ring and Nora who could be any one of them--because people in swim caps all look the same (at least I was the only one with a red cap). Right as we were getting more comfortable in our granny sport, a hairy man with a drooping belly and wearing a speedo walked in and the nervous giggles started up again. Yikes. Luckily, he seemed to already be a pro and didn't involve himself too much with us.

We ended up playing a game where the last person always has to overtake the first. And it took us so long that the teacher finally said the passer-uppers could swim to pass. As we were making our rounds, I thought, "If anyone were to see us right now and not know what we are doing, they would be really confused." From above the water, it just looks like we were all really slow swimmers. But below the water we were getting a good workout. We even did some balancing exercises, and pushups and other exercises with a swim noodle.

So, though aquajogging seems like a grandma sport to me, it was fun and it was good for me.




Now the adventure in the showers afterwards is a story for a different time . . . ;)

What weird things have you done that ended up being fun?

Sometimes You Only Need a Picture

(Thanks, Allison.)

Swimming

I've taken up swimming. My primary care physician (Dr. Voß) and two physical therapists have convinced me that swimming would be great for my knee (non-impact) and my shoulders (lots of resisted movement). I remember having a visitor last year tell me he really didn't believe that I don't like swimming. Well, now I can say . . .

I hate swimming. Here's why:

• It costs moola. (I've found a way to avoid this, though.)
  
• It is BORING! You can't even make up for it by listening to your iPod.
• It is something you really have to plan for according to when the pool is open.
• Sometimes, showering once a day or every two days seems like too much, and here I am doing something that not only requires two changes of clothes, it requires two showers and simply being wet.
  
• I'm swimming in other people's sweat and other unknown bodily substances . . .
  
• There are always lots of other people there who can watch you make a fool of yourself.
• You're in front of lots of people wearing very little.
• There are community showers and locker rooms. I just don't want to see what gets seen there!
• The German system makes it worse because there are only lanes, no open pool for just playing or something, so I feel pressure to swim faster with people behind me who all seem to be pros.
• But even though I try to keep up with other people, I feel like there's really no competition. I want to play a game! I want to win! Swimming laps just doesn't hack it.
  

The one good thing about swimming is that it makes me sleepy. But that can also be bad. Depending. But I've also noticed I could really use a new swimsuit. So I started surfing. And I really like this swimsuit:



I like that it covers a lot of skin and has a cute pattern and cute colors and even a bow on the side. But there are two problems (not to mention the price). One, the description says, "Our LeCover swim dress offers . . ." and I don't know if the word "dress" means "clothing" or that this is really a swim dress (in which case I don't want it anymore). Two, according to the size chart, I'm a small bust, a medium waist, and a small in the hips. Okay . . .

New Years YSA Conference 2008-2009 in Elm, Switzerland

I met up with these guys in Zollikofen to drive to Elm.













We requested Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up" (Daniel was the DJ) and all sung along:





I was so excited to see Alexa there, and it was so nice of her to bring her skis for me (she wears the same size shoe). Here we are getting ready to hit the slopes on Saturday!













Here's Alexa a few minutes later praying to the ski gods to let Michelle get better at skiing or at least to keep moving. I don't know what happened, but I suddenly became intimidated by this mountain and was almost paralyzed most of the time. Shameful. It also didn't help that I was stuck with gloves that soaked through with water and then froze into blocks of ice. Very pleasing, especially when my thumb was so cold that it hurt when I tried to warm it up.













At least I had lots of opportunities to take beautiful pictures as I sat down along the way. Seeing mountains again seriously warmed my heart.
















That evening, before the dance, we had fun writing and drawing all over the message board. I even added the music to "Mary Had a Little Lamb."













On Sunday, we had sacrament meeting on a snowy hill.
























This was the view:













An area seventy, Elder Weidmann, gave a great fireside which was more like a discussion on the conference's theme scripture, which also happens to be my favorite scripture: Jacob 6:12. I love Jacob. As I'm fond of saying, he's totally underrated.

I decided to do some snowshoeing on Monday. Totally worth it.
















We were so warm at the top and the view was so amazing that no one minded eating sandwiches in the freezing cold.













Wow. So this is what happens when you don't have snowshoes on--you start sinking, surrounded by beauty.













This guy just suddenly decided to stand beside me. If I were a little more warmly dressed like he is, I might be able to claim that I was at the Everest base camp or something.
















Just one more picture with the beautiful mountains in the background, followed by two videos.



















Family night was followed by a dance that was pajama-party-themed. I loved having people ask me who "Reed" was (I had on my family reunion t-shirt).













We played Werewolves and Dippity, Dippity, Dip with a big group of people. We decided to invite the French-speaking YSAs to join us. It was hilarious to hear them trying to say "Dippity." Sometimes it was "Deepity" and sometimes it was "Beebeedee." The girl and three boys on the further side of the circle are the French-speaking ones:





Tuesday, I hit the slopes again and was glad I'd done it. I was able to ski a lot faster. Vera and I made a good skiing pair because we skied at about the same speed and cautiousness. Plus, I had "borrowed" warm, waterproof gloves from the shelf outside of our room. The best adventure was when we went to the very top of the mountain and discovered it was a very steep hill. Vera didn't want to do it though I thought we could schaff it, so we didn't get out of the lift. The whole lift stopped for us to get out, so we had to explain that we didn't want to get out. Then at the bottom, there was no where to get out, so we just had to somehow jump out. I skied straight into a cupboard and she into some cement steps, which made loud noises and sent the men shoveling snow running to stop the lift. Ha ha.













So much dancing and skiing gave my feet some lovely and thankfully painless blisters. Unfortunately, not everyone had dirndls for the Älpler dance, but we still looked pretty good.













I found a lot of the Austrian boys quite good-looking, polite, and interesting. I tried on my friend Michael's Älpler hat. The winner of the Älpler contest was a friend from Leipzig!













The next day, Alexa and I had hardcore colds that left us constantly needing tissues and gave me back my intense sore throat. We were also some of the last ones to get off the slopes to get ready for the New Year's Eve ball and found this crazy sign along the way.













Instead of having showering parties like some girls, Alexa and I both avoided crowds in the showers like the plague. I'm getting better at the public showering thing. I just don't think about it and don't make eye contact with people. Unlike some girls, Alexa and I were able to get spiced up pretty quickly. I convinced her to try some of my bronzer and I think it looked really great on her.













I loved the pig decorations (they're good luck, like the peppermint pig I used to smash with my family) and even found a boyfriend to replace the smoker guy. Say hi to Schwänli.













This makes me think of that book Pigs in Hiding.
















The food was pretty good. Tin foil decorations were entertaining.













I just had to have a picture with my friend David who looks like Clark Kent.













Each night when we got ready for bed, we laughed at mascara and eyeliner smears and crazy hair. We stopped laughing once we couldn't sleep because people were snoring and sleeping through their cell phone alarms that went off every couple of minutes. (Seriously, how do they do that? I woke up one girl four or five times to tell her to turn off her cell phone. She always asked, "Whose cell phone?")













Each day, Alexa's bruises from snowboarding down the icy sledding path got bluer. As she put it, "I have dead people knees."
















Although the weather wasn't as warm as the other days, the amazing amount of snow that fell from midnight til morning gave Thursday fabulous powder that allowed me to ski from the highest slope, which was thoughtfully decked with hammocks to give your knees a rest before the long fall. Also, a tip from a Swiss friend the previous day helped me to ski a lot faster and more confidently.













In the evening, though my knees were completely done and I could have slept twelve hours right then, we took a lift to the top of the nearest mountain and sledded down to the bottom. There were amazing stars and we laughed and screamed the entire time. While waiting in line, I told Alexa about Amy's sledding fiasco, which would be ironic in the hours to come . . .













During the second round, we had to stop in the middle (of course this was only possible at one spot where it wasn't so steep or icy). I was such a horrible driver because I had ice frozen on my eyes and couldn't see anything. It was sooooo cold and sooooo amazingly hard to brake.













And the rest of the story tomorrow or Tuesday. If you can believe it, it gets even more exciting . . .