Hilary Knight: Teaching My Teammates Swedish
By, Hilary Knight, TeamUSA.org, 3.31.15
Hi friends!
We capped off today’s match with a 9-2 victory over Team Russia! It was a quick morning, as we had to grab breakfast and then prepare for a 12 p.m. game local time. I really enjoy the Swedish breakfast’s here – it’s hard to push away from the table when there is an overabundance of delicious breakfast variety (ahem, my favorite: Swedish pancakes and bacon…who does not love bacon?!). It was delicious!
I took a mini pregame nap to sleep off the breakfast and then hopped on the team bus to the rink at 10 a.m. Our off-ice pregame warm-up was a bit interesting with Team Russia, Team Germany, and Team USA warming up (Germany cooling down after their pregame skate) all in the same gym. Team Russia had the stereo privileges, which meant we heard a new version of “Genie in a Bottle.”
After the game, we returned to the hotel with the remainder of the night off. We had team dinner and then I set out to grab a fruit smoothie. There is this really good smoothie shop here called the Juice Bar, it is delicious! I ordered my twist of the “forest smoothie” with strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, spinach and orange juice. After my post-meal smoothie, I returned to the hotel and then set out for another meal with Schaus and Vetter. If it sounds like the majority of our time is spent eating or snacking – you are very perceptive!
Since Vetter and I just finished Season 1 of “Bloodline” I tried to find another activity for the evening and since I learned some Swedish at the University of Wisconsin (although I am not the best representative of our AMAZING Scandic program), I thought it would be fun to teach my teammates Swedish. My Swedish is a bit rusty, but our team host (Linn) offered to help. It took some convincing and arm-twisting, but Megan Keller and Hannah Brandt agreed to try and learn a few phrases and they did a wonderful job! We shared a few laughs – and by the end of the lesson, Keller stated, “jag älskar glass” (I love ice cream). Success?! Yep! Swedish is a difficult language, but these two were troopers.
Tomorrow I will wake up, have pancakes and join our team on a trip to Copenhagen. Would not want to travel the world with anyone else other than my teammates!
HejdÃ¥! Skriva imorgon! (Bye! I’ll be writing tomorrow!)
Hk21
Honorable Mentions:
- It was Dr. Howe’s first time managing the on-ice door (bench door where players hop on and off the ice)
- Keller and Brandt are both on Instagram: MeganKeller4 and Hannahbrandt22
- Kevin Neeld & Jen Chee have kept us in great shape!
- Brent Proulx, the glue: making Sweden a home away from home. He kind of knows what he is doing