(Prompt 2) When the owners of the Knights informed me that we'd be doing an exhibition game against a Belarusian Minor League team, I was admittedly nervous. I had never left North America before, and the thought of going to a strange land where English was very uncommon was a little scary. But I did as I was told and packed my gear into a hockey bag and some winter clothes into my personal suitcase. Upon arrival, we were ushered rather quickly through customs by what seemed to be soldiers in camouflage carrying AKs. Upon arrival at the town we would be playing in, we were dropped at our hotel and told we had 2 days before the game. Naturally, I went looking for any interesting local attractions, but found none. I spent the night recovering from jet lag, and the next day prepping for the game.

Game day was strange, I had expected more fans in the crowd, but the only fans seemed to be a very wealthy looking man and his family sitting about halfway up at Center Ice, and several armed men at various points in the arena. We played hard, and while fighting is quite rare in the J these days, within minutes some Belarusian goon came at Webb with a dirty shot, so I dropped my gloves then I dropped him. I worried for a bit that the armed men might shoot me for bloodying their guy, but luckily it seemed that the rich man loved the show. So I got into my physical groove and played the rest of the game hitting hard. At the end of the night, the Knights had lost 4-3 on some suspect calls by the refs, and my hands were soaking the inside of my gloves with blood (both mine and a few Belarusians), but I felt like the Queen of the world.