Some take it to the next level.

Tri-captain Kat Sweet and sophomore Caitlin Cahow took their game around the world.

This summer, the teammates on the Harvard women’s ice hockey team traveled to the other side of the globe to Kazakhstan for an eight-day stint with the group Athletes in Action.

Of course, the trip was really a nearly three week long trek into the unknown for a lesson in adaptability and appreciation—and, oh yeah, hockey.

We Aren’t in Kansas Anymore

It took four planes, one bus and 93 hours for Sweet and Cahow to arrive in the town of Ust-Kamenogorsk, where they, as part of the Canadian Athletes in Action team, faced off against Kazakhstan and Russia in what was loosely called the Freedom Cup.

They left behind the posh accommodations and comforts of the United States in favor of somewhat questionable conditions in the dust of Kazakhstan.

Sweet and Cahow stayed at the Sanitorium during their time abroad, an ironic name given what it was, according to the two players.

“As frightening as that sounds, it was actually probably equivalent to a five star hotel in Kaz terms,” Cahow said. “We’re talking cockroaches the size of this [Leverett Dining Hall] table. Kat was almost killed by a tarantula.”

But the housing in Kazakhstan did not throw the teammates nearly the way the food did—living off of the “meat logs” at the dining table proved to be the biggest challenge of the trip.

“I have no idea what we ate for three weeks,” Sweet said. “They would just put this stuff on our plates. I eat everything, and I just couldn’t get that down.”

Even just the process of getting to Ust-Kamenogorsk was not an easy task. Sweet and Cahow were on a bus—and it wasn’t your average coach bus—for 30 hours.

“We’re talking no TV’s, no AC, no windows that open,” Cahow said.

The only ventilation from the stuffy bus was the vents on the top of the bus, through which sand and dirt poured in.

“At one point, I was standing in the front of the bus,” Sweet said. “I tried to see the back, and I couldn’t, because of all the dust in the bus.”