Ping Pong on Jeju

 Halla Mountain as seen from Sarabong

This week has been fairly low key.  Aside from being nicknamed The Hulk by one of my classes (because of my penchant for picking up bad students and shaking them, sometimes upside down), seeing a 2nd grade girl in one class pretend the boy in class was her dog (and he played along by taking commands to sit, play dead and attack) and going with one of my coworkers to a restaurant only to find out her Mom owns it, other than all that it's been a quiet week (actually that's a pretty normal week for me here).

Jeju's lighthouse and part of the harbor

It sounds silly but one of the things I missed about Korea was good competition in ping pong.  There are many more tables and good players over here.  There are dozens of places just in Jeju City built entirely for people to come in and play ping pong.  They rent tables, paddles, balls and even ping pong shoes to people who go there.  And people wonder why Asians are better at table tennis.  Fortunately I always did love a challenge.

Sunday was a classic example of that.  I played against a Korean hagwon teacher.  His style made him a great defender.  Getting the ball past him was very tough.  My style makes me a great offensive threat.  My grip allows me to generate huge pace from almost any angle.  So my spins and power faced his quickness and defense.  The match was almost dead even.  And it was a blast!  I haven't played someone that good in a long time and i loved every second of it.  We even played Princess Bride style for a while (hint: "I admit that you are better than me."  "Then why are you smiling?"  "Because I know something you don't know.  I am not left handed!").  Overall I thoroughly enjoyed it and i'm thankful for the opportunity to have such fun during my time here.  And next week Vicky will be joining us too :)

For now it's time to relax and enjoy the weekend.  And thanks to the Cowboys game being the noon game and being the only decent game on this weekend, I might even get some sleep Sunday night :)

A redoing of my lighthouse picture from the last update.  Which one do you like better?