I *heart* ping pong

Tonight there was a ping pong tournament at the Marine House. Intense. I love ping pong. There were about 20 of us playing, I lost in the first round (but I did make it go to three games!). Luckily in the second round, they needed someone to come up from the loser's bracket to fill in and even out the numbers, so I got to play again! Lost again, but my rhythm started coming back.... Then in the third round, my name got called out again to play! I was like "guys, I've already lost twice. There's no way I can play again." And that ended up being true. But in chatting with someone afterwards, we realized it was probably because it was getting hard to make the numbers work without any "byes" (you know, where someone doesn't have an opponent for a round, to even out the numbers). So I laughed, and told the organizer "ha, I get it, I'm the bye (comodin, in Spanish, as I have now learned)." I thought it was a pretty good joke. And he looked at me and said, yes, that's right. Oh.

Anyway, it was a great time, and you would not believe the incredible ping pong talent that came out of the embassy woodwork. Wow! There was one lady who I have seen at the embassy on occasion, quiet, never really talked to her.....well, she came to play. My jaw was on the floor, it was like watching little Mrs. Campbell from down the street walk over to your basketball goal, take the ball from you, and slam dunk. So great.

So, thank you to my family for playing ping pong with me, and I send you my sincerest regrets that the only thing we did with our table while we had it was....not use it, and instead try to hit each other with the ball. What a waste. And thank you to the Barlow Center Crew, who really helped hone my skills back in the day. And who gave me such a love of (or obsession with) ping pong that I cried the day I had to leave the B-Low. Yes, I was going to miss you all too, but I was mostly crying about leaving the table. Can we still be friends?