Ping Pong

This first Activity Night of the quarter was game night.  We had puzzles, cards, board games, and a couple ping pong tables set up.  I ended up playing ping pong pretty much the whole night; the muscles in my right arm were sore the next day.  haha  For a while, we were just hitting the ball back and forth, then one of the students decided it was time to play a real game. 

In this area, games go to 11 points.  We started playing and it all seemed pretty typical, we volleyed back and forth to determine who served first, then every 5 points we switched who served.  I kept track of the score and so did one of the students who was watching.  The numbers we were saying were the same, but when the score was something like 8-6 I realized that the students score was opposite of what I thought the score was.  I suggested evening it up to 7-all and then we went on for a couple more points and it again their score was opposite of my score.  I then asked if they would explain the rules they play by so I could understand the scoring. 

After a lengthy discussion, I found out that, unlike in America, the person who gets 11 points first is the loser, not the winner.  We were playing by the same rules, except for who gets the point.  Basically, their points are like negative points, so instead of a positive point going to the person who won the volley, the person who lost gets a negative point.  It took a long time for me to determine what "losing a point" meant, it's not that if a person had 5 points they would go down to 4 points, it's that another negative point is added on.  It took almost as long to understand the first to 11 looses.  Once I was on the same page as all of them the games continued.

I think the students were being kind to their new teacher and letting me win.  Or else my ping pong skills improved a decent amount from the one time I played while I was home this summer.  Maybe it was a little bit of both.  Either way, we all had a good time.  :)

PS - For those who are curious, over here "ping pong" is pronounced "ping pang" so there's at least one word that's easy to remember!