Ping pong

This Friday we had a little teacher get-together after school to celebrate the opening of the schools auditorium.  We had cake, cherry tomatoes, rice cakes (duk), and cookies.  The teachers then had ping-pong games where they competed for money.  My one co-teacher told me that it was for about 150,000 KRW.  I must say -- I've never seen a ping pong game get so intense in my life!  Apparently ping pong is pretty intense in this part of the world.  In fact, it wasn't until I was sitting there watching these games that I remembered watching some ping pong games on the Olympics at one point way back in the day and it was primarily the Chinese and other countries of this area competing against each other.  My co-teacher told me that when she was younger they used to have ping pong "clubs" that you could go to and play (like you can to play pool or bowl), but that has more recently become a thing of the past and Korea is starting to have more gyms instead.

As for me, I played a couple games with two of my co-teachers.  I was a bit confused to see that the paddle was completely different from the ones I used in the US!  Not only that, but the Koreans kept telling me to hold it with three fingers behind the paddle.  I was so puzzled, so I actually googled this right after and apparently it is just the way they make and use the paddles in China, Korea, Japan, and maybe a few other countries in this area.