Week Four

On Wednesday our SMU classmates told us that the teachers from the major wanted to challenge us to a tournament of ping pong.  All of the hours that we have spent playing ping pong so far did not properly prepare us for the destruction we witnessed.  It was to be a 5v5 tournament where best 2 out of 3 wins with matches to 11 points.  

Right off the bat we put our best three guys up against them and even they weren't much of a challenge for the teachers.  When it was my turn I had to face off against our Oceanography professor, Xing Xiaoli.  I felt fairly confident in my ping pong game, but I knew she was going to be a lot more skilled than me.  We started off fairly even until she unleashed a massive forehand that I couldn't even see.  It was just a blur of white bouncing off the table.  I was conflicted because I wanted to be the gentleman and let her win, but our SMU classmates were cheering for me to beat her.  I decided that I would try and beat her but in the end, she beat me pretty easily.  I did manage to make it close but I never was able to take the lead.  It was a clean sweep for the professors and we do want a shot at redemption because everyone had fun playing.  After the tournament was over, they handed each of us a certificate with a different accolade and gave us a 50 year calendar keychain.  

Last night the school took the foreign exchange students out to dinner and then took us to see a acrobatics show.  It was called ERA Intersection of Time.  The dinner was very delicious, the servers brought out so many plates of food.  I think it must've been at least 10-12 different dishes.  The show was phenomenal.  It had many different parts to it, each one was more exciting than the next.  We were excited to start taking pictures but then the ushers told us that we weren't allowed to take photographs.  These performers were amazing, they had us clapping pretty much throughout the entire show.  My favorite part was a bunch of guys that set up two sides like the West Side Story and they jumped through hoops of various heights to compete.  The hoops at the end were very close to 10 feet high and they did flips through them all.  My other favorite part was of a couple coming out on a white horse dancing with hanging ribbons and flying through the air.  At the end of the show they had a big sphere that had motorcycles circling around it.  After a few tricks, they kept adding more and more motorcycles into the sphere.  By the end of their routine, they had 8 motorcycles in the sphere doing circles around it.  Absolutely amazing!