Ping-Pong

Yesterday, I had my first Ping-Pong lesson with a professional player (and, in all probability, my last). It was quite a lot of fun, though he only taugh us backhand, and what he taught us doesn't mesh with my style, and he didn't teach us enough for me to be able to do a huge amount with it. He is a perfectionist. He kept on wanting my posture and hand position to be exactly right (he wants my posture to be completely different than how it normally is-as I am quite tall he made me bend down really far) and I think I'll be able to implement those changes to improve my game.
After the class, our teacher showed us his favorite move (which was a forehand slam) and it was pretty sweet. Rather than just using his arm for the slam, he jumped up and slammed it with his entire body. I would really hate to have that done to me when I was playing a game. He did another very impressive thing when I was playing him one on one. He was playing quite slowly and pretty high (being kind to me) and I slammed it to his backhand. He appeared to be utterly unprepared for it (he was standing right next to the table not paying too much attention) and it went pretty high before he got it. To get it, he jumped up and backwards while reaching his right hand across his body and as far up as it could go. And, to top it off, he got it back to my side of the table going pretty slow and very easy to get.
I had one other surprise (though not from the coach). After the class all the students were playing each other. Peter and Luke played first. Not surprisingly, Peter beat Luke (came within one point of skunking him actually). I then played Peter, and, to my shock, he was almost as I good as I was. The last time I had played him, he was barely one tenth as good as he is now. I probably would've lost the game merely from the shock of it all, but, fortunately for my reputation, my reflexes came into action and took over almost completely. Unfortunately, my reflexes were confused by my new posture, so I only won 13/11 with Peter having actually forced me to serve on two game points previously. After beating Peter, I played David, who, as usual beat me=( This more understandable though, David has had quite a few lessons with the Ping-Pong Park, so he knows how to play quite well.
On a random note, I am now thinking seriously about getting my own paddle. Mr. Park has offered to put some professional plastic stuff on it (that normally costs $60) so i think it would be worthwhile, as a paddle only costs like 1000 riyals or so. If I did this I would have a chance to learn my paddle, which might make it worthwhile to try to learn a decent amount of spin. And I have written an awful lot aboout ping-pong so I think I should probably get back to work on my paper before I start to bore Jasmine any worse than I already have...