Monday, April 8 - Sittin' around

      Not much happened on Monday.  I had posted the van on two online sites, so there wasn't much else to do on that front.  The weather for our last week in NZ remained beautiful and I blogged, we walked to the shopping market nearby, and had a nice dinner of veggies and couscous.
     We did have some fun that evening.  Bill had been telling us about the nearby table tennis facility where he played and mentioned that he'd be in a tournament that evening.  We thought it would be interesting to watch, so after dinner we walked over and took seats in the spectator's balcony.
   

Bill started playing as a young lad back in the rough council housing he
grew up in in England.  He said he and his brothers found an old piece of
particle board, threw it down on the kitchen table, and played for hours and
hours.  Here he prepares to serve a ball.

    

     When we arrived he was in the middle of a doubles match.  His team won, then Bill played two matches of singles ping pong.  The first was against a 'younger' man, maybe 55, whom Bill defeated handily.  He came up to visit while waiting for his second match and told us more stories about his early days back in Yorkshire.

     Then he was called down to play his second singles match.  This time it was against a Chinese guy at least 50 years his junior.  I thought Bill certainly had met his match.  Hardly.  It took three sets to win, and the other fellow only scored a couple points in the first two.  The third set went to 13 - 11, but I suspect it was mostly because Bill is a nice guy and wanted to allow his opponent a little bit of self-respect.

     A couple days later Bill walked into the campground and proudly showed us a certificate that pronounced his four man team as the winner of the Division 3 tournament.  There are four divisions in all and Bill expects that his team will soon be promoted to Division 2.