International Bridge

Monday I spent the whole day grocery shopping, tidying, cleaning, laundering, ironing, baking, cooking, and getting the gutters cleaned, and Tuesday it was time to play!

I got in 9 hands of bridge with the American Women of Berkshire and Surrey, about 15 minutes each. I was declarer only once, dummy twice, and defense six times. In one round, I was dealt what's called a Yarborough: zero points and not even one ten: my four highest cards were two nines, an eight and a seven. Not too exciting to play! The odds of being dealt a Yarborough are apparently 1827 to 1. See this math page about the odds of getting really weird bridge hands. If you REALLY like bridge and logic (Mom), try these short Bridge puzzles.

Helene, the bridge teacher-type person in attendance, seemed to have X-ray vision...she always knew what cards everyone had. Very impressive, and a super-helpful tutor. After she had to leave early, the other learner ladies and I surreptitiously started playing O'Hell instead of bridge, and managed (I think) rounds from 10 cards down to 1 without the two other bridge tables noticing. Bridge is all-consuming, you know. To be safe, we called out "1 No Trump" every once in a while.

During the delicious lunch break, I heard the names of so many countries bandied about that I decided to take a survey of where all the ladies had lived. Combining the life experience of the 12 of us, we had lived in 19-22 countries, depending how you count them:

Argentina
Bahrain
Brunei
China (mainland and Hong Kong)
Egypt
France
Oman
Peru
Qatar
Singapore
South Africa
Spain
Switzerland
Thailand
The Netherlands
UK (England and Scotland)
United Arab Emirates (including Abu Dhabi and Dubai)
USA
Viet Nam

One woman had lived in 8 countries! Talk about moving around! I was happy to contribute two unique countries to the mix (France and Switzerland). What a fun place this is to live.