Last night, Vanesa and I went to the home of a friend of ours. His name is Martin and while he’s an American citizen, he was born and raised in Vietnam. While we were there, Martin and his roommate, Vincent, taught us how to play a Mah Jongg (the real version, not the computer solitaire version). It’s a very interesting game and has a lot in common with the card game Gin. It took a bit of explaining to get the hang of it but once we did, it turned out to be a pretty fun game. Actually, Vanesa seemed to get more of a hang of it than me as she ended up winning four games in a row and wound up teaching our two instructors a thing or two. I, on the other hand, didn’t manage to win any games, to which Vanesa was ever so kind to point out on a number of occasions. But now that I know how to play, I’ll keep practicing and maybe one day I can get lucky enough to come out victorious.
Oh, and if you’re keeping score at home, at the table we had one person from the United States, one from Portugal (Victor), one from Vietnam, and one from the Philippines all playing a game from China in a house located in Taiwan. Also Martin’s other roommate (Richard), who is from Belgium, stopped by to observe for a while. It was like our own little United Nations.
