pungs, chows and kongs

I was excited to get back to some of my usual activities around Okpo. Ken had really been the only person I had conversed with in days, so I was looking forward to having a little female chit chat again.


For me, that meant Wednesday afternoon mahjong...!


Prior to moving to Geoje Island, I had heard of mahjong. I actually think that when we lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, there was a group of women that got together on a regular basis to play. But I didn't really know what the game was about or how it was played.

I really like to play games. My husband, daughter and I used to play Yahtzee on a regular basis when she was growing up. My daughter and I like playing Boggle now that she is older. I like to play Scrabble and UpWords with my mother and sister. When I was a freshman in college, I played alot of Spades with my suite mates. Pictionary, Monopoly, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit are just some of games played in my past. I also like a few games on the computer - TextTwist, Scrabble Blast, and Zuma . Speaking of Zuma, I caught a photo of a Korean monk playing Zuma on a laptop while waiting for our delayed flight to Busan. He was getting very excited about his game and I think everyone sitting around him got quite a kick out of that.


Back to mahjong. Apparently there are various versions of the game - Chinese, Singapore, American and Hong Kong, to name a few. The woman that started our group learned how to play while living in Ulsan, South Korea. So I guess we play by Ulsan rules, whatever that may mean - she doesn't know what rules they played by. The game is played with tiles that are made out of bamboo, wood, ivory, resin, or plastic . It is like a deck of cards, because there are suits of sorts, except only 3 - bamboo, circles and Chinese characters. Instead of royal cards like Kings and Queens, there are royal honor tiles - winds and dragons - and honor tiles - ones and nines. There are also flower and season tiles.



I won't bore you with all the particulars of the game, but I will say that it has never bored me. The goal is end up with 14 tiles that comprise a certain hand (and there are numerous ones with names like Buried Treasure, Knitted Pairs, Windy Pungs and Three Philosophers).


With new players coming and going, it can sometimes be difficult to remember all the hands. We all carry cheat sheets in our laps while we play. Sometimes there is much chattering going on while we play. By the way, mahjong is loosely translated "chattering sparrow" - how appropriate! But other times, we are quiet and highly concentrating on our hands.



This was one of my hands I was working toward called Little Robert. I didn't win that one, but there is always the next game!


We played 4 hours on Wednesday - wow! times flies when you are playing mahjong.