The Evolution of My Mahj Obsession

It all started 16 years ago while doing a fundraiser for swimsuit designer, Ashley Paige. I wanted to help her raise money for her animal foundation. At the time, I was living in Bermuda and was watching this crazy show that used to be on MTV. It was called "The Buried Life". It was about this group of friends that were actively trying to cross things off their BUCKET LIST. Inspired by that, I made my own list with the help of two book I had picked up called "101 Things to do before you die" and another similar book "101 Things to do before your old and boring". One of the 101 things was to start your own YouTube Show. So, I signed up for youtube and I started my own movie show. I would do movie reviews, top 10 lists, and crazy spoof trailers that have hopefully been erased from the internet. Fast forward nine months later and I found myself on the phone with a famous swimsuit designer trying to help her raise money so she could help rescue more animals. I wasn't sure how I was going to like movies with rescuing animals, until I had this crazy idea to attempt to watch movies for 24 hours straight.

I would take request for movies to watch during the challange by having viewers donate money to watch their favorite movie. Who ever donated got thier movie watched. Some were good, some were terrible like,"Men Who Stare at Goats" was the hardest one to get through. Maybe because it was the second to last movies I watched, or maybe because it was jut bad. I never tried to watch it again. But, one of the films that I had to watch during my 24 Hour Ruff Houzen Movie Challenge was "The Joy Luck Club". It was the one that impacted me the most.Let me start by saying that I am not one for mushy girly movies. I like to discribe my movie taste as similar to that of a teenage boy. Horror,Thrillers, Sci-fi, Crime, the more blood the better, so I was a little reluctant to agree to watch something called The Joy Luck Club, but it was for the animals, so I rented it for the 24 hour challange and was going to try to just get through it.

Boy was I wrong. "The Joy Luck Club" was a powerful story that I needed amonst the other movies chosen for me by strangers. I would discribe it as Forest Gump, but with multiple powerful female driven stories with Mahjong at the root of this four way friendship. To be honest, I didn't understand what game those 4 ladies were playing, but I knew I wanted in on the life long friendship part that was rooted in the game of Mahjong. Ever since then, I have wanted to learn how to play that tile game and have my own Joy Luck Club.

Life went on. I moved back to the States and started a family with my husband. Had 3 kids in 4 years, moved to Europe and I kind of forgot about the game with the tiles and lost hope that I would ever have time to do anything for myself, never mind have time to learn an ancient forigen game. That was, until another movie I saw that featured that same tile game. Yep, I'm talking about "Crazy Rich Asians". That film sparked my desire againd to try and learn the game. But how? I still had pretty small children, living in Germany then Switzerland. I could barely go to the grocery store and pick out food without amost feeding my family horse or liver. I would never beable to find someone to teach me how to play Mahjong. For sure not in English. So that spark fizzled out pretty quickly. So fast forward again a few years later, another move this time to Omaha, Nebraska. A few years after the pandemic I was at a craft store when I saw it! Mahjong Lessons! I was finally able to fulfil my Mahjong dreams. I took the classes and I fell in love with the game. Then in a desperate attempt to have someone to play with, I begain to teach everyone I knew how to play and Club Mahj was born.