How I Fell in Love with Mahjong
I'm not a game player. I like word games, crosswords, Sudoku. But when a group of friends taught me American Mahjong, during a visit to Rhode Island, something clicked right away.
Mahjong has done so much more for me than I ever expected. It brought me closer to my friends, introduced me to a wonderful community, and gave me a space to completely unplug, put down my phone, and just be present. When you're at the table, the day's worries disappear. It's all tiles, laughter, and friends.
Nobody forgets their first mahjong. Mine was a Consecutive Run:
112345 1111 1111, kongs match pair. I still remember the feeling.
From Player to Teacher
When I came back to Arizona, my book club friends asked if I wanted to learn mahjong. I already had. I started helping friends who'd been taught elsewhere catch up on the rules, then a neighbor came over to learn from scratch and joined our group. Word spread through the neighborhood, our social circle, and our families.
I've started many people on their own personal path to mahjong, and every one of them is still playing.
I spent 25 years doing in-home daycare. Patience, a good sense of humor, and genuinely enjoying people are why I'm good at this. I have a degree in special education, and the way I teach mahjong comes from the same place: take something people think is difficult and simplify it. Tiles first, then the card, then the game. You don't hand a child a book and expect them to read. You teach the alphabet, the sounds, how they blend together, and then they read.
What Makes Mahjong Made EZ Different
You can learn from a book or a YouTube video, and those are great resources. But nothing replaces the back-and-forth of learning in real time: the natural flow of question and answer, being able to go into detail on whatever you find confusing and clear it up on the spot. And then there's the physical rhythm of the game, picking a tile from the wall, racking it, taking a moment, discarding, calling. That's something you feel at the table, not on a screen.
You won't master it overnight, nobody does. But you'll leave with the confidence to keep playing, and the skills to do it.
I learned to play, and you can too.
More Than a Lesson
When you learn with me, you're not just picking up a new game. You're joining an active community of players across the Valley. My students play together at libraries, coffee shops, restaurants, and friends' homes throughout the week. Nobody masters mahjong in one or two games, and learning never really ends. The NMJL releases a new card every April, which resets the slate for everyone. That's part of what keeps it exciting.
