Rummikub

Rummikub is a game played with little tiles and the goal is to get rid of all of your tiles first. Your first move has to equal a total of 30 points (it's fairly difficult) and after you get your 30 you start working to get rid of all your other tiles. To get rid of tiles you put them down in either a sequence of the same color (a blue five, six, seven) or in three or four of a kind that are multicolored (a yellow, red, blue, and black thirteen). I have grown up playing this game, maybe since I was seven or eight, and it's always been one of my families favorite games to play together. Well my mom brought it with us to India to play when we get bored. Good thing she brought it because now every night, it's becoming a ritual, a couple of the patients all sit around a table in the recreation room and play. I originally was the only one who knew how to play, but I've taught around six or seven people how to play. We all go down usually after dinner comes (whatever time that may be) and play for a couple hours. The only bad part is you can only play with four people at a time so sometimes someone gets left out, but they still watch and help out when they see a move. It's really fun to play with everyone because it gives us all something to do, keeps our brains going, and let's us have fun and get to know each other better. I love going down and hanging out for a couple hours talking, laughing, and just having fun. It definitely helps to keep your mind off of some upcoming procedure that you are nervous about, but it's also a good time to ask all questions you have about the procedure. We get pretty side tracked in talking about stuff that we forget who's turn it is quite often. Our rules are somewhat more lenient than the real rules because we like to have everyone to be able to play equally so we'll start swapping tiles to help someone get their thirty. Playing Rummikub with everyone helps me not worry about the treatment and keeps things light which is always good.