The Quest

So in the spirit of the lychee season, my middle school teacher friend, Paula, and I went out after dinner the other night to gather lychees. We found a tree just outside of school with some deep red fruits that looked absolutely delicious. I climbed up to the appropriate branch and began shaking but with no luck. Lychees are too firmly attached to their branches to shake them, you actually have to pick them off. Dangling from the branch now, I slowly began hand-over-handing my way to the end of the branch in an attempt to bend it low enough for Paula to grab the fruits. SNAP! I come tumbling down with an entire branch of the lychee tree. Now I'm not talking about a little branch, I'm talking about a full on bough. Aghh, I felt so bad. I had completely demolished a whole section of the tree. Turns out the lychees weren't even that good, and to add insult to injury (I wasn't actually injured), right behind that tree there was a lychee whose branches bowed all the way to the ground, you actually had to bend over to pick them.

Crud.

Just another day in Thailand.

Paula and I have a little thing going called "the quest for the normal day". It's actually more of my quest being observed by her. It just seems like everywhere I go something strange happens. The next day we decided to go into town to go to this organic restaurant that has the most amazing homegrown food. After about 20 attempts at the kick start, it was pretty clear Paula's moto was not going to start. Hearing our commotion, some 80 year old gardener wanders over and gets on the bike and starts trying with his rather feeble kicks. Seeing the old man on the bike brought over another gardener. Long story short, after taking apart pieces of the bike, they fixed the dang thang and we had an amazing day.

On the way back up the mountain we bought 2 kilo's of lychees, 20 something bananas, a giant papaya, and 5 avocados all for 3 US dollars. Love it.

Still looking for that normal day.

Psh

Now that it's the season, I can walk out of my apartment, jump up and pick some lychees off the tree outside and I've got myself a delicious little snack. Holy moly they're good.

Not missing the USA.