Accomplished

Wingbean crawls its steady way up a bamboo trellis behind me, its blue flowers reaching every day a little closer to the blue sky. It's little tendrils stick out here and there like baby curls, looking for something to hold on to, to show the grasping plant where to grow into itself.


Across the potholed dirt road, two children splash around in a neighbor's rice paddy, absolutely screaming with laughter as they try to run in the mud and water--full-bodied joy, total abandon.

Tuesday

Today before lunch, I:

• Waded through the lake that appeared overnight around the seedbank office
• Learned to whine about the rain and the cold (ps it's 65 degrees outside) in four tribal languages.  
• Seriously terrified several coworkers with stories of winter ('you mean...ICE falls from the SKY?!? That can't be real!' They also don't believe in fall.)
• Watched the slaughter of three ducks. Four feet from the table I work at.
• Helped to pluck, wash and pull out the organs of said ducks
• Received conflicting, passionate advice about which parts of the duck are edible...a divisive, hot-button issue between the different hilltribes, apparently. 
• Attempted to work on a report for my supervisor with four teenagers crowding around the table, mesmerized by the movement of my fingers across the keyboard and occasionally trying very unsuccessfully to sound out my English sentences. 
• Had a rat pushed in my face. Mmmhmm. "Scare the farang" is Asang's favorite game. The rat was definitely more frightened than me, though. Poor little thing was squealing in terror. I mean, I am pretty scary...
• Watched with mild Western horror as the rat was transferred to a glass jar and handed to a cranky two-year old. (yes that's right. The baby was intentionally being entertained by a rat in a glass jar)
• Was fed coconut, lychee, mango, passion fruit, pomello, and mangosteen. "Feed the farang tropical fruit" is MY favorite game, and luckily one that the staff also love. 
• Received a vocab lesson and a gracious invitation to preschool--to learn better thai--from a four year old. I'd go, but I'm waaaaay too far behind those kids.
• Geeked out about upland rice farming techniques (they grow rice on mountainsides! on practically vertical slopes!) with two local farmers.
• Washed my supervisor's dog. Not a joke.

Oh...and did some work. Because I was at work. Right.


This is what my average Tuesday morning will look like in every job I have...yeah?