6/20/17

My bags finally turned up! I’m glad to be in clothes that smell slightly better and have some more bathroom toiletries. Although putting off unpacking is definitely an issue I have.

Today, we received a guest from Thailand that was a mung bean expert. She gave me a small bag of fried mung beans to try, and I found them to be similar to puffed corn in texture. Later, as I was eating dinner in the cafeteria, she sat by me and shared a really strange fruit. The outside was bumpy and leathery, but thin. When peeled off, it revealed flesh that looked and tasted similar to a grape, but sweeter and denser, with a large seed inside. She wasn’t sure of the English name, but after getting back to my room, a bit of googling revealed it to be a Lychee. She also gave a presentation where she discussed the viability of mung beans and the many different ways they could be grown and used.

Later, I met up with some of my coworkers, and we all rode our bikes into the nearby city to see the night market. It was crowded and exciting,, and we wandered down the aisles. There were games, strange street foods, and approximately 800 billion mosquitos. As we sat down for two of us to eat, we noticed a girl at the table next to our had a pet flying squirrel scurrying around her neck and hair, eating odd vegetables and crumbs from the table. I tried some sugar cane juice and was surprised that it wasn’t nearly as sweet as I thought it would be. On the way back, we rode to a supermarket, and I invested in some bug spray.