'Tis the Season...

... for big cucumbers.

Everywhere I go around Kanglung, people are eating massive cucumbers. In shops, they're happily munching away. In the teachers' room during break, I'll see people holding big wheels of sliced cucumber. Every day this week starting from Tuesday, someone has given me a gigantic cucumber. The best time was on Tuesday when I was handing out candy to my students in honor of my birthday. As I was handing out the Munch bars to everyone, each students would accept the bar with both hands and say, "Thank you," or, "Happy Birthday." When I got to the back row where Garab and Tenzin sit, I held out the chocolate for Garab and, in exchange, he pulled out a giant cucumber from his gho pocket and said so enthusiastically, "Happy Bithday, ma'am." That was the first cucumber I received, and now we have four, side by side, in the kitchen (plus a part of one that Scott felt compelled to buy from an old man selling them at the college).

Bhutanese eat the cucumbers in one sitting, sharing them with whoever is nearby. I was given a piece while shopping for toilet paper from a bigger, old woman who looked as happy as could be chomping away on the light green, crisp flesh of a cucumber slice at the shop counter. She offered me another piece before I left the shop, but I declined. There's only so much cucumber one can eat while on the go. Scott and I have been eating the same giant cucumber for days now.

The teachers' room during a ten-minute interval.