Traveling with Orange Trees

After three buses, two planes and a train ride, I managed to return to the small town of Joensuu late last week.  To be honest, I have been stalling on this blog post because I'm not entirely sure where to begin with the last three weeks of travel.  I suspect it may take a few posts to hammer out all the details, but if you would like a quick preview of my travels, you can check out my Picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jeninnz.

My adventures out west started several days before actually leaving Joensuu.  It was the week of finals, and the local grocery store was having a sale on their mandarin oranges.  As a big fan of this fruit, I picked up a bag and started right in on them.  It was after my fifth or sixth orange (not all in one sitting...no worries) that my teeth crunched down on one of the seeds of this fruit.  It was the crunch of this seed that gave me an idea—an idea that would burden my luggage with a few more ounces but would come to epitomize my travels out west.

Here was the plan:
    (1)  Save the seeds from the last few oranges.
    (2)  Gently wrap these small bundles of life in a damp paper towel.
    (3)  Place the towel and seeds in a plastic baggie.
    (4)  Pack the baggie into my luggage.

As this story is growing far longer than I expected, I will skip ahead to the last few pages of this novel.  Upon arriving home in Joensuu, I unpacked my luggage.  About halfway down, I discovered a small bag that contained a wet paper towel.  Inside that paper towel were sprouts.  Folks, there were orange trees growing in my luggage!  The last sentence basically sums up the past three weeks.  While most things went according to plan, the results were so much more than expected.  Each brought its own adventures, and some of these adventures left sprouts that are on their way to becoming orange trees.  Without going into too much more detail now, I promise that the next few posts will be more related to the events of the last few weeks.  Next stop: Helsinki.