LEARN 10 WORDS A MONTH: Fruits 水果

June’s new words will be fruits! Vancouver summer usually starts around or shortly before June, and one of my favorite thing to do when the hot weather hits is to eat fruits. Fruits are so incredibly versatile that there seem to be endless ways of enjoying them – juice them, make smoothies, eat them straight, cook them into dishes, and use them as toppings for shaved ice!

When I grew up in China, good fruit is hard to come by. Back then it was much too costly for the general consumer to purchase transported fruit, so we are only able to eat whatever is in season, certain things only come by a few weeks a year, such as fresh lychee. Perhaps it was due to how hard they are to come by, it was also one of my favorite part of the summer.

Nowadays fruits are incredibly easy to access, and we are so lucky to be able to enjoy many fruit year round, but every summer still takes me back to my childhood years, a time things are not so readily available.

My dear friend Elaine helped me with the illustration for this month, and hand drew the ten gorgeous fruit illustrations. Both of us are relatively fresh in our current fields, but working together really inspired me to do more and get better. Her and her fiance have an incredibly busy year coming up as they will be getting married, I sincerely wish her all the best things in this world, and can’t be happier for her next chapter in life.

我小的时候生活在上海，那时候新鲜水果是不怎么容易搞到的。因为那时运输成本很高，大多数人根本买不起昂贵的进口水果，一般都是吃当季的水果。每到夏天我最开心的事情就是跟妈妈去菜市场买好多当季的水果回来吃。

今时今日水果已经不像从前那样稀有，我们很幸运整年都可以尝到各种各样的水果。就算加拿大大半年都很冷，进口的热带水果也不至于吃不起。可是每到夏天一想到水果，第一个浮现在脑海里的还是小学的时候在上海的炎炎夏日吃荔枝的日子。

这个月的图片是我好朋友Elaine帮忙绘制的。我们两个都是还在不断学习的新人，绘画也好，做网站也罢。看着她的作品会让我有一种要更加努力的冲动，我十分喜欢。接下来的一年对她来说将会非常繁忙，因为她就要结婚啦！我由衷地祝福她，希望她以后能无比幸福，天天开心幸福。