kate.nic

Wow . . . it's been a long time since I have written. The last two weeks of our internship just flew by! For the longest time it felt like we had a month left, and then all of a sudden it was the last day. Again it feels daunting to write as there is so much to write so here goes:

I really enjoyed the last two weeks of work at PunPun. The focus was doing all the finishing work on the building. We worked on adding two large benches to the outside of the building using a technique called "earth bag" construction. It's pretty self explanitory: you fill large bags with earth one at a time in thier final position (they will be too heavy to move much) and then tamp them solid as if to make a very large brick. You layer the bags just like you would stack bricks, but without mortar. This process allows you to build a large mass very fast. Once the bags were all stack we cobbed over the mass and then finished with a smooth layer of plaster and some ceramic tiles.

For the main part of the building we worked on finishing the 1st layer of plaster, inserting the glass work, doing a coat of fine earthen plaster made using sifted soil and after that a coat of earthen paint. The glass work was particularly interesting and involved using wire, gasoline soaked cloth and fire to cut the bottles in half. For the outside of the building we made a paint mix using a sifted reddish-purple soil found near the farm, mixed with sap from rubber trees (to protect the building from the rain) and water. The finished look was a beautiful maroonish red. For the interior we made paint using powdered white clay, very fine sand, and water to make a beautiful creamy white. Earthen paint is applyed fastest by hand which was super fun and brought me back to my finger painting days. The finshed walls turned out stunning and as we stood back and looked at all the work we had accomplished we beamed with pride. The roof for our building will be quite big and will be built by a carpenter that has helped out with many projects at PunPun. Nicole and I will be excited to visit PunPun again at the end of our trip to see the building finished in its entirety.

Our social lives at PunPun for the last few weeks were equally impressive. Seeing that our time together as a commuinity was coming to an end it was hard to find time for much sleeping with all the singing, talking, playing, drumming, and workshops we were putting on. One of the highlights was a "No Talent Show" which encouraged anyone in the community to prepare an act. Nicole, Mel (one of the other interns), and I created an amazing hip hop dance routine which meant many hours of practice (way more than I would have ever guessed), and a lot of sore muscles! Melanie and I were thankful for Nicole's choreography skills considering our limited dance repetoire. The final performance was well worth the work. Our last night at PunPun we had a going away party that was kicked off by a burrito dinner (yes, a burrito dinner). Matt, one of our fellow interns who is also from Portland gathered all the burrito fixens at the market and others helped make homemade tortillas (you can't find tortillas in Thailand). Others made salsa, and desserts, and of course the latest batch of rice wine was dipped into (this batch was only 2 weeks old so it was quite sweet and not very strong, but good none the less.) After dinner we watched a slide show that was put together from all of our pictures and laughed at how clean everyone's clothes were and different everyones hair was at the beginning of our time together. Then it was up to the building we made (which is still roofless) for a bon fire under the stars and within the walls that we created together.

Our last day was spent packing and cleaning and the saying our bitter sweet goodbyes. After spending two months living, working, playing, learning, eating, laughing, arguing, singing, dancing, and building with these folks we have created some pretty deep friendships. In some ways it has become odd to imagine not living with them. In our final hours together we spent some time sharing our favorite memories and then ending with a Thai string tying ceremony. In this ceremony we celebrated each of our individual bonds with everyone by tying a string around each persons wrist while giving them a blessing. It was beautiful, and weepy, and sacred. Our strings are to stay on our wrists until they break. And then it was time to say goodbye to PunPun and our life on that land. I felt weepy as I felt my barefeet against the earth one last time and thought of my playful life there of planting seeds, digging in the dirt, stomping mud, stacking bricks, building, growing, laughing and living in it's purest form. But I know now that I have the freedom to choose that kind of life for myself where ever I am in the world. I have SO MUCH now to carry back home with me.

Lovely people of my life!

Apparently, some say that the four stages of team development are FORMING, STORMING, NORMING AND PERFORMING. I think that us interns at Pun Pun have finally reached the PERFORMING stage, and it has been quite a journey together getting to this point. We all met and had our honeymoon stage, so excited to work together and get to know eachother. Then we had our storming, where certain tensions were clear, there was frustration on the worksite and a few folks had emotional outbursts or became disconnected. After that we normed: we got used to eachother, settled into our sub-groups of friends, worked smoothly together during the building process, accepted people as we knew them. Now we are performing well together-getting the job done, working hard and getting sad/excited about the end of our internship and the parting of ways. It has been a wonderful and exceptionally smooth process and I both embrace and reject the coming of the end!

So far 2008 has only brought more and more learning. Lately, our group has been studying/discussing a lot about global food security, free trade, biotechnology (genetically modified food...) and seed patenting. We watched a terrifying but wonderful film called "The Future of Food" that I highly recommend to everyone. There is so much misinformation out there about these issues, and I do not think that the average person on the planet thinks nearly enough about the food they eat, where it comes from, how far it travelled, what chemicals it may have been sprayed with etc. And this is the stuff we put into our bodies, our temples! Although I try to be conscious about food, there is obviously so much more I could do to be physically healthy and act with sustainability in mind. Hopefully, when I return home, I can not only continue to buy Local and Organic, but to GROW my own food! Yay!!!!!!!

So today Katie and I are in Chiang Mai finishing up our last biggish break (3 days). I have had a relaxing and inspiring little trip. Much of the Pun Pun community came to Chiang Mai so that they could come support me at my gig. I had booked a concert at this bar/restaurant called Sudsanan, and it ended up being a racous and crazy time. All of my Pun Pun crew was there, Pe Tdu (family friend) came and brought his wife and many Thai friends, and there was a bunch of random Thai folks (regulars and whatnot). Although they were a bit of a noisy crowd, it was a very supportive atmosphere. I played my original music from 9:30-11 and broke the set up with an acapella Thai song and a choir song (I taught the "choir" a song and we all came up and sang it during the set). The middle of the show was pleasantly interrupted by Pe Tdu who presently me with a huge bouquet of a dozen red roses. It was sweet and hilarious! I play gigs all the time at home, but here it was a big deal I s'pose. People were so responsive and kept saying "Congratulations." Ha.

The day of the gig was also a birthday celebration day for Nate (a PunPun resident) so we decided to keep the party going after Sudsanan and head out to go DANCING! We went to a club called Bubble and then to another one, Spicy. It was sooooooo much fun, and it was great to see everyone cutting loose and being silly and dancing until 4 am. Of course Katie and I love to dance so much, we had the time of our lives. The next day was spent in our guesthouse talking with three of our dear, close friends Tai, Grayson and Mel. We lounged around on our bed laughing and blabbing all day long, recovering from a late night and a few drinks. It was a lovely, lovely day.

Any other exciting things to mention....Let me see. . .

A few days ago, we did our 'border run' where we went to the border of Burma to get our Visas stamped so we could stay another 60 days. Eight of us had to go so we rented a songtao (truck with a covered back and two rows of seats on the side) to take us on the 4 1/2 hour trip (one way). We had a long stretch of heavy work days so I was very excited to have a relaxing day of no building. I expected a comfortable ride full of good conversation and beautiful scenery. Although come of the trip was spent this way, most of it was taken up with over 1/2 of the passengers trying to overcome their nauseau. It was sooooooooooo windy, and I don't mean windy like wind that blows, I mean WINDY like twisty and S-shaped. We tried laying down on the floor, eating some weird herb from the driver, curling in a ball, putting our heads out the window. Nothing worked too well and our friend Grayson ended up puking on the side of the road. All in all, it was a nice day though, and it was interesting to be at the border where two countries meet, but weird too ("borders"/ dividing land is still an odd concept to me).

I put on a Poetry Open Mic at PunPun, and it was fantastic. The building that we are finishing (meeting hall/ yoga shala) already has a chunk built so I put candles in it and threw the evening event in there. I think about 10 people performed mostly original poetry and it was a heartwarming time of sharing, listening and bonding. The building with its earthen walls and arched windows looked so beautiful and inviting in the darkness lit by the flickering little candles. It was a favorite moment.

Katie and I continue to enjoy Tahn-3, Tdrun-4 and Tai-5 (the three kid residents at PunPun). We see them mature every day and as annoying as kids can be (they are constantly playing loudly at 7 am outside our house, interrupting etc.) they are such joys to be around. We love to play with them and hold them and try to communicate in Thai with them! At least every couple of days we see their naked little butts running around jumping around in our big cement watering tanks, shoveling sand into buckets or watering the garden with mini-water cans. It makes such a difference to have kids in this community environment, and I feel so, so blessed to have their free-spirited energy flowing around us. It makes us miss kids at home though, the babies of our families and friends!

My friendships with some of the other interns have really solidified over the past few weeks, and it feels so good to make genuine connections with honest, kind and creative people. When we first arrived at PunPun, our heads were full of silly judgements of others, many of which were off the mark. It has been so great to get to know people well and to feel that people look forward to seeing me every day too. We had a Women's Circle one evening, (I am trying to make it happen every week) and it was one of my fondest memories of this experience...sharing emotions that the larger group isn't willing to hear, doing fun writing excercises, singing together by candlelight, affirming and supporting one another in a healthy and safe setting. Those kind of things are so important when living in an "intentional" community. There has to be a place to get out those crazy feelings that may be trapped inside without people even being aware of it. It was energizing and inspiring, and I am grateful for the intelligent and strong women who are part of this community. In fact, I am grateful for all the people here. There isn't anyone who I don't mostly get along with.

Katie is giving me the eye like "We gotta go" so I will wrap up for now. Everything is good. I wake up every morning and say Thank You out loud because I feel so blessed to be here. Our work is going well and we are starting the finishing stages of our masterpiece building. Yippppeee! I miss you all a lot and hope that you can find time to write us emails! We would like to know what is happening in your lives too of course.

One thing I forgot earlier! PLEASE go to www.storyofstuff.com and watch the free movie if you have time. It is soooooooooo amazing and simple and talks about a lot of the issues discussed at Pun Pun If anyone ever wonders why the hell I'm doing what I'm doing instead of getting a "real" job, here are reasons why...summed up in a great film.

You are all missed. Love you and hope your year has begun with good cheer,
Nicole

p.s. The batteries in our camera are dead so we can't post any pics, but we will soon!

Well, it's almost half way through January and I am just getting to my first blog entry of the new year. We had a wonderful New Year celebration hosted by "You Sabi"(one of Pun Pun's neighbors: started by a Thai couple who do both cooking courses and earthen building workshops). As all celebrations here the occasion was marked by the a tasting of the lasted homemade wine (mixed fruit this time) and dancing. We danced well into the new year (4am) and spent the following day resting. On the 2nd of January the New Year's festivities continued in the nearby hill tribe village where we went with Pi Jeni (one of the men that lives at Pun Pun) whose family lives there.

After all the New Year's festivities wrapped up it's been back to work and life as usual on the farm. After completing the Adobe walls we moved on to cobbing (another earthen building technique using mud and straw that is very sculptural) the curves of our windows and sculpting niches into the wall (Nicole and I worked several days perfecting one of the niches and honing our cob skills). The last few days have been spent working with earthen plaster (which is made from, you guessed it, MUD and some rice husk). This plaster is applied with trowels and allows us to smooth and level the crude surface of the stacked brick walls. It has been so much fun to move on to this detail work and really see the building start to take on a new life. It has been amazing to see how fast we have been able to construct such a large, beautiful building (and using no tools besides machetes).

We recently took a day off from building to return to some of our work in the gardens. We spent the day tending to our plants, weeding, mulching (adding a layer of straw to hold moisture in the soil and prevent weeds), adding compost and manure where necessary and following up on the trees we grafted when we learned about propagation techniques. It was a nice change of pace and quite reassuring to see how well everything is doing; I continue to be in awe of how fast plants seem to grow here.

Daily life here continues to be enjoyable and inspiring. As I can hardly believe we've been here almost 2 months already, I will be savoring our last few weeks at Pun Pun as Nicole and I prepare for the next part of our adventure.
Just a couple random thoughts from the past few weeks:

*Mosquito nets seem to work really well . . . IF the mosquitoes are on the outside. On any given night Nicole and I have been known to spend up to 45 minutes "hunting" mosquitoes INSIDE our net to insure that they don't bite us through the night. Nicole holds the flashlight, pointing out mosquitoes while I chase them around, clapping the between my hands (we make a good team). I imagine it would be an amusing sight. (p.s -- don't worry mom, the mosquitoes haven't been bad here, and there is no risk of malaria in this region.)

* The other day I was sitting on the scaffolding plastering the wall of our building with earthen plaster and I looked up at my work and thought wow, look what I've done. I've never done this before, and now I have . . . I realize that that sounds silly, but it dawned on me all of a sudden how wonderful it is to do something you've never done before. Tyler always says - try something that scares you everyday-, and I thought of him as I was filled with a feeling of accomplishment of tackling something new. I hope that I can continue to seek out and approach new experiences in my life with such joy and gratitude.

Much love to you all at home . . .

Katie

Colleen C. Barrett:

"When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers."

This is the second quote I read when I searched on Google to find a quotation about 'work.' I thought it was hilariously perfect for the work that we are currently doing at Pun Pun, and heh, the person quoted shares my last name. Fun fun fun. Quickly, I am learning that what the quotation says is true! Not only are bricklayers equally or more important than architects, but you can easily be both. The last couple weeks at Pun Pun have been so empowering, as we have been building and helping design a large meditation/ meeting hall. We are using earthen bricks, made from dried mud that we (and some other hired workers) dug from nearby pits. They become very hard and heavy and we have had many days of sweaty work getting the building up. We started by building the foundation around the edge of the building. We mixed cement, (the only yucky material) sand, rock and water to make the material and then used interesting techniques to spread the concrete around the border of the building. Katie just interrupted me to let me know that she wrote about all this stuff already so.....I'm not gonna go into all these crazy building details! Just read her blog called "Life is Good" When we return home, maybe we'll give a big, fat workshop and teach you everything in detail if you so desire! Basically, for me, I have had a wonderful time and now realize that truly, almost ANYONE can build their own home. You don't have to be a fancy genius, or a carpenter or whatnot. We can just do it!

So, the holidays are coming to a close as we approach the festivities of New Year's Eve tonight. We are excited for the costume party happening at the farm, but we are also a bit burnt out of huge group activities. Currently, we are in Chiang Mai where we have stayed for the last 2 nights to get a little break from the crowd. We do enjoy the other folks at the farm, but sometimes it can become a Western bubble, where we only speak English and rarely hang out with Thais. It is good to come to the city and be around Thais and be able to practice the language too. Katie and I are alike in that we both thrive in the country (rural setting) but appreciate the bustling fun of city life too. We head back in a few hours and will have to start sewing our banana-leaf outfits for tonight...? We don't know what to wear to the costume par-tay!

I just booked a gig at a NGO bar in Chiang Mai called Sudsanan where many Thais and a few farang hang out for later in January! It is so funny to think of playing a real gig here, where I am amplified and everything. It should be a blast, and I hope I sell a few cds! I plan on doing originals, but if I am pressured I will be willing to do some Carpenters, Eagles or Bob Marley. It's what they want!

My health is feeling much better, although I do not feel perfect. Thankfully, I think the bug from my food poisoning may be completely gone. I try to take it easy when I need to and take plenty of breaks while working. I am a bit afraid of chai yen (thai iced tea) now, but I hope to overcome my fears!

I wish I had more time to write and edit and all that jazz, but we've gotta go catch a truck to Pun Pun soon! Please keep in touch, comment on our blog, write us emails, whatever! We miss you all and think of you fondly.

Hope this coming year, 2008 if full of

adventure
hope
creativity
joy
learning
peace
fun
compassion
LOVE!!!!!!!!!

Many hugs and kisses! Chok dee! (Good luck)

nicole sangsuree

It has been about two weeks since my last entry (besides "happy holidays") and I find myself at that place again where I'm not exactly sure where to begin. If I could write daliy there might be more ease to this but I have neither the access or the desire to be on the computer quite that often. So here goes . . .

Life is good. The other day I found myself walking barefoot down the dirt path to the bathroom from the kitchen/community space. It seems like a simple enough task, walking to the bathroom, but it dawned on me suddenly as I was enjoying the feel of the soil under my feet and the warm sun on my skin, I am in Thailand. I am living in Thailand, in a farming community where I spend my mornings and afternoons building with the earth, tending to the many gardens, and building a new relationship with the land. It was a profound moment in which I felt deeply how blessed I am.

The work here continues to be rewarding and when I water the gardens in the evenings I am constantly amazed at how quickly things grow here. They have no lack of enery from the sun! The weather has been getting hotter and hotter by the day (although the nights remain quite cool) and as the main focus of our work has shifted from farming to building it has made for some HOT, tiring days of hard labor.

Our hard work, however, has proven to be worth it as we have seen how quickly one can build with adobe. With over 1000 bricks already made and dried in the sun we recently began constructing the walls of the meditation/community center we are building. In about 5 days we were able to lay a concrete foundation (nessesary only because of a termite problem in this area) and stack walls about 10 feet high. The construction of many vaulted windows slowed us down a bit, but proved to be a fun challenge. Once the walls are completed our next task will be to plaster and paint (using materials from the earth) which should be a nice change of pace. (Some folks have emailed with questions about adobe. Nicole and I both would love to chat with anyone about it when we get home, and I also encourage you to google it a bit-- there is a long history of adobe building in many places throughout the world. It's very interesting.) I try to spend some of my free time here reading and talking to folks about other methods for growing food crops and building and will be excited to continue exploring and expiermenting when we get back home and am always eager to share and exchange knowledge with others.

Yesterday we had a field trip from the farm where we visited 3 other projects in the area that have a focus on any or all of the following: sustainability, self-sufficiency, earthen building, organic farming, and healing. It was a wonderful, but busy, day where we were able to see a diversity of approaches to living on and with the land. The first project we stopped at was based on the King's philosophy of integrated agricultural management for economic self-sufficiency (The King in Thailand is very into sustainability and has done much to promote his philosophy and offer trainnings that people might become self-sufficent as well as build a more localized economy). This project showcased many ponds for rasing both fish and frogs, poultry, and pigs whose pens were linked to a tank that utilized thier manure for producing methane gas. This methane fuels burners for cooking. Amazingly enough, 3 pigs can produce enough methane gas to cook 3 meals a day for 10 people! Our second stop was a healing center. This project was started by a thai couple who had farmed the land for many years using pestisides and chemical fertilzers. Eventually the man collapsed in the fields as a result of prolong pesticide exposure and they realized they couldn't continue this way. At this point they converted to an organic farm using a beautiful canal system for irrigation. At this point they decided to grow food only for themselves (not for market). They proved sucessful and slowly grew into a healing center where people can now come for treatments or for trainings to be healers. It was an incredibly beautiful picture of alternative health care. Our third stop was an artist residence where folks come to stay for a month at a time to work on projects that culminate in a big show. This project included earthen buildings that used various methods including adobe, and earth bag construction as wells as unique artists' touches.

Today we are in Chiang Mai again for a short break and will be back to the farm for a New Years party. As always it is nice to take a quick jaunt to the city for a soft bed, warm shower, and a little internet time to catch up with folks . Today we were lucky enough to randomly come apon this huge breakdance battle. Yes, a breakdance battle and a pretty serious one at that-- prizes totaled over 10,000 baht (about 300 US dollars). Nicole urged me to sign up, but I didn't have the confidence and I wasn't sure if the novelty of being the only white person in the competition would be an advantage or a disadvantage . I did however think of Tyler who could have faired pretty well in the competition! Needless to say, it was a fun suprise. Much love to all . . .

Katie