kate.nic

The holidays found us missing home a bit, but the fun at PunPun was a welcome distraction. Christmas Eve was a mellow day spent relaxing and working on crafting our secret santa gifts. Nicole crafted beautiful bamboo cups painted with cherry blossoms for one of the other interns while Katie watercolored a childrens' book for one of the little ones at the farm (3 year old Tahn). Some of the interns worked on decorating the Sala (the outdoor covered community area where we eat our meals and relax). A christmas tree was created around one of the pillars using large banana leaves, and garlands were strung using red and green leaves collected from around the farm. The rest of us (including Katie) spent the afternoon at choir practice where our choir director (Nicole) taught us several christmas songs with 2 and 3 part harmonies-- we sounded amazing. (Nicole would also like to mention that she made the choir wear green and red only and they looked beatiful!) Katie was especially please that the set included a candlelit version of Silent Night followed by a booming rendition of Joy to the World (just like the Christmas Eve service at the church she grew up in). Nicole was a wonderful director and the other interns are now begging to continue choir practices even after the holidays.

All our practicing was in anticipation of our evening celebration. Pi Jeni, one of the men that lives at PunPun, invited all the folks from his nearby village to come celebrate with us on Christmas Eve (they are a Christian village). They arrived in the evening with the children in traditional hill tribe dress to sing to us. They sang beautifully and the children performed many songs with very cute choreography. When they had finished, we followed with our choir. It was a beautiful exchange. Afterwords, they returned to thier village for thier next performance, and we broke out the rice wine we had made about two weeks prior. It was tasty, and potent!--making for a great party. We can't wait to make some wine for you all when we get home (wine making skills are a must for self-sufficency

We awoke Christmas morning to a breakfast of cinnamon rolls prepared by one of the other interns. They were Sooooo delicous we stuffed ourselves sick! We frantically finished up our Secret Santa gifts and then got to the cooking! Many of the interns had signed up to make various dishes for Christmas dinner, and of course we were included! We prepared some stuffed pork pastry things (hard to explain, but so yummy)- we made dough from scratch and seasoned up some ground pork with fresh herbs from the garden...they were a hit! We enjoyed an evening spread of mashed potatoes, Irish nut loaf, mushroom gravy, stuffing, brown rice, mussaman curry, pumpkin casserole, phad thai, big salads and many desserts (gingerbread cookies, an adobe gingerbread house, brownies with banana ice cream and fruitcake). HOOWEE! We were living high on a hog, as Nicole's Grandpa Don would put it. We did a White Elephant Gift exchange which was fun but exhausting (30 people playing). Luckily, Nicole ended up with a nice scarf rather than one of the wacky gag gifts (Katie didn't play).

After that, we had a long period of exchanging our Secret Santa gifts. All was fun until it was realized that some people who had agreed to participate ended up not making gifts so two people were totally left out. One was Pe Yao (a Thai woman) and dammit, one was Katie. Nicole is writing this chunk and she wants to let everyone know that Katie handled it all so wonderfully and maturely, it was very impressive. At the end of the exchange, the energy kind of fizzled as it was realized that Katie, who had spent hours crafting her gift, was offered nothing. What a crock. It isn't that we are greedy and materialistic. It is that everyone else had been thinking of someone special for the weeks leading up, crafting and leaving nic-nacs. And it is sad to realize that no one was thinking and scheming for you. Later, one of the interns, Tai, snuck in our house and left her a wrapped fancy bar of soap so that was kind. Also, the next day, we came up to our building site and realized that some mystery person had written a huge message on the land with adobe bricks that spelled out "WE LOVE KATIE!" That made her feel better as well. My advice to those who run Secret Santa games: Make sure everyone who signs up understands what they're doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We still enjoyed Christmas nonetheless and hope that everyone at home was able to spend quality time with loved ones. Have a safe a lovely New Year's Eve! We'll be thinking of you all as we step into the next wonder-filled and exciting year of our lives.

Loads of Love and Good Cheer,
Katie and Nicole

I already told you all about the work aspect of Pun Pun so far, but I haven't mentioned much about the social aspect of living communally. Let me just say that nothing is better than the SINGING!!!!!! There are many other folks here who play instruments and love music, but there are a few who LOVE to sing sing sing. We sing while we're gardening, sing while we're hiking, sing late at night by candlelight, sing after breakfast...We teach each other simple folk songs and rounds and truly have such a blast sharing in the music. I think I want to start getting up really early with a group of folks and sing at the sunrise (meditation is OK for me, but music really gets me that kind of a state easiest). One night, after we threw a dance party for one of the intern's bdays, I invited everyone back to our mudhouse for singing and candlelight. We had a beautiful evening of singing and sharing and harmonizing and passing the guitar around until 2 am when all the candles had burnt out. Those moments are to me, heavenly.

There are ten other interns at Pun Pun and about ten other folks who are permanent or semi-permanent (Thai and farang (foreigner)) around the farm. It is so wonderful to have people who are of a variety of ages. There are three young boys who currently live there, and it fun playing with them and trying to discipline them in our limited Thai. Each person at Pun Pun has so much to offer, and we've already set up a system of giving workshops on random skills that we have. There are many aspects of this place that make it feel like an Adult Summer Camp (in a good way, I LOVED camp). We've had many evenings filled with random games that we have made up, my favorites being Blind Contour Drawing (drawing people without looking at your paper or picking up your pen)

and 5-Line Poetry (where 5 different people write 1 line each to a poem). I am a game freak and doing all these artsy things with all these creative people is so much fun! Katie and I packed plenty of art supplies (and have bought some) so we are always prepared to express ourselves.

Somehow, even though we have a 2+ hour break every day, I don't seem to have enough time to do everything I want. Doing laundry, sweeping our house or taking naps often fills up our breaks. And of course, we are often sucked into interesting conversations that we find difficulty pulling ourselves from. There is a reservoir close to Pun Pun, and Katie and I have only gone swimming ONCE!! It was so refreshing, and I wish we prioritized doing it every day. On the walk back from the reservoir, there is a freezing and extremely powerful little waterfall. Some other interns have been going quite frequently to it and practicing a little primal scream therapy (you can scream and yell under the flow of the waterfall and no one can hear you very well, including yourself). I went in for awhile and enjoyed the intense pulse of the water on my body. I felt so alive and rejuvenated, although my shorts and tanktop were pushed almost completely off me by the water! ha

My Thai is getting better! Yay! We have a lesson every morning and are learning valuable conversational skills. I mostly practice it with the Thai folks on the farm or when I'm in the city (ordering food and such). I am so happy to be here speaking with and living with Thai people. I'm no expert yet, but I am definitely getting better every day. Katie is very diligent at practicing and is improving all the time.

So, Christmas is coming up in just a few days although I often forget this fact. We did a Secret Santa drawing a few days back and are each going to make a present for a fellow community member. We are going to have a big celebration for Christmas and neighboring villagers (some are Christian) are going to come by in their traditional clothing and sing to us. It should be a sweet time and hopefully will keep us all from getting too homesick. I love holidays for the good mood-giving-lovey-dovey-music side of it all, but I am also disgusted and overwhelmed by the greed, stress and consumerism that has infested it all. Therefore, I am both happy and sad to be away from home at the moment. I miss the caroling and the mashed potatoes, but I don't miss reading about people getting stomped to death at Walmart while trying to get the last DVD player on sale. Ew.

Currently, I am in Chiang Mai where I have been for 4 nights. We got a three day vacation so we decided to come into the "big" city, but we ended up having a four day vacation instead, if you can call it that. The trip began amazingly. We had a restful first evening and great food. Then the next day, we enjoyed ourselves for many hours at a spa and sauna where we frolicked around in mud masks and sarongs, drinking tea and sweating off our dirt. It was so relaxing. I LOVE to feeling of being in a hot, hot sauna breathing in lemongrass and other herbs, and I think it helps my allergies. Yay! Afterwards, we went to a clinic that is all blind masseuses and had some rubdowns (my first Thai massage since I've been here-good, but she could have been a little rougher!) The next day is where the problem began. It stared off fine enough, Katie and I wandered around shopping and things and then we went to The Chiang Mai University Art Museum to see the exhibits. The photos and paintings we saw were breathtaking, but I couldn't shake the feeling of a slightly rotten stomach. Finally, after a few hours I couldn't take it anymore and began to have intense symptoms of food poisoning. We were at the ballet school (connected to the art museum) and I spent quite a bit of time throwing up in the bathroom, hoping the little ballerinas wouldn't hear me while they were changing into their leotards! Finally, I was OK enough to jump back on a truck to our guesthouse where I spent the next day and a half being sick and sleeping when I could. Thank God Katie was patient enough to take care of me in my sick-zombie-like state. What a gem! We had shared all the same food, except for a stupid CHAI YEN (Thai iced tea) that I got at a market. It must have been the culprit, because a Thai lady told me that sometimes they leave the tea sitting out too long. wah. I have never had such a terrible experience with my tummy. I am feeling much better today, although achy, and am almost ready to eat solid foods again! Yippeee. Sorry if it's too much information for some of you, but that's life, eh?

We're heading back to the farm in a few hours and am not sure when we'll write again. I hope you are all enjoying your holidays, and not getting too stressed! I am thinking of you all and wish you a happy winter solstice, merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that Jazz! Remember that you can always send us letters (or care packages-wink wink) for the next month at Pun Pun PO Box 5 Mae Taeng, Chian Mai 50150 Thailand
Also, if you're still looking for gifts for anyone, I think the latest CD by Sangsuree is a good option.
heh heh---always marketing for myself... (But really, you can get my new cd at www.cdbaby.com).

Above is a pic of Katie and I on a big holiday recently: The King's 80th Birthday! We wore shirts in his honor. My mom better be proud!

I miss you so much and hope everyone is healthy and well. Eat some thumbprint cookies for me.

Healing and Happy,
Nicole

This weekend marks the end of both our third week at Pun Pun and our 1st month in Thailand. After a month away I am truly beginning to miss family and friends at home-- especially Tyler (for anyone who doesn't know he's my twin). Somehow my daily adventure's here remind me of our adventures together as kids: all the exploring, creating, building . . . all the mud. He would love it here!

During our 3rd week at Pun Pun we continued our work in the fields while we increased our time in the kitchen. We had an amazing Thai cooking class where we learned how to make curry from scratch, Tom Kha soup, and a desert made with coconut milk and pumpkin. Delicious! Cooking is a much needed new skill for me (my previous specialties include fried eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and cream tuna on toast . . . bad). We also had a lesson on food products where we learned how to make soymilk and tofu. So fun and easy. . . can't wait to teach you.

Other highlights of the week: making more bricks (playing in the mud), thai massage lesson, learning about natural medicine, Nicole cutting my hair (it was getting way too hot during the day to have that mop in my face and I kept sweeping my bangs to the side like a bad comb over), swimming at the reservoir ( it is a 10 minute walk from the farm), Dance party for one of the interns birthdays. . . . . . . .

Currently we are on a 3 day break from our internship and are spending time in Chiang Mai. Yesterday we had the luxury of spending a day at this amazing spa. 10 of us interns went together to get a package deal that included a 4 hour private session at the spa with 2 herbal steam saunas, amazing exfoliating scrubs, facial masks, fresh fruit, and tea. We spent the day in and out of the sauna applying scrubs and masks and relaxing. After the spa several of us had 1 hour thai massages. Ooh wee. After spending the last three weeks farming and making bricks from mud with only pond water to bathe with, I felt like I had never been cleaner! Speaking of cleanliness . . . Three weeks of hand washing my clothes has helped me disprove my previous underwear theory: the more the better. It turns out that it is much easier to do small frequent batches of laundry rather than wash and hang dry 20 pairs of underwear. I stand corrected.

It has been such a joy to be in Thailand with Nicole: to see bits and pieces of her roots, to learn about her history, to know her better. She is so brave and brilliant when speaking to Thai people. She has been such a wonderful leader; getting us around, ordering food, finding us places to stay. . . It has also been amazing for us to be at Pun Pun together. We have this oppourtunity to learn so much that we can take back home with us to strengthen our lives as individuals and together as partners. We are so blessed to be here . . . we are so blessed to have eachother.

Life is so beautiful in this moment. I don't know if I have ever felt more connected to the land, water and air that this planet provides us. The more details I learn about how our natural environment functions, the more I learn about how I, myself, function and what my place is in the scheme of things. Some people wonder why Katie and I would come here to a place like Pun Pun. A place where we live in mud houses and bathe in pond water and bear the beating sun's heat. People wonder how this kind of experience translates into "a real job" or "how it helps us gain security." I can tell you now, as a university-educated individual, that nothing-nothing I have learned (except maybe how to love) is more valuable than this learning: how to live simply and how to be self-reliant. What is there that is of more value than the natural resources that the world provides us? Nothing, because without these natural resources, we would not exist at all. That may sound like a very obvious revelation, but the things I have always believed intellectually are now becoming more true and valid through my actual experiences and feelings. I feel so, so blessed to be privileged enough to have had so many forms of education including this internship at Pun Pun. There is never too much of this kind of learning, although I still have much to UNlearn.

I am learning so many practical skills, but I am also engaging in many, many philosophical discussions that challenge my personal assumptions and have introduced to many different ways of living life. What a humbling and joyful experience. So far we have been at Pun Pun for three weeks. Every day has been intensely educational, and I have noticed very plainly, what interests me most and what interests me least. This is great for me, because as most of you know, I have a tendency to be interested in way too many things and can never decide what is the right route for me!! So far, my favorite things to do/ learn about have been: medicinal uses of plants/ what the edible parts of plants are.....putting mud/straw mixes into brick molds and forming them into the right shape.....making chopsticks out of Bamboo that we chopped down.....planting and watering seeds/seedlings....Thai cooking.....making Kaffir Lime (Bergamont) shampoo.....passion fruit/ rice winemaking.....Thai massage of course!!! (I think I may want to more intensely study Thai massage) These have been some of the highlights for me personally. I have also had lessons on soapmaking, saving seeds, all sorts of composting methods, water and sanitation technologies, making tofu and soymilk, cultivating microorganisms for the garden and building a solar dehydrator. I have been taking mad notes, and sincerely hope that all this information is STICKING!

Bug bites...allergies...pokey plants on my feet...intense midday heat. These factors have sometimes been affecting my ablity to work wholeheartedly, but mostly I have really enjoyed all of the physical labor. We have spent quite a bit of time digging beds for gardening, hoeing and hauling compost, gathering buckets of water to make earthbricks etc. Some days we are pretty lazy and just sit and have someone give us lessons on a dry erase board, but mostly we are up and at 'em doing a bit of activity. It has been lovely to see what a little bit of sweat and hard work can create. We also have a weekly globalization discussion, which has been very interesting although sometimes overwhelming. We have a weekly reading and then our group of interns along with other random community members come and we have a facilitated discussion about what globalization means, what it is doing, what is "free trade", and how and why do corporations have the rights of a human? We watched "The Corporation" last week, which is a great movie that I recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it. We watched it around 8 pm (late for us here) and I kept jabbing Katie to wake her up "YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS PART!" The movie made me very emotional and got a lot of thoughts churning about how effed up some things are in the world right now and wondering what creative solutions there are to help things improve. There is a lot of footage of the WTO protest in Seattle years ago which I attended when I was nineteen. So many intelligent and caring people are passionate about not letting corporations rule the world, but I hope we can do enough work to reverse some of the damage that has already been done to social and environmental institutions around the globe.

At Pun Pun, we had an unexpected guest named Helena Norberg-Hodge, a famous-ish woman who was speaking at a nearby conference. She is an author and filmmaker who focuses on the impact of the global economy on cultures around the world. It was wonderful to meet her and have a lengthy group discussion with her (mostly about localizing food economies). We watched her first film (Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh) before she arrived, of which I was very critical, and it was wonderful to meet her and ask her all the questions that I had brewing. We watched her most recent film (it isn't completed yet) which focuses on happiness and money and how they are not synonymous. It was great to engage in a dynamic and sometimes tense discussion with a person who has spent her career focusing on the protection of biological and cutural diversity. Sanook Sanook (much fun)

So there is a bit of my account of the work aspect of my Pun Pun experience. Katie and I are in Chiang Mai for a three day break so hopefully I will get a chance to write tonight about the other aspects: the people, the social aspects....

Yay! I miss everyone sweetly and deeply.

My love, Nicole

It was a warm windy morning. I awoke to the sound of the banana leaves rustling in the strong wind as the sun rose over the surrounding hills. It is so beautifully quiet here in the mornings. Today is our day off and marks the end of our second week at Pun Pun.

I am settling into our daily routine now and am enjoying our regular work in the gardens. All our farm work is done with hand tools and as the days go by we have hoed, manured, and planted more and more of the 9 acres that is Pun Pun. We water by hand also (with watering cans using water that is pumped into tanks from the pond), so our evening responsibility of watering takes longer and longer, but becomes meditative in it's repetition. We've been planting a wide variety of crops for eating, seed saving (Pun Pun is a living seed center that works to save heirloom seed diversity-- they planted over 100 varieties of tomatoes last year), and for processing as products (banana chips, dried tomatoes, lime soap, wine etc.).

Some of our new ventures this week as we continue to build skills for self sufficency included: composting methods, cultivating microorganisms, wine making, building a solar dehydrator (for dehydrating fruits), and soap making (liquid, and solid). Yesterday we had our first day of Brick making (earth bricks). This consisted of digging a large pit, loosening the soil, soaking it with water, mixing it with our feet, and adding rice husk to tie it together structurally-- this keeps the bricks from cracking. Once the rice husk is stomped in we carry the soil mixure in buckets to be poured into the brick molds. The bricks will dry in the sun for the next 7-10 days. In 2 hours we made a little over 100 bricks. We will need over 1000 bricks to complete the building we are working on (a large yoga/meditation/meeting hall), but have had MUCH help from the local villagers.

Mid week I became the victim of a giant carpenter bee (2 inches long and fat too -- google it). It was late in the evening and something dropped from the ceiling into my collar. It stung me and I immediately doubled over in pain, screaming expletives. It hurt soooo bad i was convinced i was a scorpian. I left the area crying in pain and yelling. It stung me on the back of my head and the pain shot up my neck and down my back. Thankfully Nicole was there to calm me down and spent much of the night convincing me the pain would subside and I would be okay. I have recovered nicely after a few days of feeling like I got punched in the head. I did however get trapped in my room for 10 minutes the other day because another one flew into our house and I was too scared to come out!

much love

katie