Sun Flowers in the Dead of Winter

The MCC at CMU has a winter agriculture festival in honor of His Majesty The King's birthday, which is on December 5th and it's a big year because it's his 80th birthday. So, the MCC has put this whole flower, vegetable beautifulness to go along with the whole festival; you might not all know this but the North is known for its sunflowers (in the winter). I know you all are in the dead of winter , considering that today is the first of December and so I thought I would share with you a little bit of Thailand's beautiful winter sunflowers. Enjoy!

Tuesday November 28th, 2007

First off, I can't believe it is November 28th, that is kind of nuts...

Anyways... Last week, my group and I totally pulled off a glorious Thanksgiving and for the first time I actually ate farang food that tasted like farang food... It was pretty amazing but also kind of strange... My group and I made our Thanksgiving feast at Bradley's home stay. FYI, Bradley's home stay house is kind of amazing and beautiful. His home stay dad has a big yard in the front with grass ( a very odd thing to have) and a gazebo type hut where we ate our feast. On the menu was, roasted chicken (instead of turkey), BBQ pork and steak, delicious mashed potatoes, green beans with butter and garlic, cranberry sauce, corn, garlic bread and yummy CHEDDAR CHEESE!!!! It was quite a glorious meal. In lieu of family tradition, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for and of course, because we are in Thailand we were thankful for a great many things... After dinner we lit some Khom Loys and laid in the grass to let our stomachs rest... It was definitely a Thanksgiving I will never forget...

Here are some photos of the feast: Click to see

Ps thank you bradley for sharing your thanksgiving pictures....

Sunday November 25, 2007

As I write to you now, it is officially Loy Krathong and illegal fireworks are going off everywhere.... Loy Krathong is a Lanna water festival where people give offerings of Krathongs to the water goddess for everything bad they have done in the past year and ask for forgiveness. What is has turned into, at least in Chiang Mai, is an excuse to light off billions of illegal fireworks and party for about a week. Its really beautiful because Khom Loy's (lanterns) are also lit and let off into the sky; so there are tons of floating lanterns in the sky and it quite magical. Last night, we made some Krathongs and went down to the Ping River with a few Thai students, the river was packed with people and tons of krathongs. There were also hundreds of Khom Loy's (the lanterns) being lit and set off into the sky. This sounds like a lot of fun but as the evening went on, it became much like a battle zone and young Thai teenagers seem to enjoy throwing poppers at farangs. Khom Loy's also get stuck in the electric wires and about every 30 minutes or so the lights would go off in the city. Luckily, the Khom Loy's, in the sky completely lit up the city. It's a holiday that is very hard to describe and must be seen in order to really understand but with that said, I don't feel the need to experience it again.

Here is a link to some of my pictures from last night: (click to see)

Friday November 23, 2007

Last weekend, the International Sumo Wrestling World Championships came to Chiang Mai and let's be serious this was a once and a lifetime experience, so Brad and I spent about 4 hours watching very large, quite naked people throwing each other out of the ring. I had no previous experience with sumo wrestling and to be truthfully honest I had no real interest in learning more. The championships were held at the Chiang Mai 700th anniversary sports complex, right outside the city, in one of the smaller gymnasiums. When we first walked into the gymnasium we were hit with a very strong whiff of body odor. I don't really know how to describe the scene, so instead I have photos to describe what words cant.

This is how the match would begin, the two competitors would get up on the platform and do their own little arm thing.

They would then go to the middle and stare each other down and then stand up again. PS this by far one of the most uneven matches...


The competitors would then go into this crouch position. Brad and I, never really figured out how this worked because there is some intimidation significance for who puts their fists down first....


And then they lunge.

This is usually how it ended.

This was the Russian women's team, ps they were humongous! The women on the far left was the biggest women in the competition, 397 lbs! The largest man was from Germany and he was 445 lbs!

Although a lot of the competitors were huge and probably more fat than muscle, it was ones who were big but strong and fast, who usually won.

To say the least, it was quite a trip.

Monday November 19, 2007

I have officially reached the lull in my abroad experience. We were warned about it before we left but I thought I was doing a pretty good job of avoiding it. i think it is the combination of familiarity/ non-familiarity, routine, a never ending Thai class and the need for a wider social scene. I am in desperate need of a holiday. The good thing is, you know it will all pass. Luckily, tomorrow I leave for Ping Noi for two days and in a week or two I begin my longer field work stays at Dong Palan.

This week is thanksgiving and my farang friends and I are planning an excellent thanksgiving feast of roasted chicken (there are no turkeys in Thailand), mashed potatoes, whipped sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce (hopefully there will be some canned at the farang supermarket), cheese and wine. All of the above are items that we have either not eaten here in Thailand or have had only once. We have invited a whole slew of people and we are actually not sure who exactly is coming. It should be interesting, to say the least.

For the past month or so i have been having daily battles with enormous amounts of ants. I can officially say that I hate all kinds, colors, shapes and sizes of ants, they are the devil reincarnated. I don't leave food out and my room is cleaned at least twice a week but for some reason they are innately drawn to my room. My main weapon of choice has been water but now I have changed to a more toxic weapon, floor cleaner. This afternoon I came home, after four hours of Thai class, and there must have been thousands upon thousands of ants in my room. I raged about my room for a good thirty minutes finding every and any hole that an ant may climb out of in my room and soaked it with floor cleaner. I then preceded to stomp, smash and conquer all those that were still alive. One thing I really miss about home, is the lack of ants in my bed.

Monday November 12 2007

So, lately the love has been lacking from my blog.... hint hint wink wink I love comments.... Tell me how you are, what you have been up, ask me any questions you have, tell me how much you miss my pretty face, etc..... Just putting it out there....

My cousin Alissa asked how exactly I am conducting my research and that's a good question, to be totally honest I'm kind of making it up as i go along and as i learn more... I started out wanting to understand the incentives for farmers to use sustainable practices but then I realized that 'sustainable agriculture' is way more intricate and complicated and that before I could understand incentives I needed to know what it meant for a farmer to use sustainable or unsustainable practices. I started with a very small concept and realized that it wasn't as small as I had previously thought, by investigating the larger concepts I could integrate my smaller concept in a more cohesive manner. But the basic premise of my research, is going to be evaluating what exactly sustainable agriculture is, in particular pesticide-free agriculture. I'm going to use my literature review to define the systems, practices, problems faced by farmers and policy makers, etc... Then, I'm going to use my pesticide-free field work site (Ping Noi) as an example of pesticide-free systems, etc... I'm not exactly sure how my second field work site is going to fit into my report but the basis of my literature research has been focused on rice and Dong Palan is a chemically aware rice based system, so its on its way to being more sustainable and I plan to evaluate if that's possible, what needs to happen for them to be sustainable, etc... My report is more of an evaluation than anything else. I have a 2 pages of words to be defined and that will be how I go about writing the majority of my report. I guess, I'm not researching, I'm investigating. Who knows, we will see how it goes. I'm trying to be as flexible as possible and see where my research takes me.

Sunday November 11th 2007

I just came back from 3 days in Ping Noi, on a pesticide-free farm owned by a man named Phop and his wife Geew. To say the least, I had a really exciting and educational weekend and I'm pooped. I would tell you all about it but then none of you would read my paper... Anyways here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the farm etc...



Phii Geew ( we spent about half of the weekend weeding, now I understand why people use herbicides...)
Phii Phop, Phii Geew and I ( ps I have noticed that most thai's dont smile in pictures but I swear Phii Phop and Phii Geew are happy people.)
They raise crickets to cover basic expenses of the farm.
Where they 'wash' the produce (lessoned learned, always wash your vegetables before eating....)
They package their goods, by hand, and every morning take them to Carreforre (a super market chain). I spent both evenings in Ping Noi packaging the produce that was harvested that day, it was actually quite entertaining.
Drying bananas. There were tons of butterflies all over the bananas, it was really beautiful.
Logan trees


I have had many requests to see my uniform, so here it is, in all its awkward glory:


November 25th is the holiday Leery Kratong, its a water festival where you make those pretty floating things (above) and pray to the river goddess to forgive you for all the bad things you have done in the past year. My language teacher brought in about 9 students to teach us how to make them and the above is my product.
I hope you are enjoying this emma and alex.

Sunday November 4th 2007

Today it is 70 degrees out but it feels like it might as well be 50. I think I have officially become acclimated to Thai weather. I started noticing this first, when I wasn't profusely sweating I would put more layers on until I began sweating again because whenever I wasn't profusely sweating I felt cold. Now, I feel freezing. Yesterday, it was probably more around 65 degrees and I had three layers on, a knit hat and socks. The weather has been made worse though, because it has been rainy for the past two days . What I have gathered about Chiang Mai winter is that it has beautifully clear skies and average temps of 70 degrees, not bad eh?

Yesterday, Acaan Phrek took me to Ping Noi (my second field work site). The area I'm looking at it is a farm, that in 2002 made the switch to pesticide-free vegetable farming. The man who owns the farm, Phii Phop, somehow got connected to the MCC (multiple cropping center at CMU) where they were conducting a farmer field school, where they teach about how to create pesticide-free agroecosystems (it's more complicated than that but I guess you will just have to read my report or click on the link). Phii Phop took me around his fields and it was so incredible to see all of the systems and applications of pesticide-free farming which I have been reading about, in application. It was also really amazing because Phii Phop really understands the relationships of organisms within his fields and is able to experiment with different practices and such. This was of particular interest to me because recently I have been spending a lot of my time learning about IPM (integrated pest management) (click on the site to learn more) Programs. Phii Phop also raises crickets (a great afternoon snack) and uses their excrement as manure for his fields (i think this is really exciting by the way) but the crickets are actually I great source of secondary income as well... Anyways, Phii Phop uses rows of two dozen egg crates as safe spaces for the crickets to hang out in, so he lifts one up and hands it to me; mind you, there must be like 300 crickets on it and I had a serious moment of, I don't want to be holding this but I have to suck it up and pretend that I don't mind that I have crickets jumping all over me or going down my shirt. It was quite an experience, to say the least. Phii Phop and his wife Phii Kgeew are the only ones who work the fields, so I think they were excited to have me come work with them. Next Friday I will spending the weekend at Ping Noi. My goals for this site are: - understanding the specific systems that Phii Phop uses
ex. assisting pest-predator relationships, understanding when certain pests come out to eat (ie what time if day) and using some deterrent to get them off the plants (Phii Phop uses this technique on his cucumbers), etc...
- Using this field work site to get A. Phrek to tell me about the farmer Field school. Hopefully, Phii Phop will also talk to me about his experience as a farmer in the field school and his opinion about such programs.

I hope to at least spend two to three weekends at Ping Noi, I'll keep you all updated.

In closing, I would like to officially state that I have declared war on ants. I hope they all die or at least leave my room.

Ms. Crane, I would love to come talk to one of your classes when I get back, that would be a lot of fun. I'll probably be leaving Thailand on the first of June, so I could definitely come to one of your classes in June. Ps. Thanks for taking an interest in my blog, it was nice to hear from you.