Thailand on Foot

This is my last entry for this blog. I've recently started a diary on a raw food board that I'm a member of. I have been posting both there and here. It's too much of a burden. So please, if you're going to read what I'm writing, go to this link.

http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/index.php (hmmm.... Sorry it's not coming up as a live link. I don't know what to do about that.)

The main forum on the board is the one at the top where it says:
My diary is here:

"Raw Diary - Your Personal Experience".

Click the cursor on it. You'll see lots of people's diaries. Mine will probably be on the first page. But realize there are several pages of diaries. Look for:

"Raw at a Buddhist Temple in South Korea"

I'm not trying to convert anyone to raw foodism. I'm not trying to introduce it or familiarize anyone with any raw "flavor" of eating / living (any style of raw foodist life). I've been a member of the board for a while now, somewhat less than a year, and like the interaction with others on the board. And since I decided that there are things I wanted to share with them, I started up the diary. But maintaining two of these things is more than I care to do. And since I still want to share experiences and interact with others on the board, I've decided it's time to call it quits for this blog.

I'll post headings / titles in capital letters as the first line of each entry to my diary. So if something looks like it'll probably be "blatant raw foodist propoganda" you can always skip it. Each of my entries will have my name at the top, and a small picture of me (love that picture!) at the bottom (of each entry). If you don't care to read the entries of people who read and respond to my postings, skip them.

I only started up the diary a month or less ago and haven't made all that many entries in it. So if you decide to go back to the beginning, well, there isn't that much to go over.

I've got several more already typed up. I'll put them on the diary in a few days at most. I want to send this first.

The forum at the top {"Living and Raw Foods Discussion (Vegan)"}is where most of the action is. The most intersting posts are there and that's where I post most of the time.

I'll probably post at least part of this message on the diary too.

Lastly, I've made posts on several of the forums on the board. If you're family (and for some other reason interested in what I've written since I joined the group, you can always do a search for "troy".) It's a really neat board and I like it alot. But please, realize that I'm not trying to convert, introduce, or teach anyone anything. Of course, if someone does get something out of the board, great, just realize that really really isn't my intention.

Sorry, one more thing. If you feel inclined to post a message to the board, great. But, you have to be a member. If you still feel inclined to post but not to become a member, send me the message and I'll post it to the board. If you want to say that eating raw fruits and vegetables is great, but, that we should all start getting sensible and eat some real food TOO, fine. I'll post it for you.

Enough.

I guess it’s training. A local kindergarten teacher came yesterday and today to teach and play games. She’s real good with the kids. But she’s way more exaggerated than I care to get. She’s so so so animated. The kids have a great time. But I’m a bit more reserved. I can have fun with the kids, play with them, sing songs, play games, act up a bit, just a step down from her. I don’t know that anyone is expecting me to mimic this lady’s classroom ways. I still don’t know what’s expected of me. And Sunim was only here one day. Yesterday. He left again this morning. He hasn’t been here much lately.

Anyway, I am getting some ideas by watching this lady. Someone is apparently going to come for a month. Two days a week. Thursdays and Fridays. We have class from 10am until 11:30. Three classes. Thirty minutes each. I haven’t counted but a round guess is there are about 60 kids. A few fewer than I was anticipating.

There are Montessori kindergartens around. I want to go talk with at least one of them to see if they teach English and if so, to see if anyone speaks English. And if so, then I’d like to talk and observe to see what I can learn.

Some kids start at 9am and finish at 2pm while others start at 10am and finish at 3pm. Many of them are around after this time and a few are around before this time. They love to play with me, saying “Hello” a lot, and saying a few words in English. Some of them really like to hang around and spend time with me. In a playful fashion, of course. They love to laugh and play, run and generally goof around.

I’ll get some pictures someday of some of them.

Enough.

I talked with Sunim yesterday about these three things. I told him there is so much recyclable garbage around the temple. So much. I don’t know if he has much of an idea of the extent. I don’t, I’m sure. I’m not sure that anyone knows just how much there is lying here and there, outside as well as in various storage places.

I have a hard time talking with people. Not only is my ability to speak very limited, but when others speak with me, I often get very little or nothing. So I’ve decided to write things and at opportune times I’ll flash the note to someone. Yesterday I felt like I had a good chance to talk with Sunim about the garbage and the recycling. So I showed him my note. I’d written a note saying that I know an old man who accepts recyclables. I’m sure there were mistakes in my use of the language, but Sunmi read it later and told me she can understand.

So I asked Sunim what he thought of my idea. Thumbs down. So I told him there are TVs outside. They’re rusted to hell. He said that I can give away the TVs. We didn’t talk about all the stuff laying around because I can’t communicate those things. Talking with Sunmi last night she said she could probably determine some things that can be gotten rid of. So so much stuff. So, I’ll ask her to follow up on this. If she does, then other people will have to get involved.

I also told him about burning trash. I told him we burn plastic here. Every day. I understand that he’s said we shouldn’t burn the plastic garbage. But people here do anyway. So I asked him how we can stop this. I am not so sure I understood his answer very well. Something like, “We won’t burn it.” But that doesn’t seem to be the sort of answer I want. Anyway, Sunmi and I talked about my conversation (?!) with Sunim and she’s behind me. She said she’d talk with them about it.

I wrote a note for people in the office saying that if they’ll separate the paper from the other garbage then I’ll recycle the paper. Why oh why do we burn paper here? Or plastic? With recycling so very convenient, and a recycling pick-up spot just a couple of minutes walk from here (really, maybe less than two minutes) why pollute the air? The smoke goes up, and the wind always blows it into the garden. That’s the usual wind direction. There is one reason for burning that I can see, and agree with. That’s taking local responsibility for trash. But, ideally, it would make a person generate less garbage, so they have less to burn. It would ideally instill a sense of environmental and local ecological responsibility in a person. I see nothing of the sort here. Plastic plastic plastic. But I do suppose Americans generally are still far more egregious consumers of plastics. The stuff is hideous. It gets into the air and into the soil, then into our food. Who wants to eat and drink stuff associated with petroleum anyway?

Sunmi, I think, is behind me on all these things. And something about my recycling efforts I think generated a little discussion between a couple of the temple supporters last night. So, we’ll see what happens with some people apparently agreeing with me and supporting me.

Enough.

I haven’t put anything on this blog for a while. I feel like hanging out in my room now so I’ll write something.

I’ve been doing some work in the garden the past couple of weeks. Mostly watering! But also helped plant some tomatoes, some cabbage or kale, a few eggplants, and sowed lots of seeds. Everything is looking okay.

I’ve also been pulling weeds. Last time I pulled weeds it was in the spinach bed. I put the weeds onto bare spots on the bed. After finishing I pulled wild legume plants from the edge of the garden. I put those on the spinach bed too.

The old lady (again, her name is Kong Yang-ju, which means person who makes food for monks) was there in the garden, not too awfully far from me. I pulled the legume plants pretty close to where she was. I pulled them from one spot, and walked to the spinach bed with them. So I figured she must have some idea what I was doing.

When others pull weeds they toss them to the side. So soil on some parts of the bed is bare. Exposed to the sun. Not good. Dries out the soil, kills bacteria, insects find other places to hang out. Not good. I think I’ve read somewhere that people want to kill the bacteria. Figuring this might be the reason behind why others pull weeds then throw them off to the side, I decided to see what would happen if I covered the bare spots with dead weeds. It’s called mulching.

This is really such a good idea. I won’t go into it. I don’t know of any real difficulties that arise from mulching.

So I decided to do it on the one bed and see what might happen when someone finds out.

A few days later (a few days ago) Kong Yang-ju was pulling weeds in the potato patch. I saw her and offered to help. She looked at me and blurted and barked out something. I didn’t catch a word of it. But I got a look at the expression on her face and in her voice. That resonance and communication get through clearly enough sometimes. Not always, for sure. Oh, no, I did get one word. The Korean word for spinach!

I apologized and walked away. Found something else to do in the garden. She continued. We were both there until about lunchtime. She never said another word to me. I took that brief bark and the ensuing silence as a condemnation of what I’d done in the spinach bed. I’ve decided to not do the same thing again until I can explain why I did what I did. I should probably wait until I can understand her answer, but really, that day may never ever arrive.

I dislike a few methods of gardening that I see here. Hopefully something will change someday but I feel that little or nothing will change while I’m here.

Talked with Sunim a few days ago about organic gardening. Sunmi told me a while back that Sunim wants organic gardening here. But after talking with him, through Sunmi, it’s now clear to me that he himself has allowed some synthetic fertilizer use in the garden. Apparently we don’t use a lot. I don’t know how much we use and don’t know how much I myself would consider “a lot”.

Just yesterday I got permission from him to take a small piece of the garden to do some organic gardening myself. It’ll be fully organic. Except to say that I don’t know if the spot that I’ll use has “clean” soil or not.

I want to get some training first. There are some organic liquid fertilizer recipes that I had some exposure to in Thailand. I made some a couple of times and used them more than a few times. But I never did get good at making them. The method comes from right here, Korea. What I learned was a modified version, suited to Thailand. Now that I’m in Korea, I’d really like to learn Korean style. Plus, the climate here is temperate. Thailand was tropical or subtropical. More than likely I’ll live in a temperate climate after I return to the US. So, learning this style here makes sense. One because I’m not in a Thailand climate! And two, I’ll likely live in a climate more similar to this.

Just this morning Sunmi called the place that pioneered this liquid fertilizer. The name of the place is Korean Natural Farming Association (KNFA). (The head of this association has visited Thailand a number of times. He taught the Asoke people how to make these fertilizers.) There’s nobody there that can teach me in English how to make the fertilizers. I’d need an interpreter. So I asked Sunmi to call back and ask if they know of anyone here on Jeju island. The lady at KNFA told Sunmi to call back in the afternoon. In the meantime, the lady would look for someone here on Jeju. There’s gotta be someone here who makes and uses the fertilizers. If we can find someone, we can contact them and ask them to come here and show us how to make and how to use the fertilizers.

I don’t know why we do some of the things here we do in the garden but I want to try something different. I know I know, I’ve never been good at gardening in the past, why don’t I just quit? Never. Or, at least not now. I have no intention of giving up until I feel I should give up. I don’t know have that feeling. Just still lots of fire to do it.

It’s 3pm now. I’ll get off this computer soon. I suppose Sunmi will be here soon. And I hope she can call the KNFA for me.

This one’s longer than most of my entries, sorry.
Enough.

Boy, this was so fast and easy to set up I'm actually a bit skeptical that it'll be that easy to use. I was hoping that I could get email notification that a voicemail has arrived. But I don't see anywhere that this is a service that the company does. So I'll check the voicemail once a week or so to see if anyone has called.

Below I've copied the information from the phone service regarding my voicemail.

Your Account Information

Your Area775 Voice Number: 775-459-8990

Using Your Service
It's really easy...have friends, family, or coworkers reach you by dialing your new phone number. You'll receive incoming calls on your Gizmo project software! [Well, no. I will more than likely NOT have my computer on. So, if you call, and I don't pick up, please leave a voicemail.]