Recharge and be well.

Agreed!!!!

Linda -

I would love to hear about your trip to Thailand. I love Thailand, love the people and want to continue to learn more about their culture and Buddhism. Please share!

Also, my son and I are considering a trip to Africa. We'd like to go with open hearts and open minds. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jo

Linda "Blessed by Gulu!" Nowakowski said:

In the past 7 weeks, I have taken an incredible trip to Africa, prepared the outline and abstract for a paper to be presented in Budapest in August and started work on my PhD. I have read more than 2000 pages of works on economics, development, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. I have tried to maintain some semblence of normality - not really normality but continutity of sameness - particularly in how I have interacted in this community.

I have realized in the past few days that I can not keep this up right now. I am not sure how I will keep up my interactions but I certainly cannot get involved in the day to day drama in this community. It increases my frustration levels and ultimately achieves nothing.

I think there are incredibly rich concepts that could be developed in looking at the feedback mechanisms and group dynamics of this community. It takes time and thought (and time for the thought) and I can't afford it anymore or at least right now.

In the past months I have developed a deep place in my heart for problems centered on providing access to safe drinking water. I will continue to work on that but not on the scale I have worked in the past.

I will probably still pop my head into Word Association :-D It is fun and mindless and requires little time for the laughs it often brings me.

I have committed to help David on his Worldwide Connectory but time wise I am going to have to limit my involvement there as well.

I have already dropped out of all of the groups that I shared with one member because I choose not to deal with him. We still share membership in <Ned> but I doubt that he is going to cause problems there.

I am going to be spending the next 4 days working almost non-stop with my doctoral adviser on refining frameworks for Buddhist economics and Sufficiency Economies in preparation for an international Conference at Chulalongkorn University in a few weeks, for a UNESCO conference we will help host in December and for getting my research proposal completed for next month.

On Monday I am leaving the hinterlands for 5 days and going to Bangkok. Next week is Songkran - Thai New Year. It is about my favorite holiday in Thailand. It is a 4-5 day water festival during the hottest time of the year. There is no way to stay dry during Songkran. That is to say that you have a few days of being cool and being kewl! But it has its more gracious and serious side as well. The Songkran tradition is recognized as a valuable custom for the Thai community, society and religion. The value for family is to provide the opportunity for family members to gather in order to express their respects to the elders by pouring scented water onto the hands of their parents and grandparents and to present them gifts. The elders in return wish the youngsters good luck and prosperity. To that end,I will be visiting with my sister-in-law's family.

While I am in Bangkok I will be learning about a large Buddhist community, Santi Asoke. The chairman of the community is a PhD student in my program as well and (be still my heart) he is my age! He speaks English well and we have kind of agreed that I will help him improve his writing and speaking and he will help me understand the Buddhism and Thai culture that I need to understand. I will also be doing some research at the Chulalongkorn Library and doing some more reading. It probably won't be much of a relaxing time but it will feel good being someplace different and being around some people who speak English. (I got really spoiled in my 3 weeks in Uganda where everyone I spoke to could understand me and I could understand them!)

All of this is to say that I am going to be scare, at least in terms of my prowling around and keeping on top of everything going on in the community. If there is anything that you need me for, please message me because I am only an e-mail away.