The last week has been incredibly busy, relative to last week. Monday and Tuesday it rained quite a bit, so Gundula and I spent a lot of time in cozy coffee shops and swimming in the rain. I also took a lot of naps (okay, so that part wasn't quite so busy). On Wednesday, we had our second silver making class. I made another ring and a pair of earrings…such progress! That afternoon, we started preparing for the three day Earth Day Environmental Art & Music Festival. Our first job: digging holes for the tree planting ceremony. It was great fun to dig holes in the rain and to get extremely muddy!
Thursday morning was the tree planting ceremony with about 50 children from two neighboring schools. I led a group consisting of eight: three pre-teen Balinese girls and five 7-8 year old Balinese & Western boys. The girls were calm, helpful and quiet. The boys were entirely the opposite…wild! It was all I could do to get them to stay focused on planting the tree. They were much more interested in throwing mud on each other, making mud mustaches and seeing who could get the dirtiest. It was a blast…since I haven’t really been around kids in a long time, it reminded me of how much raw energy they have and of how thankful I am that I am not a teacher! ;) The funniest thing that happened related to poop. During the first 3 minutes when I had the group’s attention, I explained the planting process: compost into the hole, some soil, plant, more soil, mulch, etc. One of the more vocal boys said, “I’m not touching the compost. Compost is poop.” I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain that the compost we were using, while directly from a compost toilet, had been completely through the composting process to remove all of the “bad” parts of poop. Hilarious to hear five boys discussing holding poop in their hands...
And another thing about poop…for the last week or so, I’ve seen random droppings in my bathroom, way too small for the spider that seems to have moved in. My guess was mouse or rat until I had to move the dresser to retrieve a slip of paper that had fallen behind. There was a massive gecko just hanging out on the wall…I screamed because it was so large and so close to the paper I wanted. The guys working at the hotel where I’m staying had a good laugh at my expense, but, at least I know where the poop has been coming from. Now there are three of us in room 6 at the Swan Inn: a spider, a gecko and me.
On my way home from the tree planting morning, I stopped to look at some art in a shop on the side of the road. They had some beautiful pieces, and as I really haven’t purchased a souvenir from Bali yet, I decided to buy a decent size canvas painting. I noticed, though, that the particular one that I had chosen was not signed by the artist. To get it signed, I had to drive another 20 minutes north of Ubud to the artist’s home. My coming was apparently a big deal as every family member in their family village came to see me. None of them spoke much English, so communicating was a bit challenging, but it was such a wonderful experience to meet the artist, see his workshop and see the way a typical Balinese family lives.
I spent most of Friday afternoon running errands, setting up for the festival and handing out fliers and posters to local restaurants. Saturday was a very long, very hot day! The festival started at 3, but the volunteers arrived by 9 to help with the set up and with organizing the vendors. Somehow, I got put in charge of a whole lot of things and so spent the morning running around like crazy trying to stay on top of everything. My official job title once the festival started was, importantly, Bar Ticket Girl. I strategically chose a job where 1) I could sit down in the shade 2) I was close to the stage (great music!!) and 3) I could meet all of the men who wanted a beer! I also filled in at a booth where people where encouraged to write an idea to help save the earth on a slip of paper and post it on a concept web board. A group of pre-teens from a local Balinese school all came together to the booth when I was there. One of them wrote, “heal the world” on his slip of paper and I started humming Michael Jackson’s song. The next thing I knew we were all singing the song together, loudly. It gave me goose bumps and almost brought tears to my eyes….very moving.
Gundula worked at the kid’s section of the festival the majority of the day. She thought it would be fun to paint a huge butterfly all over my face. For some reason, neither one of us could stop laughing as she was painting me. I was the oldest person at the festival with a Lepidoptera on my face. ;)
Today, we went to a cremation ceremony. In the Balinese culture, they celebrate life by playing music, cheering and having a parade. An older woman had passed…we saw the men lift the cardboard coffin draped in colorful tapestries onto the top of a gold tower to be carried by bamboo. Once the deceased was in place, the parade started. The parade was led by a cardboard bull being carried by bamboo, followed by the Tamalan percussion band and the gold tower. We walked through the streets for about a mile until we arrived at the cremation site where they moved the coffin into the bull, performed some blessings and made offerings. Then, each member of the family/community lit an incense stick and together lit the bull on fire. The entire atmosphere was relaxed. No tears. They had a few people selling food, people were smoking cigarettes and one of the men chanting a blessing answered his cell phone call while he was up with the body. Definitely nothing like any funeral I have been to at home, but in all honesty, I like this one better. It was a positive, beautiful and peaceful celebration.
Author’s note: I had to look up another word for butterfly for effect…I didn’t just know that. xoxo
Thursday morning was the tree planting ceremony with about 50 children from two neighboring schools. I led a group consisting of eight: three pre-teen Balinese girls and five 7-8 year old Balinese & Western boys. The girls were calm, helpful and quiet. The boys were entirely the opposite…wild! It was all I could do to get them to stay focused on planting the tree. They were much more interested in throwing mud on each other, making mud mustaches and seeing who could get the dirtiest. It was a blast…since I haven’t really been around kids in a long time, it reminded me of how much raw energy they have and of how thankful I am that I am not a teacher! ;) The funniest thing that happened related to poop. During the first 3 minutes when I had the group’s attention, I explained the planting process: compost into the hole, some soil, plant, more soil, mulch, etc. One of the more vocal boys said, “I’m not touching the compost. Compost is poop.” I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain that the compost we were using, while directly from a compost toilet, had been completely through the composting process to remove all of the “bad” parts of poop. Hilarious to hear five boys discussing holding poop in their hands...
And another thing about poop…for the last week or so, I’ve seen random droppings in my bathroom, way too small for the spider that seems to have moved in. My guess was mouse or rat until I had to move the dresser to retrieve a slip of paper that had fallen behind. There was a massive gecko just hanging out on the wall…I screamed because it was so large and so close to the paper I wanted. The guys working at the hotel where I’m staying had a good laugh at my expense, but, at least I know where the poop has been coming from. Now there are three of us in room 6 at the Swan Inn: a spider, a gecko and me.
On my way home from the tree planting morning, I stopped to look at some art in a shop on the side of the road. They had some beautiful pieces, and as I really haven’t purchased a souvenir from Bali yet, I decided to buy a decent size canvas painting. I noticed, though, that the particular one that I had chosen was not signed by the artist. To get it signed, I had to drive another 20 minutes north of Ubud to the artist’s home. My coming was apparently a big deal as every family member in their family village came to see me. None of them spoke much English, so communicating was a bit challenging, but it was such a wonderful experience to meet the artist, see his workshop and see the way a typical Balinese family lives.
I spent most of Friday afternoon running errands, setting up for the festival and handing out fliers and posters to local restaurants. Saturday was a very long, very hot day! The festival started at 3, but the volunteers arrived by 9 to help with the set up and with organizing the vendors. Somehow, I got put in charge of a whole lot of things and so spent the morning running around like crazy trying to stay on top of everything. My official job title once the festival started was, importantly, Bar Ticket Girl. I strategically chose a job where 1) I could sit down in the shade 2) I was close to the stage (great music!!) and 3) I could meet all of the men who wanted a beer! I also filled in at a booth where people where encouraged to write an idea to help save the earth on a slip of paper and post it on a concept web board. A group of pre-teens from a local Balinese school all came together to the booth when I was there. One of them wrote, “heal the world” on his slip of paper and I started humming Michael Jackson’s song. The next thing I knew we were all singing the song together, loudly. It gave me goose bumps and almost brought tears to my eyes….very moving.
Gundula worked at the kid’s section of the festival the majority of the day. She thought it would be fun to paint a huge butterfly all over my face. For some reason, neither one of us could stop laughing as she was painting me. I was the oldest person at the festival with a Lepidoptera on my face. ;)
Today, we went to a cremation ceremony. In the Balinese culture, they celebrate life by playing music, cheering and having a parade. An older woman had passed…we saw the men lift the cardboard coffin draped in colorful tapestries onto the top of a gold tower to be carried by bamboo. Once the deceased was in place, the parade started. The parade was led by a cardboard bull being carried by bamboo, followed by the Tamalan percussion band and the gold tower. We walked through the streets for about a mile until we arrived at the cremation site where they moved the coffin into the bull, performed some blessings and made offerings. Then, each member of the family/community lit an incense stick and together lit the bull on fire. The entire atmosphere was relaxed. No tears. They had a few people selling food, people were smoking cigarettes and one of the men chanting a blessing answered his cell phone call while he was up with the body. Definitely nothing like any funeral I have been to at home, but in all honesty, I like this one better. It was a positive, beautiful and peaceful celebration.
Author’s note: I had to look up another word for butterfly for effect…I didn’t just know that. xoxo
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