Cambodia and Home

I think I'm finally getting over my massive case of jet lag, so I'm posting some photos from Cambodia. Coming east over the International Date Line threw my system much more than going west over it did, as far as I can recall, although maybe I'm just blocking it out of my mind. (Does anyone know why that happens? I remember it being the same when I went to China with my family a couple of years ago.) Still, I think I'm back on some semblance of a normal sleep pattern, which means you can get a mostly sentient blog post.

Where did I leave off? My parents and I were in Thailand for two days, then flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia, on a terrifying little prop jet. We had four days to explore Angkor Wat and the other temples, so we spent the mornings at the ruins and then spent the afternoons, which were probably ten degrees hotter than they'd been in Bali, in the pool hiding from the heat.

So to start, some pictures of the temples. We started off at Ta Prohm temple, which is notable because the jungle grew into it instead of just around it. As a result, a number of trees are now important structural elements; if they were to be cut down the temple would crumble even more than it already has. (It's also a notable temple because it's where part of the Tomb Raider movie was filmed, but we'll put that aside.)

See what I mean? A tree growing out of the roof of part of the temple.

A closer shot of one of the trees. I don't know if the size comes across: the horizontal root was around the level of my head.

 

After that, we went to a smaller, probably incomplete temple (dedicated to Shiva, I think). Whereas the walls of Ta Prohm were intricately carved, the carving on this one stopped about halfway up. There were some steep stairs still intact, though, so we climbed up to the top (and bought some bracelets from a girl sitting up there who knew more random statistics about the United States than I do).

If you look really closely you should be able to see my dad, in a blue shirt, in the center doorway at the top.

 

And, of course, we went to Angkor Wat. The temple complex there is enormous, and everything is intricately carved with patterns, false windows, and images of apsaras, the traditional dancers.

Carvings!

 

What blog post about Angkor Wat would be complete without the quintessential Angkor Wat photo? The teal fabric is where the temple is being restored.

From the center/top of Angkor Wat, looking out over the west (front) gate. Most Angkor temples are oriented eastward, but Angkor Wat breaks that pattern.

We went to Angkor Thom, as well, which is adorned with huge faces on the towers (of kings, I think? I've forgotten). Outside the temple, they had elephants that you could feed huge quantities of bananas (complete with the peel) for $1. Unfortunately, the photo of that is on my dad's camera, so you don't get that one. Elephants are probably my favorite animal now.

I told you there are big faces carved into Angkor Thom. See?

Siem Reap itself was a neat, if odd, city. Everything is pretty new, since most of the city got rebuilt by NGO's after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. When we were there, it was the end of the dry season; after all the green of Bali it really threw me off to see so much dust and concrete. It was interesting to be someplace that so clearly relied on foreign aid and tourism -- most prices were listed in US dollars, and bikes were a huge mode of transportation. Since we mostly just went to temples, I don't know very much about Cambodia or its political history, but I'd like to know more.

That's kind of a down-note to finish talking about Cambodia, so here's a picture of a tuk-tuk.

After Cambodia, we hopped on another (scary) prop-jet and headed back to Bangkok for a day and a half. In the four days we'd been gone, the city seemed to have picked itself back up. I saw a lot more tourists, and businesses that had been closed were open again. At one point, though, we took the Sky Train past the Siam Center, the building that was burned out. Although all the buildings in its vicinity were clearly functioning, the Siam Center was decidedly charred and empty. People typically referenced the protests as "the big problem" or just "the problem." They never sounded completely convinced that the turmoil is over, although the newspapers seem to insist that it is.

Now, as of Monday night, I'm back home. I've been in Bethesda for a few days, enjoying potable tap water and bread, trying to get over jet lag, and baking up a storm. (If anyone wants a recipe for the awesome pizza I made on Wednesday, let me know. I think I'm making it again tonight, it was that good.) This afternoon I move up to the Philly area, where hopefully I have an internship, although I'll know with more certainty next week.

I've really enjoyed blogging my experiences, and I think I'll keep this space up and running. (Although I suppose I'll have to change the name. Any suggestions?) To start with, I have some Balinese recipes if anyone wants them. I haven't quite decided what I'll write about generally, but no doubt you'll see new things up here occasionally. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see!

Thailand

Specifically, Bangkok. We (my parents and I) got in yesterday afternoon, and spent today basically just being tourists, going to all sorts of temples and to the palace. (Apologies in advance if my captions are not 100% accurate as to where I took the photo -- I don't speak Thai so I have a terrible memory for the names of places here.)

As one might expect, it's rather quiet here given the protests of the past few weeks. There's still a curfew at night (tonight from 11pm-5am) so the government is clearly still a bit concerned, though the protests themselves have disbanded. The newspapers and government seem to be painting a picture of an ended conflict, but some of the people I've talked to here seem to think that nothing's yet fixed. I frankly don't know enough to assess who might be right, but it will be interesting to see what the next month or two brings.

But in the meantime, the internet at this hotel is nice and fast, so you get lots of pictures.

A guardian demon outside the temple of the Emerald Buddha. There were a bunch of these guys, each probably 15-20 feet tall.

One of the pagodas outside the temple of the Emerald Buddha. This one was entirely covered in little pieces of gold-leaf-inlaid glass, which apparently have to be replaced each seven years.

A woman restoring part of an enormous Ramayana mural.

Demons and monkeys (the sad one on the right is a demon; I think the other two are monkeys) support a pagoda.

The reclining Buddha, in the (surprise!) temple of the reclining Buddha. This one is 15m high and 46m long. No big deal.

Chinese porcelain inlaid in the Temple of Dawn.

Another demon(?) supporting the Temple of Dawn.

Dried fish market!

  

So that's the whirlwind tour of Bangkok. Tomorrow, we head to Siem Reap, Cambodia, for four days, then back to Bangkok for another day or two before heading home. Adventures!

I Guess I'll Actually Update This Thing

Sorry for the lull between posts. I've mostly been focusing on my ISP, so there's not all that much to report from the last few weeks. There is, however, a big festival going on at Pura Samuan Tiga, not far from my host family's house (really only a few blocks). My ibu has been spending all of her free time putting together offerings for it, and this morning she went to the market around 5 in the morning (or so she told me last night; I wasn't awake to confirm her departure) to buy fruit for offerings. The volleyball field (court?) near the temple, down the street from our program center, has been converted to sort of a tent city of warungs. Since people come from all over the area for the temple festival (which goes on for something like two weeks), locals set up food stalls to make a little extra profit. Perhaps later some pictures -- I keep forgetting to take my camera with me when I go places.

What else? I did end up switching my ISP topic just before the ISP period began. Instead of researching and writing about folktales, I've been writing stories of my own. One of them is loosely based on a popular Balinese folktale/legend, the story of Jayaprana and Layonsari. I won't recount it in full here, but Jessie has described it as a combination of King David from the Old Testament and Romeo and Juliet. (Admittedly, I remember next to nothing about King David -- is he the one from David & Goliath? -- so I can't quite vouch for the accuracy of that statement. Sorry, Dad.) My second story is based on things my ibu has told me about her life growing up and with her children, and the third is about topeng and sort of about Balinese Hinduism. All in all, I've written over 50 pages of fiction this month -- so you can understand why I haven't been up to much else.

That's about it for now, but sometime in the next couple of days I'll try to get out and take some more pictures. I'd like to get take some pictures of Bedulu, so that you all might be able to get a better sense of daily life. More later!

So That's Why They Call It the Rainy Season

I had just finished lunch in Ubud and was en route to finding a new cafe with wifi, when it started to rain. I ducked into the market to buy an umbrella (usually I wouldn't mind getting wet but my computer was in my backpack), at which point it started pouring. Now, I'm not talking "slightly above a drizzle" pouring. Nope -- after about twenty minutes, the streets looked like rivers, current and little rapids included. A very nice group of Balinese people let me sit in their pottery stall for a couple of minutes, until I got bored and ventured out. I wish I'd had my camera with me. It really was amazing.

Anyway. The French tourist story.

A couple of weeks ago (I think; my comprehension of the passage of time is a little wonky at this point), my Ibu and Bapak informed me that two French tourists would be staying in the spare bedroom across from mine for two nights. (By across I mean in the building next to mine, the one with the bathroom I use. I think I've explained that Balinese houses tend to be a collection of small buildings rather than one big one. If I haven't, well, then, there you go.) Apparently this sort of thing happens with some frequency; as long as my host family has spare bedrooms, they figure they may as well use them.

That evening, I was sitting on my porch reading when an enormous tour bus pulled onto our street. We live on a fairly major street in Bedulu, but it's not the main road that goes through town and to see a tour bus there was bizarre. I had assumed it was just going to be two random tourists; instead, it turned out, it was a whole group.

So these two ladies came into the yard accompanied by one of the group guides and my Bapak. I tried very hard not to judge them by the enormousness of their suitcases (which really were bigger than mine, and I've been here for two and a half months. Ah well.) Bapak showed them the room, and hardly a moment passed when there was a shriek. Ibu and I looked in that direction, and caught something about a lizard. They had seen a tokek, the bigger of two varieties of gecko commonly found in Bali. Now, if you piss off a tokek (i.e. by chasing it or trying to catch it), it might bite you, which'll probably hurt. But short of that, they're totally harmless. I'm pretty sure one lives behind my closet. Still, they refused to go back into the room until the guide came out with a dead lizard in hand, which he did.

While this was going on, my ibu and kakak (older brother) and I were cracking up, teasing them in Indonesian. My ibu asked me if I was afraid of lizards, and I laughed, telling her that they're everywhere and there's no sense in being afraid. I didn't have the heart (or the language skills) to explain to the two Frenchwomen that another tokek would probably find its way into the room later.

Things were pretty uneventful until the next night, when Bapak came to get them to go to some dance performance their group had planned. As they were leaving, one of the women pointed at the painting that hangs outside my kakak's door. "I bought one just like that!" she said. "Only bigger."

So my bapak promptly started trying to sell it to her. He explained to them that he and Ibu own a painting shop, which is kind of true, in that my Ibu owns a tourist tchotchke store outside of Goa Gajah which sells some paintings, among other things. Then he named a fairly ridiculous price.
She declined, but said, "maybe we got it at the same place!"

At this point, my bapak feigned being upset. "No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "I painted it myself."

Up to this point, my ibu and I had been watching the exchange with interest, giggling occasionally, but at this point we completely lost it. My bapak is a very talented man, and he makes awesome woodcarvings (that being his job), but he definitely doesn't paint. Without thinking, I said to him, "bohong!" which means liar. For a moment, I panicked, not sure if it was really bad to tease one's elder. Fortunately, when I said it my ibu laughed even harder and repeated it to him.

The French women didn't buy the painting. Still, it was a pretty entertaining thing to watch.



In other news, to answer Ryan's question about whether auspicious days are spontaneous:

So, the Balinese have several calendars. There's the lunar calendar, which determines when things like Nyepi fall. Then there's a seven-day calendar, based on the Gregorian calendar and used for things like school calendars and general day-to-day business, since it matches internationally. It's also the basis for the 210-day Balinese year, since the calendar is made up of 30 seven-day wuku, or weeks. That determines when a temple's odalan, or temple birthday, falls. Then there's a five-day calendar and a three-day calendar, both based off of traditional market days (one Javanese and one Balinese, though I can never remember which is which). Then there's also a calendar that works something like 1-day week, 2-day week, 3-day week, etc etc, but that one is completely over my head so I won't even try to explain it.

The point is, when you look at a Balinese calendar, it's got all sorts of writing on it. Each day will have the Gregorian date, the Gregorian day of the week, and then what day of the five-day, three-day, bizarre cycle I don't understand, and lunar week it is. Also, all of the wukus have their own name, so that's on there, too.

As far as I can tell, in terms of religious offerings, the five-day and three-day week are most important (although the wuku is important for odalans). Each week has its "most auspicious day," and the intersection of those days, Kaja-Kliwon, is the most auspicious day of all. A lot of rituals go on on that day. Days that are just Kaja or just Kliwon are also reasonably auspicious, and I think some of the other intersections are too. Some of them are not auspicious at all, but I don't know which particular days those are.

So to make a long story short, yes, people absolutely know about these events in advance. They take a ton of planning, especially for something like the enormous odalan at Besakih. In the days before a festival, women are making various offerings out of palm leaves and flowers, and the men are doing the cooking necessary for sacrifices and offerings. Also, the temples are decorated, and I imagine the high priests are also doing a whole bunch of things to prepare (though I can't say with certainty what they are).

But this stuff also goes on on a daily basis, too, since every day people make offerings, usually in the mornings and the evenings, part of whatever they've cooked that day. It's actually kind of problematic: a generation or two ago, people made offerings less frequently, but as tourism and other forces have emphasized Balinese Hinduism, there has been pressure to make more offerings. In and of itself, that's not necessarily problematic, except for the fact that daily offerings require both a lot of money and a lot of time. As a result, some Balinese families put more effort into offerings than things like education.

Still, it is pretty cool to watch the whole community come together in preparation for the big festivals. Everyone gets really excited, and the temples really do look spectacular. Plus, it's a lot of fun to get to go to them.

Woosh!

That's the sound of time passing quickly. I didn't realize it'd been so long since I'd last posted!

The last few weeks have been pretty laid-back. We're prepping for our independent study period (ISP), so we've had a bunch of papers due and we have exams next week. After that, classes are over and we have a month to explore the topic of our choice. I'll be studying satua, traditional folktales, most of which are animal fables. I'm going to be going around Bedulu (some people are going elsewhere on the island, but I like Bedulu and I really like hanging out with my host family) getting as many people to tell me stories as possible. Then I'm going to try to figure out why the stories aren't told as commonly now as they were before (my hypothesis: electricity, TV, and public education). Then I'm going to attempt to deduce whether there's a correllation between people not telling the stories as much and changing cultural values.

Basically, it's all an excuse to get people to tell me stories.

Prep for ISP -- meeting with my advisor, writing up the proposal, etc. -- has been taking a lot of my free time, but last night I went with my host parents to two huge temple festivals. Now, I can only understand some of what my host family says to me (and I think because they know that they never give me fully comprehensive explanations of what's going on), so I had been under the impression that at six o'clock, we would ride a bus to Besakih, the biggest and most important temple in Bali, then go to the festival, eat dinner, and head home.

Technically, all those things happened. At 6, we piled into the car and drove toward Mas, where my bapak works. We met up with his boss and some people he works with, then sat around on the bale (sort of a porch/gazebo-ish structure) for a while waiting for more people to show up. Then we piled onto a big bus (the kind they use for tours), at which point my ibu informed me it would be a two-hour ride. Roughly an hour and a half later, we arrived at Pura Ulun Batur, the second biggest/most important temple in Bali. I figured maybe I had misheard my host parents. We prayed for ten minutes (the big festivals are a pretty quick in-and-out affair, because there are so many people who want to make offerings and pray), then walked back to the bus.

"Next we'll go to Besakih," my ibu said. That would take another hour to get to, and by this point it was around nine pm. I snacked on some of the fruit my ibu had bought, and napped. When we got there, I was floored. Besakih is huge -- my ibu said that there are 1000 temples within the complex, but I think that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but only a little bit -- and the whole thing was fully adorned with brightly colored fabric, gold, offerings, flowers, and fruit.

We first walked up the stairs (the temple is on a hillside) to a relatively smaller temple to pray. My bapak said that there are different temples for different castes; because the family follows the patriarch's caste, we were in the ksatriya temple. (Quick review: there are three high castes. First is brahmana, the priestly caste. Second highest is ksatriya, the warrior/ruling class. Third, I believe, is wesya, the merchant class. After those castes come the sudra, the commoners. Caste in Bali isn't nearly as important as it is in India, but it does determine things like where in a village someone lives and where one goes to pray.) After that, we went to the main courtyard, which was enormous. The ground was covered in offerings that others had made and left. We knelt, waited for the high priest to begin instruction (which basically involves when to pray, who to pray to, and when to stop), then followed his instructions. After that, we were finished, and walked down the stairs of the temple.

At this point, it was roughly 11:30pm. My bapak went to buy us fish sate, and we sat on a wall alongside the road and ate it with rice and fruit that my ibu had bought. When we finished, it was time to head home, and we piled onto the bus again. We got home around 1:15am, and I headed to bed.

The temple festival at Besakih lasts for 15 days, in order to accomodate all of the people who want to come. Later in the week, my brothers and their wives will go. I'm not sure if they'll go to Ulun Batur, too, but it wouldn't surprise me if that festival also lasts for a long time. To an outsider, it appears that these festivals just kind of pop up without reason, but usually it's because it's an especially auspicious day. I'm pretty sure these festivals were odalan, which is sort of like a temple birthday and happens twice a year (because the relevant Balinese calendar has 210 days).

Prepare yourselves for an incredibly long post.

It feels like ages since I've written a blog post. We've been on an extended excursion for the past nine or so days, but somehow it feels like I've been away longer. Bedulu is starting to feel more like home. When I got back to my homestay, my Ibu gave me a big hug and everyone asked about my trip (and then let me go have time to myself, since I've been up since 3:30 in the morning -- more on that later). After many nights in various hotels, it's a bit of a relief to be back in a familiar room that I can call my own for the time being.

I'm typing this up starting on Sunday night. I've done so much recently that I want to start to get it down before I forget, and I'll most likely not be able to post this until Wednesday. Tuesday is Nyepi, which is sort-of-kind-of the Balinese new year celebration, and the day before is a huge celebration. On the evening before Nyepi, the streets turn into a sort of raucous party, and people parade around ogoh-ogoh that the boys have spent the last month or so making (I think I explained them in a bit more detail last post). During the day, they make offerings to the demons (Balinese believe in a balance between good and evil, and bad spirits must also be respected). The day after (which is Nyepi), the opposite happens. In order to convince the demons that Bali is uninhabited and therefore uninteresting, the entire island shuts down (and I mean entire: even the airport is closed). People can't leave their houses, drive, work, or use electricity. (Although people fudge the rules here and there -- last year, my teacher Mirah went to her neighbor's house to hang out for half an hour or so, something that's technically forbidden.) So basically, with all the hubbub, I won't be getting to an internet cafe anytime in the next couple of days.

Back to the beginning of the excursion. Two Saturdays ago, we met up with a handful of students from Udayana University in Denpasar who major in English, and headed to Ary's (the academic director) village in Tabanan. On the way, we stopped at a semi-organic (it aims to be organic but is still in the transition phase) farm in Batukaru. Unfortunately, the lecture there wasn't very good because a lot got lost in translation (which is a frequent problem), but the farm was beautiful and we got an amazing lunch.

After the farm, we headed to Desa Munduk Pakel, the village. We were going to stop driving partway there and walk the rest of the way through the sawah (rice fields), but before we had a chance it started raining buckets and thundering, so we drove the whole way there. By the time we arrived, the rain had decreased to a little more than a drizzle. When it finally stopped, we hiked up to the sawah to check it out. Then it was back for dinner and to meet our homestay families. Mine apparently was the family of Ary's first husband -- scandalous! (No, really, divorce is quite uncommon in Bali.) We also got to play gamelan that evening.

The sawah near Ary's village.

A lot of the villagers ride their motorbikes up to where the road stops,
then walk the rest of the way. This was around sunrise.

The next day, we headed into the sawah to get our hands dirty and to help Ary's father in their fields. We spent an hour or so hoeing the flooded sawah that will be planted sometime in the future, breaking up dirt and grass clods and smoothing it out. To smooth it out, you walk on the mud you've already hoed, so within minutes we were all pretty dirty. Then Ary's father declared that we'd done enough, and our work ethic clearly devolved. Within about ten minutes, most of us (some of the Balinese girls, and a couple of the guys, ran away) were covered head to toe in mud that we had slung at one another. (I unfortunately don't have pictures of this, but hopefully Ary will post some soon and I can direct you to them -- it was pretty ridiculous.) Once we tired of throwing mud, which is to say once being hit with mud no longer made a person any dirtier, we started racing. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to race through water or snow, but it was kind of like that, only harder -- the bottom of the sawah is slick with mud and if you're at all tired, you'll face plant. After the races, we got to drink and eat some young coconut and then go bathe in the river, something we did every day after that. Then we had some class, ate dinner, and played more gamelan. I eventually figured out the smaller bronze instrument (it looks sort of like a xylophone), but I'm still not coordinated enough to play the faster parts.

The next day -- I think it was Monday -- we went on sort of a salad walk through the forest. We started out in the village garden, picking ginger root, galangal, a sour fruit (the name of which I've forgotten), and coffee beans. Then we walked through the forest, finding all sorts of things. I don't remember all of what we picked, but a few that I recall are turmeric, water spinach, lemongrass, and plant called bongkot that looks like really big lemongrass and tastes kind of like artichoke. When we finished, we went back to Ary's house and made the most amazing sambal (sort of a spread/relish of chopped vegetables, usually mostly chilies) I've ever eaten. (And I have the recipe, so if you remind me when I'm home I'll make you some!) After lunch, we learned how to make bowls from coconuts. After that, we had free time, and I conducted my first field interview with a man who told me a folktale and answered all sorts of questions about it. (He also seemed a little confused about why I was asking him to tell me a children's story.)

On our last full day in the village, some people went hunting with Putu, Ary's son. (I passed. Everyone should be surprised.) Then, in the afternoon, we got to watch a cockfight, which was at the same time fascinating and horrible. The older men in the village run it, and they're all these totally laid-back guys who pass the time between fights gambling on dominoes. The cockfights are designed to be bloody -- cockfights are illegal except for ritual purpose, and the ritual purpose is to spill blood in sacrifice -- and the men tie knives to the rooster's foot before the fight begins. (Sometimes one bird will get two knives, one on each foot, if the owners of both birds agree beforehand that it's otherwise at a disadvantage, i.e. because of size.) Then the fight goes on until one of the birds can't stand anymore. The losing bird becomes food, and the winning bird earns its owner a fair sum of money.

That day had somewhat of a theme to it, since in the evening we went eel hunting in the sawah. It ended up being more of a "follow the guy with the giant eel-catching-pliers and the bucket through the mud and try not to fall in" excursion, since there was only one set of eel-catching pliers and there weren't that many eels. Some of the guys went off to try to catch them with their hands and managed to catch one, which impressed the villager we were hunting with. The eels looked kind of like giant worms, and the next day they were fried up for lunch. Apparently, with the introduction of pesticides (which are used with abandon, since the government originally gave them to farmers for free), eels are rarer. It's problematic, because they used to be an important source of food.

On Wednesday, we parted ways with the Udayana students (which was sad -- they were really cool) and headed to Lovina, on the north coast, for our "spring break." Lovina is right on the beach, and it's near Singaraja, which was a major port town under the Dutch. Because it's easier to get to than the ports of south Bali, there's much more multiculturalism. There's a larger Muslim community there, and also a large number of Chinese people and Chinese descendants. That evening, we went to one of the major Buddhist temples in Bali. A few monks still live there, but not as many as there once were.

The next morning, we went to Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha (UnDikSha), the university in Singaraja. We met with the English majors there and had a discussion on interfaith dialogue, since there are communities in the Singaraja area that have both Hindu and Muslim families, something you see more rarely in the south. It was refreshing to have a discussion instead of a lecture, and also interesting to hear the differences in religious dialogue there. In Indonesia, everyone must declare a religion -- it's on your identity card -- so it's pretty central to daily life. In the mixed communities, usually Hindu people go to the big Muslim ceremonies, and vice versa.

That afternoon, we went to a Bugis village on the coast. The Bugis are Muslim fisherman, and so their customs are fairly different from those of the Hindu Balinese. (They also are the origin of the Boogeyman -- back in the day they were also pretty fearsome pirates and colonizers used to tell their kids they'd give them to the Bugimen. These people definitely didn't fit that description, though.) It's become a tradition that when the SIT students visit the village, they play music and we dance with the kids. I don't think I've ever met such cool kids. They were reluctant at first, but once we got going, they practically wouldn't let us stop. They also loved our cameras, and insisted we take tons of pictures of them and then show them. After we danced, we got to see their mosque, which they renovated just last year.

SIT students dancing with awesome Bugis kids.

On Friday morning, we went with the UnDikSha students to Gitgit waterfall, near Lovina. The waterfall was huge, and afterward we (just the SIT students and Ary's son) took turns jumping off some rocks into a swimming hole of cold water. After that, we went to a Chinese temple, Klenteng, and then to lunch with the UnDikSha students.

The next day (sorry, have I bored you to bits yet?), we left Lovina for Kintamani, on the edge of Lake Batur. On our way, we stopped at Pura Ulun Batur, which is a temple that serves as the starting point of all of the irrigation networks and coordinates it all. Once we got to Kintamani, we had time to rest up before our early wake-up call the next morning.

At 3:30 on Sunday morning, we woke and got ready for our hike up Gunung Batur (gunung means mountain). On our way up, we met up with some Indian guys who were studying in Singapore, and hiked around with them. We got to the top just before sunrise, and had a breakfast of coffee and volcano-steamed eggs and banana sandwiches. (Yes, there is a small warung on top of the mountain.) After sunrise, we hiked around the caldera, then headed down. We were back at our hotel by 9 am, then had some down-time before we left to return to Bedulu.

So that's the round-Bali excursion. While I'm on my writing streak (it's now Tuesday), I figure I'll say a little more about Nyepi, which I am currently experiencing. Yesterday, in the middle of the day, there were big offerings in the street (with chicken sate as sacrifices -- depending on the village, the sacrifice can be as small as a chicken or as big as a cow). In the evening, the boys paraded around all the ogoh-ogoh in the center of the town, while a guy on a loudspeaker cracked jokes about them all. That went on until around 10 or 11 at night.

Today (which is to say Tuesday) is Nyepi, and theoretically everything's supposed to be quiet. It's been a kind of confusing day, though. There are four rules: no fire/lights, no work, no entertainment, and no traveling. When I walked into the bathroom this morning to shower, the light was on. Later, my Ibu was sweeping, and she told me I could wash my clothes (my teachers yesterday had told me I wasn't allowed to). I've been reading all day, and earlier my host sister-in-law was playing guitar to her baby. This morning, my Ibu told me I was welcome to do anything around the house, I just couldn't leave, and at night there couldn't be any lights on. Still, around 4:30 kids spilled into the streets and played for about an hour. When I asked my host sister-in-law why that was okay, she shrugged and said maybe they were bored. My Ibu added that I could go join them if I wanted to, I just had to be back inside in an hour. And now, I've learned that in my room, I can have my light on, I just have to have the shades drawn.

Definitely a holiday of contradictions. But a nice one at that -- I've spent the day reading, lying around, and getting some work done. After the flurry of activity that was the last week and a half, it was nice to have some time to myself with no real agenda.

As promised, pictures of Bedugul

The view from the road into the mountains. Usually you can pick strawberries here,
but there weren't any because it's the rainy season.

Pura Ulun Danu in Bedugul. During the dry season you can walk to it,
but right now it's effectively an island.

Sylvie, Mirah (one of our language teachers) and Frances by Lake Beratan.

A Balinese fisherman by Lake Beratan.

Sanur was good, although mostly uneventful. We befriended a Javanese kid who called himself Roger Michael Steve and may or may not have been lying all the time, since his background story was pretty ridiculous. There were also a few moments of panic when we heard about the tsunami warning, but it turned out to be no big deal (although obviously not in Chile).

Now we're back in Bedulu, returning to the standard class-topeng-hang out with homestay family pattern. I figure it might be good to say a few things about everyday Balinese life, so here goes. Bear with me if I've mentioned some of these things already.

1. Music. Balinese culture is incredibly musical -- it's not uncommon to walk past people practicing gamelan on their front porch, or to hear gamelan accompanying a ceremony until late into the night. The younger people are definitely into current music, especially punk rock, the Cranberries, and Bob Marley (I think I've heard "Buffalo Soldier" about 10 times in the last hour at this internet cafe). They all listen to music on their HP (hand phones, i.e. cell phones), but it's not uncommon for them to switch back and forth between Bob Marley, the Ramones, and traditional gamelan.

2. Originally bizarre-sounding greetings, the first of which is "mau ke mana?" which basically translates to "where are you going?" At first this comes across as an unnecessarily nosy question, but it's really just like saying "what's up?" Also, it's perfectly reasonable to reply "jalan-jalan," which means "just walking around." Another weird greeting is "sudah mandi?" which my host mother asks me all the time. It means "have you already bathed?" which at first seems really rude and made me thing I always smelled terrible. Then I realized it was basically asking if you're feeling refreshed. Balinese people bathe frequently, at least twice a day, almost always with cold water, which is in fact incredibly refreshing.

3. Marriage and babies. Although Balinese young adults are getting married later these days, my host sister-in-law is only 22 and she and her husband have an 8-month-old baby. My ibu frequently asks me if I have a boyfriend in America and teases me about getting married soon. Also, if two people are married but don't have kids, the term is always "belum" (not yet) rather than "tidak" (no) - it's assumed the couple just hasn't been married very long. (This has led to interesting conversations about the marital status of family members, etc.)

4. Ritual: a huge part of everyday life, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention something about it. Offerings are put out basically whenever food is cooked, and of course at other important times. The Balinese calendar involves a 7-day week, a 5-day week, and a 3-day weeks (as well as another system I don't really understand), and when certain days of the weeks overlap, it is a particularly auspicious time and festivals may occur. Also, every 210 days, a given temple will have an odalan, or a temple birthday, which is a big festival.

That's about it for now, but I'll post more as I think of it. Let me know if there are other things I should be talking about!

More adventures

Hi all! Apologies for the long delay in posting. On a day-to-day basis, I've been doing a lot of topeng carving. I'm done with the chiseling component of my mask, which means the face is pretty much blocked out and I've carved out the back. The next time I go, I'll begin working with knives to make the face more detailed; after that, painting begins.

I've started walking home from Mas (where the topeng-maker's workshop is) to Bedulu. It's about a 5km walk (or so I've been told) and it's easier to do that then to try to catch a bemo (public transportation) in the late afternoon. Plus, it's a nice walk -- mostly downhill, and on the back streets of Mas I get to talk to lots of people and see some cool temples and sawah (rice fields). It confuses my host family (and basically everyone else), though. My bapak keeps telling me to call him for a ride home, even when I explain that I enjoy the walk. The people along the street assume I'm lost, which can also make for some entertaining conversations.

Let's see, what else has happened in the last week or so? Last weekend I went with Sylvie (one of the other students on the program) to Klungkung to work on our "archaeological sites" paper, which basically involves going to an important cultural/historical site, exploring it, doing some research, and, of course, writing a paper. We went to Kerta Ghosa (which I may or may not be spelling correctly, apologies), which is part of the old palace in Klungkung.

Sylvie walking up to one of the buildings.

The roofs of some of the buildings are painted in the wayang (shadow puppet) style, and all tell a story. This roof has the descriptions of various punishments in hell, plus I think one of the stories from the Mahabharata (although I may be mixing it up with one of the other buildings).

Interior of a roof at Kerta Ghosa

On Wednesday, we migrated to Denpasar for three days, where we went to Udayana University and met with some of the English students there (and also attended some lectures on Balinese culture). Yesterday, we went with them to Bedugul, which is in the mountains. We went to a temple on a lake and a botanical garden: pictures in the next post when I can upload them to my computer. Now, we're on a free weekend in Sanur, which is one of the touristy/beach towns.

This morning, we went to the University for a large ceremony, since today is Saraswati day and Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge. There were a ton of people there, and a full gamelan orchestra, a dance (I forget the name of it, sorry), and, of course, many offerings and a high priest officiating. We got to take part in the prayers, which involved being sprinkled with and drinking holy water, listening to chants (we didn't know the words so we couldn't really take parts) and making offerings ourselves.

Tomorrow, it's back to Bedulu for the week for more class and topeng making. Next weekend we head to Ary's (the academic director) village for a week, then to the northern part of Bali. Stories to come!

More homestay time, with a whole lot of artists' lectures in the last few days. We've met with several dancers (and I can assure you that I am not all that talented at Balinese dance, and that it is WAY harder than it looks), a dalang (the person who pretty much singlehandedly orchestrates the shadow puppet performances), a batik artist, and a topeng mask maker. Starting Wednesday, I'll be studying with the mask maker, learning how to make the wooden masks used in topeng dances.

The topeng maker was fascinating -- his family has, for several generations, specialized in making these masks, and he spent his childhood watching his father work. He wasn't allowed to try, though, until he was 16, because the tools for topeng making are too sharp and require enough coordination that a child can't use them. Hopefully I'll manage them, though!

The topeng maker, with masks in several stages of the process.

Some of the finished masks.

We mahasiswa (students) had a free weekend, so we went to Uluwatu, a region on the bukit (the very southern tip of the island). The ecosystem there was different -- the soil isn't as rich there and everything is sitting pretty much on top of the limestone foundation, and it's drier and hotter. It's also one of the big surfing locales, so it had a more touristy vibe. The beaches were beautiful, though. On Saturday we walked from where we were staying at Padang Padang to Dreamland Beach, which I'm going to go ahead and claim earns its name. We also went to Pura Uluwatu, one of the larger temples in the area, and narrowly escaped being jumped on by monkeys. (Seriously, the monkeys around here are mean -- when you enter the temple there are signs telling you to hide any jewelry because the monkeys will steal it.)

Sylvie and Frances at Pura Uluwatu (imitating one of the better tourist poses).


Part of Pura Uluwatu. Note the evil, evil monkeys.

And to wrap up, to answer the comments from last post:

Mom -- I definitely will give my host family your greeting. I told them that you want to come visit now because of the snow, and they informed me that you are most welcome.

Ryan -- Ubud is kind of like very mini Beijing in the touristy sense, but it's a lot smaller and also I think more artsy. My bapak and ibu totally are rockstars. They speak a little bit of English, but not a ton -- enough to facilitate our communication. Also enough for my ibu to tell me her opinions of the characters on the soap opera we watch together.

J -- not yet. I'm working on it! I hear Jimbaran is the place for seafood, though.

Righto. Don't get too snowed in, all!