Bali Family :)

We all arrived in one piece, feet swollen like small balloons, weird!  Must have been the four gallons of water consumed on the planes.  No problems until the airport in Bali when we discovered, well, the blonde traveler in our party, MOI, was approached and asked, twice, if for a fee, the lines of 1,000 or so people could be made to easily disappear. Being the upstanding citizen that I am, and also afraid I might end up in a foreign pokey, I said I was traveling with a small tribe and thought it best I play by the rules. BIG MISTAKE! Two

hours  1,200 people (the line grew) and a rising temper later, I went up to the same guard and decided to give him just a wee piece of my Irish mind....the only thing it accomplished was that no more of those graft payers got into our line, and those guards disappeared.  It was the only annoying part of the trip...

On to customs, snicker, snicker, all 5 seconds of it, and then we met Joel, Simona and Oskar! :)  HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!!! We piled our 400 pieces of luggage into two vans and were off through the streets of Bali to the Green School campus.  Traffic, HAHAHAHA!!!  We shall not be driving here!!  Motor bikes, some with entire families of 5 on them, cars, vans, little buses, weaving in and out never signaling, three and four deep in two lanes....skilled drivers,  I was super impressed, never once did I flinch! I was in the back of course.

  The things we passed on the way were just so cool.  Nyepi, Balinese New Year had just passed,  celebrated with a full day of silence and meditation, one reason why we came later.  A few days before, the Bhuta Yajna ritual is performed in order to vanquish the negative elements and create balance with God, Mankind, and Nature. The people create these magnificent figures, Ogoh-ogoh, made of bamboo and paper painted in fabulous colorful detail. All have fangs, bulging eyes and scary hair and are illuminated by torches. Ogoh-ogoh monsters symbolize these evil or malevolent spirits surrounding the environment which have to be eliminated. They are paraded around the village and the evening before Nyepi, the devout Hindus celebrating Ngerupuk, start making noises, light burning torches and set fire to the Ogoh-ogoh  in order to vanquish the negative elements and evil spirits. Luckily for us, some of them were still  around, appearing between some of the smaller buildings like fabulous colorful giants.

The sun was setting and the trip had been so long, everyone just wanted to get to Rumah Bambu.  We arrived just as the sun was setting, and were amazed at what we saw....the house is breath taking. The pictures cannot do it justice.  Made entirely of bamboo and circular in construction, it is two stories high, but the center pole rises at least another story to a point.  Thatched roof, bamboo floors open walls look out on to the jungle growth, with geckos living along the towering support poles. Simply enchanting!

Simona and Joel made us a wonderful dinner of chicken, pumpkin, papaya, rice, lemongrass, galangal, garlic, tumeric, lime leaf, I might have missed something else here, but it was so delicious!

Oskar, their little 4 year old, cute as a button, explained how to use the 2 toilets; one is the composting one, and the other is the whizzer. Exciting, different, similar to Girl Scout Camp, but fancier. Then, it was a wonderful shower, open to the evening air, and off to bed for a great night's sleep under the mosquito net!

Paradise.....