Trip to Bali

Hello! First of all, sorry I have been MIA for a couple of weeks, but I have good reason, which I am predicting will make all of you groan with pleasure and jealousy. You see, I have been on my first annual leave vacation with my friends Amie and Amelia, to the lovely country of Bali… (cue groaning). We left on the 4^th, from Poipet, Cambodia (possibly the worst city in all of Cambodia- never go there, there is nothing to see), crossed the border into Bangkok by bus, stayed the night in the Bangkok airport, and then flew out at 6:30 AM, arriving to Denpasar around 11:30 AM. We spent six days and seven nights in Bali, exploring around the island, lounging around Legian and Kuta beaches, taking a couple of day trips to explore Ubud, the cultural epicenter of Bali, and to see parts of the countryside. Since pictures are more representational of my experience than words alone, I’ll cut to the chase and just narrate along the way.

In the foreground, Cambodia. In the background, Thailand. The immediate change in infrastructure and aesthetics was striking. (Thailand is much more wealthy and developed than Cambodia).

In Denpasar airport, arriving in Indonesia!

view of the beach between a mountain divided, a recurring symbol in Bali.

BEACH! White sand, rolling waves, clear sky, and ocean breezes…

My friends and I took two day trips while we were in Bali, with a guide named Giri. Our first day trip started out with white water rafting on the Ayung River with a guide named Radi. We forward paddled, back paddled, and stopped! on Radi’s command, and had a relatively smooth ride, except when Radi would gleefully lead us down some treacherous patch of water, giggling loudly in the back of the raft and saying, “I’m sorry! I’m lose control!” when we would scream and hack up the water we’d just swallowed unwittingly.

The ride was so serene and green… We were all awed to silence by the flowing water and singing birds, the only sounds punctuating our journey.

Multiple waterfalls broke through the rocks

The second leg of our journey took us to an elephant park, where we rode elephants with a guide.

Mine was called “Happy” and my guide’s name was Matty.

Matty would take my camera from time to time and document what he interpreted as being memorable to me. I have no idea who this little girl is.

Matty. While I was riding behind in a sort of bench-like seat that lumbered back and forth with Happy’s every move, he just sat right on top of her back and so was able to conform to her movements. I think I would have liked this better- my ride was very bumpy.

Amie and Amelia with their guide

I’m not really sure if Blogspot will do this picture justice, as I’m not sure you can zoom as much as is necessary to get the full effect of the moment, but suffice it to say that all of us are laughing gleefully and in utter merriment, and I love it.

Matty took a lot of pictures.

Just me, hugging my new friend, Happy the elephant. 

the three of us with Happy and “Sen Sen,” “Hello” in Balinese.

Next we stopped at a coffee plantation. That’s Giri, on the left. In the bush, if you know what you’re looking for, there are cinnamon plants and cacao trees.

grounding up the beans. Bali is renowned for its Arabica roast.

Sampling the varieties. From right to left: cacao (basically hot chocolate but more bitter), Arabica coffee, red ginger tea, white coffee, ginseng, and lemongrass tea. The teas were very sweet and delicious, the coffee bitter and strong, and the red ginger tea sweet and spicy.

At Taman Ayun, a moated temple.

Multi-tiered pagodas, called Muri. In Balinese tradition these either have three, five, seven, nine, or eleven roofs, according to the status of the gods to whom they’re dedicated.

Our last stop of the day: Tanah Lot temple, a temple that’s set in the ocean. The sunset was surreal.

And there was a full moon…

Oh, we also ate a lot of great food! This fruit plate cost 25,000 rupiah ($2.50) and was a refreshing snack pretty much every day we went to the beach.

Amazing red snapper…

Amelia got the prawns, which inspired a lively debate over what exactly prawns are.

*cue drooling* - don’t be fooled, though. The chocolatey, moist-looking deliciousness on the left actually turned out to be far inferior to the black rice pudding with coconut milk and sliced banana on the right.

this beautiful piece of coral just sort of floated into my hand while I was in the ocean.

AHH!! Ok, so my friends and I tried surfing while we were in Bali… It was something that Amie had always wanted to do, and Amelia and I, uncoordinated as we are, just sort of went along for the ride. We got lessons at this informal surf school with a few Balinese instructors and had an hour of personal training, with the instructors by our side in the water, telling us to PADDLE PADDLE PADDLE, and STAND UP! at crucial moments. As you can imagine, these detailed instructions left us gasping for air and choking down salt water much of the time, but miraculously, we all did end up getting up.

Those are our surf instructors- mine is Eddy, in the middle. Note the giant boards; if you’re a beginner, your board is very long, up to ten feet. As you get better, the board gets shorter, as short as 5’6. Thanks to these ginormous boards, we all managed to catch a few small waves.

The sunsets in Bali are incredible…

Our second day of touring with Giri we started off at a temple, called Tirta Empul.

the Banyan tree is a sacred symbol in Indonesian culture.

This temple is known for its holy springs

giant spider on the side of the springs’ outer wall. My khmer mom says this is a cicada… I don’t believe her.

Brahma and his wife, Saraswati. Brahma is the god of creation, but he can’t create without Saraswati, who is the goddess of knowledge, music, arts, and sciences.

Our next stop was Kintamani, an active volcano in Bali (last erupted in 1974. “And today,” Amelia joked). This is a view of Mount Agung and the surrounding lake Batur.

Here is Kintamani.

More delicious food: fish curry, stir-fried veggies, fried rice, fish satay, and spring rolls, with a perfect view of Kintamani and lake Batur from our table’s window.

We didn’t actually stop at the terraced rice fields because we were running late, but we slowed the car and rolled down the windows for pictures. Tiered fields like this are common in Indonesia for growing rice.

…And then we got a two-hour spa treatment (*shields herself from the tomatoes and other rotten fruit you are indubitably now throwing at your computer screen*)

The view from the bathroom of my massage room…

I got a one-hour Balinese massage and a pedicure, and Amie and Amelia did the former with a facial.

Our last stop of the day was to see a traditional Balinese music and dance performance in the cultural epicenter of Bali, Ubud. The instrumentalists played the gamelon and the djembe, and the music was played using the pentatonic scale.

I might have developed a small crush on this guy…

The dancers wore traditional Indonesian costumes and the dances comprised jerky, spider-like movements that were emphasized by waggling fingers and darting eyes.

Two of the dances incorporated masks. This one, “Jauk,” was about a demon-like figure. Again, lots of jerky, spider-like, and almost "feeler" like movements of the fingers which here had long fingernails attached.

Aaaaaaand we’re on our way back to Cambodia! The trip was too short in some respects (we all could have stayed in Bali longer), but it was a good amount of time for a break, and came at an ideal time when we’d otherwise be sitting in our rooms, sweating and bored from having too much time on our hands from being off of school (I’ve heard from a friend that we may not start again until mid-May…)

Bali is exceptional, and I highly recommend it as a vacation spot! The people are notably welcoming and helpful, the sites and scenes refreshing, and the food delicious and memorable. If you are ever planning a trip and need any recommendations or suggestions, don’t hesitate to ask!  I will endorse this place endlessly :)

Susan Cain TED talk

Being an introvert myself and having had to learn how to adapt to a world that seeks to create extroverts, I really appreciate this TED talk and wanted to share:

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

I'm sweating, how are you?

Hellooooo! First of all, I want to say THANK YOU for all of your donations! I left my charger in Phnom Penh a week ago, and have been without my computer and the internet for a week, so imagine my surprise at checking my PC Projects page and finding that over $1200 has already been donated to my project! I cannot adequately express to you my gratitude for this… Your support means so much, and literally makes this project possible. Thank you.

Since the last time I updated, I went to Phnom Penh for St. Patrick’s Day, to celebrate with fellow volunteers (and, of course, partake in drinking some festively green beer in honor of the occasion). I got back on Monday, and found that there was no school for the entire week because the 12th graders had their national exams. Why the entire school had to close down so that just the 12th graders could take their exams beats me… But I wasted no time in pursuing other ventures- I rode my bike to my friend Diana’s site, about 38k from me, to help her with her World Map Project, so I could get a better idea of how mine will go. Hers is actually the first other volunteer’s home I’ve visited, and it was so nice to see how another volunteer’s “home dynamic” is other than mine. Diana’s is very different- her family is a lot more chatty than mine for one, and also quite a bit younger. Her sister knows a little English, which, for more reasons than one, Diana and I both found wildly entertaining…

So visiting Diana’s site occupied a day and a half of my free time… But that still left the entire end of the week, and this whole week, which I have today learned is also free from teaching. Wow! I may go crazy. As it turns out, since it is so close to Khmer New Year (actually not that close- it starts on April 13 and lasts, technically, for only three days), the students have simply stopped coming to school. I somehow was not aware of this (I'm usually not notified of these sorts of things until they're already happening so I guess it's typical), and showed up to school this morning in my sampot only to be greeted by the few teachers who were hanging around for no other reason than to get out of the house for a couple of hours. Sigh.

In other news, it’s HOT. Like really hot. Like, so hot that even Khmer are uncomfortable. Back when I first got to site and was a whiny baby about the weather—back when it was a balmy 85 degrees and that was too much for me—I remember complaining to my mom in the late afternoon, “k’dow naa!” (it’s SOOOOO hot!) Now it seems so silly to me that I could have wasted those words’ meaning on such pleasantries. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m up to three bucket baths a day now, and those are what I use to mark time. Bucket bath one is simply taken out of habit- it's how I start my day. It's even still kind of nippy at this time. Number two is by far the most needed. It’s 2 or 3 in the afternoon and I’ve been writhing around in my bed, trying, and likely failing, to read, trying, and likely failing, not to notice the sweat dripping down my back and down my arms from my armpits (gross, I know.) Bucket bath number three marks the end of a long, hard battle. It is at the same time a kind of victory over the day, and the calm before the storm that will come tomorrow. Do me a favor next time you’re in an overly air-conditioned mall or grocery store, ok? Just go ahead and bottle some of that up to send over to me. :)

dinner I made for my family- couscous with potatoes, onions, green peppers, black eyed peas, and tomatoes. Yes, we ate it with ketchup.

Diana's students drawing the grid for the World Map Project

cow

somehow Angkor tastes better when it’s green.

Library Development Project

Alright folks, so here's the deal. I am embarking upon my first "real" Peace Corps project... What does this mean, exactly? It means I am trying to raise enough money so that I can renovate the now termite-infested, cluttered, and generally abandoned library at my school into a working, functional, and useful resource... I will soon post pictures so you get the full extent of how naive I am.

However, regardless of my naiveté, I'm going to try my damnedest to make this work. And for that to happen, I need your help. How? you ask. By donating money that I don't have. You can do this here, at the Peace Corps website:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=303-025

As you can see, the goal is lofty: $2050. My intention is to be able to start this project by May and to finish in August. We will see how that actually pans out, but that is the plan... Please, please tell your friends, your co-workers, family- whoever. Any amount is GREATLY appreciated. You can donate by name, or anonymously if you prefer.

Thank you very much, and I am excited to keep you updated on the progress of this project!

One World

Last Friday, twelve of my regular students from my after-school English club and I met to work on an art project. The project is called “One World” and the way it works is that my students produce 25 pieces of artwork to send off to this organization who then sends it off to a group of students from somewhere else in the world, and in return, we will receive 25 pieces of artwork from another student group from somewhere around the world. I told the students they could invite their friends, which I feared would end up meaning the whole school, but it ended up working out with 23 students altogether.

We met up at the school around 3, when they were finished with class, and set up the materials. A few of them pulled out notebook paper, not realizing that I’d brought nice cardstock for them to use. They started up with some hesitation, just sort of looking at the paper and looking up at me for instruction. Go for it! I told them vaguely. I told them they could draw anything- something they’ve seen in real life or something that’s just in their heads. They timidly put their pencils to the page: a sun here, a TV there… A couple of students would barely get a shape onto the page before rushing to the front of the room to show me and get my approval. It’s great! I told them. Don’t be afraid to use more color… and see how there’s still a lot of space on the page? You can use that too…

After more timid lines and safe subject matter, they started to get more daring. Angry Bird made an appearance, as did Winnie the Pooh. Some students started drawing more elaborate scenes of rice fields with palm and coconut trees, cows and water buffalo lowing in the background. One of my students drew a horse that blew me away with its accuracy.

Just as a background note, students in Cambodia don’t often get the opportunity to exercise creativity, which is why this project was met with such hesitation and timidness. Any sort of creative activity carried out in the classroom has rigid guidelines and instruction, so having this much freedom was intimidating to the students… at first. It was motivating to see how, in such a short period of time, those walls came down and they were able to produce some really great, original works, totally by themselves. It fed my tiny seed of hope (that easily withers away if not fed regularly) that there may be hope yet for the next generation of Khmer to learn how to think more critically and creatively than the current.

What's making me happy this week

MANGOES! From now until the end of April I shall be in a velvety fever dream from a combination of the excessive heat, and living on a diet consisting primarily of these juicy fruits. I may be sweating out of every pore and up to three showers a day, but I like to think mango season coinciding with the hottest months in Cambodia is Mother Nature's way of saying "I'm sorry."

Time Travel and the Peace Corps

I read a volunteer blog the other day that described the experience of seeing 2012 through the lens of your country of service. Here, there are few to none of the “advances” we in the U.S. and other developed nations view as indicative of the times, and yet, it is inarguably 2012. For inhabitants of these countries, the year is still chugging along, even without the latest technologies. Eventually, it will even be 2013, and these places will likely still be without much of what we in the modern world consider indispensable to our daily living.

So imagine for a minute how strange it is to have the ability to jump between "the modern world" and the "developing," then, because that's what it's like to go from my village to Phnom Penh. In my village, I live without clean running water or modern plumbing, my only means of transportation is my bike, and while there are some in my village who own cars and many who own motos, it’s not uncommon to see villagers use a horse and buggy to get around. Wireless internet is unheard of, and developments like tablets and interfaces, still a very long way off.

Now Phnom Penh: abundant running water, reliable electricity, wireless Internet available in almost every hotel and guesthouse, streets packed with high-end cars… It’s hard to reconcile that the “modern world” as I know it—as most of you know it—is only 60K away from my small, developing village, and that for many in my community, they will never know it.

A friend and I were talking recently about our first impressions of Phnom Penh… I remember being shocked at how dirty it was, although I tried to convince myself I wasn’t (heh), and generally just kind of feeling overwhelmed by it all- how crowded it was, how noisy, etc. The closest I’d ever come to visiting a “developing country” was when I visited Taiwan on a study abroad trip throughout East Asia in college, and of course this was nowhere near the immersion experience I’m getting now.

After being here for seven months, going to Phnom Penh is not only "sensory overload" but also a puzzling experience for my sense of time. We volunteers talk about this phenomenon we like to call “Peace Corps Time.” When I'm at site, living with the locals and doing what they do (this can be as riveting as sitting at the kitchen table and watching traffic pass for hours), time does this funny thing: it stops. Days can feel like eternities, and only at the end of them, or at the end of a week, do I find myself saying “Whoa, where’d the time go?” It’s a very strange thing indeed. So when I go to Phnom Penh, and I’m back on “normal time” it’s even stranger. Days go by as I vaguely recall they do back in the states, and since I’m usually enjoying them immensely being reunited with friends, talking, laughing, eating and drinking to my heart’s content, I wish they would pass a little more like typical “Peace Corps Time” and let me savor them a little longer…

There is a lot more I could say about Phnom Penh- which for me, at this point in my Peace Corps service in which I am evidently not so choosy, represents modernity- in contrast to my village, but for fear of becoming pedantic, I’ll wrap this up. I do want to mention one small observation: it’s striking to me how much people smile in my village- genuinely smile- and how rare an occurrence this is in Phnom Penh, comparatively. I’m not trying to initiate a dialogue on the “evils of modernity” versus the “quaint, un-touched simplicity of village life”—fear not—it’s just something I've noticed, and probably has more to do with the annoying “Lady! You want moto baaiii?” which is called around every street corner in Phnom Penh and never fails to put a scowl on my own face, than much else.

~~~~~~~~

This past week I was in Phnom Penh for a “technical in-service training” (IST) with Peace Corps. This IST was mainly about grant writing (more on that soon), and, extra-curricularly, about catching up with friends. This part is always extremely rewarding for me. I've been lucky in that I've made some true friends here, and don't take for granted the times we're able to spend together and be really understood. This is definitely something I took for granted in the states, and being deprived of the ability to easily communicate at site I appreciate it all the more now on the rare occasion I am able to. I was supposed to return to site on Sunday, but the bus decided not to go to Prey Veng that day (ha), so I happily returned to the hotel with other friends whose busses had abandoned them too, and had an extra day of rest. :)

Now I am back and site and trying once again to readjust to my life here. I should mention that my family is doing a lot better since things came undone last week… They are making the necessary changes to the house already—my dad has already installed a new metal door in the back of the house—and is currently pricing the new brick wall that will go up to partition the house from the lawn. They’re remaining optimistic and doing their best to move on with things the best they know how. I appreciate your words of encouragement and sympathy through e-mails and comments, and have passed them on to my family. Hope you are all happy, healthy, and well!

This is an old picture. I came home from Phnom Penh and I swear he’s doubled in size!

my new favorite place to go walking…