The Shaba Jimbaran

After a terrible breakfast consisting of old coffe and a toast sandwich filled with pineapple we went snorkeling for about 1-2hrs. We saw lots of fishes and schools of fishes around the USS Liberty wreck. After this we drove all the way to Lalang in the very Northwest of Bali. From here we took a very expensive ferry to the Manjangan Island. It is said that the snorkeling an diving is very good here. The island is surrounded by a very steep wall. While there are some fishes, the snorkel site ...

We slept in. After the night we had, we needed it. After waking up and having the included toast for breakfast at our $10-a-night-hotel, we dressed in our bathing suits and headed out to the beach. We passed dozens and dozens of vendor shops, each trying to sell us something that was exactly like we had already seen at twenty other places and all over the island of Bali. We kept a straight path and bypassed most of them. Sometimes it's hard to get past them, but ...

... of what we taught them. When we reviewed sports and asked them what their favorite sport was, they each answered with their favorite sport and didn't copy the answer of the first person. Usually if the first person we ask likes soccer, everyone else just repeats that answer. For example in the younger classes, even when we ask the kids their ages, they don't even say the right age. They just say what the first boy or girl said. Grade 4 on the other hand understands ...

... but your hands make more of a cupped shape and by placing your hands directly in line with your forehead. The first time you pray, you keep nothing in your hands, making an empty cupped shape. The second time you pray, you hold a flower in your fingertips; you then put the flower in your hair after this time you pray. The third time you pray, you hold this small miniature bouquet of flowers; the flowers are held by a cone-shaped coconut leaf, just like how flowers in ...

... rechtes Bein am Auspuff verbrand (ca 3x3 cm, keine Haut mehr *g*, hat nicht mal wehgetan so tief war das). Mittlerweile sieht es wieder ganz gut aus, aber ich werde an der Stelle wohl ein 'schoenes' Souvenier mit nach Hause nehmen nach dem Jahr... Letzte Woche Dienstag hatte ich dann den letzten Tag in der Sprachschule. Man kann schon ganz schoen viel lernen in 3 Wochen, aber die richtige Arbeit beginnt glaube ich jetzt erst, wenn man mit den Leuten draussen ...

... anyways. At first I thought it was a birthday party but then we saw the bride and groom. Then we saw all the muslim headdresses. Three americans walk into a muslim wedding... Sounds like the start of a joke. I asked a senior looking person if we could stay and he said "of course! you will be our guests of honor" Soon the man on the microphone was talking in English, which meant he was speaking directly and only to us because everyone else was Indonesian. We were invited to try their food ...

Twenty five years ago, I met a girl, we fell in love, and we lived happily ever after !!! Nah, this is the Uncle's world and not a fairy tale, but twenty five years ago, I did meet a girl, a girl called Jo. We became very good friends, and then she moved North and I went to the Northern Hemisphere. Every now and then, we would talk, but a month ago, I found out she was going to be in Bali at the same time as me, so plans were laid out, and I was going to see a friend, I had not ...

... using their creative skills. Besides eating, walking, and luxuriating in massages and such we actually DID do quite a bit of work (work these days consists of figuring out where/when to go, researching how to get there and what to do, and most importantly actually purchasing transportation). As a fellow traveler said "my family keeps asking if I am doing as lot of reading; if you are talking about Lonely Planet - yes." So we spent a lot of time talking to multiple travel agents, tour ...

... amount of tourism, the Balinese are some of the friendliest people I've come across. They always seemed to be smiling and are typically super friendly and nice. One my birthday (yep, I'm 30 now...) we went on a combination ATV / river rafting tour. The ATV tour left a bit to be desired since the 4-wheelers were in bad condition and kept breaking down. The river rafting was a blast though. During the rafting we would see people bathing in ...

... of course nothing like the kind you see at Sea World, but fact that they were wild dolphins made it so much greater. We also did a bit of snorkling in Lovina, as it has a good reef with plenty to see. I have to say that Lucy totally outdid me when it came to hand feeding hundreds of fish, with the bread that we pinched from the hotel. They were all around her & she stayed really calm until that is, one fish, which had a face the size of a human, came right up to her ...