Beautiful Bali
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2008
1
6
22
Trip End
Ongoing
Umalas,
Indonesia
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Well the kids have started school and they are, well there are many words to describe them... Lovely, polite, organised, eager, accommodating, quiet, shy and easily intimidated. Apparently tiny little moi has terrified them! Can you credit that dear reader? Surely not!? Amuse them with my bungling and ineptitude, possible, bore them to tears with incessant rambling, inevitable, enthuse them with a thirst for knowledge, I live in long suffering hope, but terror?? 'Simply impossible' I hear you say. However I have now been told the same thing by no less than seven different teachers, a couple of parents and the artist in residence, Ms Fox... So may have gone slightly overboard on the discipline front. Wouldn't be so bad if I had gone in with all guns blazing, determined to make my mark on them, but I had seriously held back and gone in with a positively sunny demeanour compared with Dorcan!! I would have said at most a quarter of my usual sternness. No, I am afraid there is no alternative but to accept I now teach a bunch of wusses. Even mentioning the word detention seems to send them into paroxysms, causing parents to contact the school to complain over the 'threats' their little darling have received! Honestly you'd think I was setting up my own branch of the mafia and shaking kids down for their lunch money and i-pods during my lessons.
That aside teaching here is not a problem, teach a good interactive lesson and the kids love it and get involved, teach a crappy, talking, lesson and they sit and listen soaking it all up without complaint! The hardest part is still the resources - or lack thereof!
But! Enough complaining it's time to sell Bali a little and let you know about some of the gorgeous things here:
The rice paddies I have already mentioned are currently blushing from green to gold as they are ready for harvesting and then when they are cut down the yellow stalks show up the green walkways in between like a great patchwork quilt or network of mazes.
There is a constant, quiet, background noise when you walk, of insects and frogs, the wind and the bird scarers in the fields, (bits of wood which knock in the wind). It is a very soothing sound and everywhere has a slightly different sound, every day a modified tempo, considering there is so little city noise Bali is never quiet! The temple beside my house sometimes has ceremonies which come with their own music and chanting.
The temples everywhere are little sculptures and works of art, again each one is slightly different but all recognisable as the same style, from larger than a school to the same size as a pillar box. Generally the buildings are fascinating but not 'beautiful' but every now and again you come across an old civic building and they are amazing, usually in orange and gray, like the temples.
Have been round and about exploring the local Warungs with Helena and some of the shops, with a little work you can find pretty much whatever you want, hand made to order out of heavy duty materials for very reasonable prices! A solid teak four poster bed? Hand carved and measured to fit you? No problem £150 and ready in two weeks, (the only the slight drawback that 'two weeks' actually means whenever they finish! And whenever you ask for an update, the answer is 'two weeks'!)
Ok a page in word is far too long so I will speak to you all again soon! Ish!
Ixxx
