America is really weird, and that's not just because the sun is lower and colder in the sky right now. I've been home for about 48 hours now, and culture shock is getting a bit more melancholy. It started out as a really subtle thing, surprising after the repeated slaps to the face that I was receiving last September in Bali. But home will always be home, even if you've been chilling in Indonesia for almost four months, and that was the scary part: how easy it was to come home. Parents smiling at the airport, familiar banter on the ride home, same old house smell, same dogs, same food, same room, same bed. Apart from odd jolts (like first thing the next morning, waking up to a new room), it was almost like Bali was just a dream. The next day proceeded in a similar vein, just kind of letting my day wander me around town, sort of confused and sort of mistrustful, all the while occasionally stopping to remember the Bali analogue of this or that. It was just so weird because this was the promised moment, the end result of all the daydreams and fantasies that kept me afloat during the dark times. Now... I don't even know. It's not like I'm sobbing in a corner every five minutes wishing to go back, but I'm definitely remorseful.
What it is, I'm guessing, is the challenge of moving on. I've unpacked all my stuff and am trying to assemble the Bali things in my room. I no longer immediately reach for my Bahasa when I meet a stranger. It just seems so final, and I don't really want to move on and become an American yet. The people on the street won't say hi to me when I smile (let alone the fact that my hair is long and my beard scruffy), fine. I actually almost don't want to say hi to them either, because they seem so conceited and self-absorbed. Who cares what you're doing? Is it really more important that the communal act of living? Where are the people for me to sit and talk to? Why must we all be busy all the time? Thus the reverse culture shock (probably with a hint of jetlag) takes a turn for the nasty today.
But I can't spend the rest of my days grumbling and castigating my fellow men, just because they don't conform to my Bali values. There were plenty of things that I was happy to get away from in Bali- leering young men and their catcalls, burning trash, casual violence, all those ills and evils. I've just got to find a way to take my Bali learnin' and somehow turn it into a new brand of Americanism. Because I was pumped to be an American at points on the trip- reading The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Cold Mountain, even old New Yorker articles really jazzed me up. I was living the dream all those expat writers and artists discovered way back when, that when you leave home you get a totally new perspective. From the porch in Bedulu, America seemed kind of flawed, but oh so exciting and interesting. The people! The possibilities! Our own national heritage! I was so proud to be a part of it, it made me kind of feel like sharing with my host family: "We can be pretty great too! It's not all chickenhawks and overconsumption out our way!" And then I came home.
I suppose it's just a matter of time. But this seems like kind of a downer final final post for such a rollicking good adventure. I think, and probably can predict with some accuracy, that in time I will come to ignore the various minor cultural evils of my country. I will stop thinking that everyone is putting on a show of stupidity to be cool, and I will be re-enamored by the wonders of American camaraderie. I should hope, though, to continue to rail against vast societal evils, too many to name here, and to do so with Balinese practicality. But above all, I hope to retain one of the things that I learned in Bali that touched the deepest, namely the basic principals of human decency. I jokingly mentioned to my friends there that I had realized that "girls are people too" (ha, because I had to spend the entire trip with them! Oh the wit), but it's true. Girls are people, as are boys and morons and launchpieces and all the other detestable elements of this world. So it's important to recognize their humanity, and maybe smile a bit, but most importantly to, for lack of a better phrase, be real. Bali was a real place- people spoke their minds when upset, but without offending others. They lived for the sake of living, took breaks, solved problems in a no-nonsense manner. And that's admirable, in any culture. It's time to start living life with a bit more reality, and maybe (by the next time I post some more post-Bali thoughts) that'll lead to a less crotchety and happier me. We'll see.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Hampir Habis
Which is Bahasa for almost finished. And it's true-- this little adventure has just about come to an end. I wrote the big paper, we presented and had a little oral exam, then spent a few days relaxing at a beach in East Bali (possibly my favorite geographic region of this island, a perfect combination of lush and arid, with huge mountain views and black- to gray-sand volcanic beaches, all drenched in golden sunlight and with a vibe of pre-modern times). Continuing with my digression, beach is a bit generous. Locals destroyed the reef dynamite fishing in the past, so now there are big breakwaters set up to capture some sand. But it's all good, as the breakwater was great to walk along and there were lots of crabs, not to mention great for stargazing.
But enough about my time unwinding in the east. It's time to reflect a bit, about lessons learned and expectations reversed. Basically, I knew that all my trepidation and unease in the beginning was just a symptom of anticipation; I knew that I was about to be thrown so far out of my comfort zone and routine that those very words would soon become meaningless. But I also knew that I'd end up having a good time in the end, like finishing a trying backpacking trip. What I wasn't prepared for were the friends I'd make, the epiphanies I'd have, and general awareness of how the rest of the world lives. It's going to be exceedingly difficult, coming back home, to try and explain everything I've seen and done here, the fact that I've sort of lived and began to understand how a completely different culture lives, new values and new approaches to everything, while still integrating to western life.
See, it's already impossible for me to explain myself coherently. I think what I'm saying is that I'll miss Bali. I'll miss the sounds, the smells, the heat. I'll miss all the delicious foods, martabak and nasi goreng, rambutan and manggis. I'll miss living life this way, where you spend your free time with family and friends, just sitting and living. I'll even miss the aspects that were kind of shocking in the beginning, the bemos and the bucket baths. Most of all though, I'll miss the people. I'll miss it when little kids run up to you and say hi, I'll miss how everyone smiles, I'll miss having strangers ask me if I've showered or eaten, and I'll miss the friends and family I've made here. Living in Bali was the cliched study abroad experience. I came because I have this nutty adventure complex, I grew and made some realizations about life and humanity, I developed a supreme hatred for tourists and expats (like the woman next to me yelling at the staff here because her internet is slow), and I think that I've grown up a bit. Just a little though, as my continual fascination with the geckos and crabs proves to me. We'll see how I manage to channel all of these overstimulating experiences when I get back home, and we'll see if I can manage to use them for some good. But what I do know is that it's been a grand old time, and that I'm already making plans to head back some day.
So here's to you, Bali, in all your splendor and squalor. I'll miss it all, the good and the bad, as it's all just a part of living life with joy, something that you manage quite well. Untuk semua, terima kasih banyak (dan suksemoa), sampai jumpa. Here's till next time.
But enough about my time unwinding in the east. It's time to reflect a bit, about lessons learned and expectations reversed. Basically, I knew that all my trepidation and unease in the beginning was just a symptom of anticipation; I knew that I was about to be thrown so far out of my comfort zone and routine that those very words would soon become meaningless. But I also knew that I'd end up having a good time in the end, like finishing a trying backpacking trip. What I wasn't prepared for were the friends I'd make, the epiphanies I'd have, and general awareness of how the rest of the world lives. It's going to be exceedingly difficult, coming back home, to try and explain everything I've seen and done here, the fact that I've sort of lived and began to understand how a completely different culture lives, new values and new approaches to everything, while still integrating to western life.
See, it's already impossible for me to explain myself coherently. I think what I'm saying is that I'll miss Bali. I'll miss the sounds, the smells, the heat. I'll miss all the delicious foods, martabak and nasi goreng, rambutan and manggis. I'll miss living life this way, where you spend your free time with family and friends, just sitting and living. I'll even miss the aspects that were kind of shocking in the beginning, the bemos and the bucket baths. Most of all though, I'll miss the people. I'll miss it when little kids run up to you and say hi, I'll miss how everyone smiles, I'll miss having strangers ask me if I've showered or eaten, and I'll miss the friends and family I've made here. Living in Bali was the cliched study abroad experience. I came because I have this nutty adventure complex, I grew and made some realizations about life and humanity, I developed a supreme hatred for tourists and expats (like the woman next to me yelling at the staff here because her internet is slow), and I think that I've grown up a bit. Just a little though, as my continual fascination with the geckos and crabs proves to me. We'll see how I manage to channel all of these overstimulating experiences when I get back home, and we'll see if I can manage to use them for some good. But what I do know is that it's been a grand old time, and that I'm already making plans to head back some day.
So here's to you, Bali, in all your splendor and squalor. I'll miss it all, the good and the bad, as it's all just a part of living life with joy, something that you manage quite well. Untuk semua, terima kasih banyak (dan suksemoa), sampai jumpa. Here's till next time.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
A Not-So-Strange Episode. Or Two.
Sometimes this little Bali jaunt really does feel like an episode straight from Fear and Loathing. Like when we have to flee Nusa Lembongan after a nasty altercation with the ferry tickets guy. Or when my teacher and I screech off as an old woman demands money from us. Or when, thwarted by bus schedules, I have to abandon a morning trip to Sanur and slink through the blissfully cool and empty streets of morning Ubud to regroup and lick my figurative wounds at Bali Buddha. But then again, it really isn't like anything the good doctor did in the American Southwest, and that's not just because I'm in the Indonesian Southeast.
Actually, I just did a little something I like to call "withholding information for dramatic effect," which is another way of taking my low-key adventures and making them sound vastly more exciting for you guys when in fact they were simply fun. From the top: Nusa Lembongan is a little island, still part of Bali, off the Southeast coast. Some of us went out on the oh-so-fun ferry (kind of rickety, but also great, especially when you ride on the roof)to relax on pristine beaches for a couple of days. Catch was, most of the people we met were in the tourism industry and therefore jaded towards all Westerners, even if we're nice students with a grasp of Bahasa trying to understand the culture. So they weren't so friendly, especially not this ferry tickets dude. The morning we were trying to head out, there was an exact change issue between us (plus a couple of Canadian friends we made- it's nice to meet pleasant travelers), and Marissa ended up being shorted 40,000 rupiah. It's four bucks American, but still not okay, so she asked for her change and the guy looked confused and gave her his money to count- exactly the amount he should have had. But it didn't make sense, so she persisted and he eventually gave in, but made us all feel bad. But why would he give in if he was really right? And what happened to the four 10,000 rupiah bills that we had paid him, not present in his wad of cash? And why didn't he show us what was in his pockets, nasty Bagginses? Victorious but rattled, we fled the island feeling righteous. First story down.
The second relates to work, but work is boring, but this is relevant: remember Nongan, the village that extracted blood tribute when I last visited? I returned on Thanksgiving to finish what I had started, namely interviewing people about active worship of Pan Balang Tamak, the trickster. I was driving with my teacher, Pak Yudi, and we had to turn around in the narrow country road. So he was backing into a driveway, but one of our wheels ended up in the little ditch by the side of the road. We hopped out, and a woman (whose driveway is was) came up and smiled and started saying no worries, we'll help. Then her grandson and husband came and pushed with me and the car popped right out. It was so easy I probably could have done it myself. But then the woman came up to me, no longer smiling, and started saying speaking in Balinese. I also heard "uang," which means money in Bahasa Indonesia, so I feigned ignorance and told her to talk with Pak Yudi. I hopped in and she came to the window and started in again, so Pak Yudi just waved and sped off into Nongan, laughing. I asked what was up, and he said that she was trying to ask for money (probably because I was a whitey), which was absurd. His rationale was that she shouldn't get used to being paid just to help a stranger in need, so he had decided to stylishly avoid the situation. It was a fun moment.
So that's two counts of us getting the better of avaricious people, something that delights me and makes all the other incidences of swindling a bit better. And those are the kinds of adventures I've been having (that word gets thrown around about five times a post)- business-related but still fun. On to the not-so-fun, I've realized that my time here has almost come to an end. Two weeks from Tuesday and I'll be on a plane heading home. Thoughts of home have sustained me through all the dark times (and the boring and even the not-dark times; I like daydreaming), but now I realize how hard it's going to be to leave this new way of life behind. We've all met some really cool people, and become a small, fifth-business-y part of this world. It's kind of cruel that study abroad has to end so soon. So that's some irony for you; I've gone full circle from relative indifference to dread to growing adaptation and excitement to now acceptance and actual regret that I'll be leaving. On the positive side, it's not like Bali's going anywhere (physically, yet), so I could always come back. And keep in touch with friends and family here. And be, you know, forevermore culturally sensitive and worldly and stuff. It's been real, but now I've got to start appreciating the end of the journey. And doing that work thing too; I'm technically still a student. But that sounds like a job for later.
Actually, I just did a little something I like to call "withholding information for dramatic effect," which is another way of taking my low-key adventures and making them sound vastly more exciting for you guys when in fact they were simply fun. From the top: Nusa Lembongan is a little island, still part of Bali, off the Southeast coast. Some of us went out on the oh-so-fun ferry (kind of rickety, but also great, especially when you ride on the roof)to relax on pristine beaches for a couple of days. Catch was, most of the people we met were in the tourism industry and therefore jaded towards all Westerners, even if we're nice students with a grasp of Bahasa trying to understand the culture. So they weren't so friendly, especially not this ferry tickets dude. The morning we were trying to head out, there was an exact change issue between us (plus a couple of Canadian friends we made- it's nice to meet pleasant travelers), and Marissa ended up being shorted 40,000 rupiah. It's four bucks American, but still not okay, so she asked for her change and the guy looked confused and gave her his money to count- exactly the amount he should have had. But it didn't make sense, so she persisted and he eventually gave in, but made us all feel bad. But why would he give in if he was really right? And what happened to the four 10,000 rupiah bills that we had paid him, not present in his wad of cash? And why didn't he show us what was in his pockets, nasty Bagginses? Victorious but rattled, we fled the island feeling righteous. First story down.
The second relates to work, but work is boring, but this is relevant: remember Nongan, the village that extracted blood tribute when I last visited? I returned on Thanksgiving to finish what I had started, namely interviewing people about active worship of Pan Balang Tamak, the trickster. I was driving with my teacher, Pak Yudi, and we had to turn around in the narrow country road. So he was backing into a driveway, but one of our wheels ended up in the little ditch by the side of the road. We hopped out, and a woman (whose driveway is was) came up and smiled and started saying no worries, we'll help. Then her grandson and husband came and pushed with me and the car popped right out. It was so easy I probably could have done it myself. But then the woman came up to me, no longer smiling, and started saying speaking in Balinese. I also heard "uang," which means money in Bahasa Indonesia, so I feigned ignorance and told her to talk with Pak Yudi. I hopped in and she came to the window and started in again, so Pak Yudi just waved and sped off into Nongan, laughing. I asked what was up, and he said that she was trying to ask for money (probably because I was a whitey), which was absurd. His rationale was that she shouldn't get used to being paid just to help a stranger in need, so he had decided to stylishly avoid the situation. It was a fun moment.
So that's two counts of us getting the better of avaricious people, something that delights me and makes all the other incidences of swindling a bit better. And those are the kinds of adventures I've been having (that word gets thrown around about five times a post)- business-related but still fun. On to the not-so-fun, I've realized that my time here has almost come to an end. Two weeks from Tuesday and I'll be on a plane heading home. Thoughts of home have sustained me through all the dark times (and the boring and even the not-dark times; I like daydreaming), but now I realize how hard it's going to be to leave this new way of life behind. We've all met some really cool people, and become a small, fifth-business-y part of this world. It's kind of cruel that study abroad has to end so soon. So that's some irony for you; I've gone full circle from relative indifference to dread to growing adaptation and excitement to now acceptance and actual regret that I'll be leaving. On the positive side, it's not like Bali's going anywhere (physically, yet), so I could always come back. And keep in touch with friends and family here. And be, you know, forevermore culturally sensitive and worldly and stuff. It's been real, but now I've got to start appreciating the end of the journey. And doing that work thing too; I'm technically still a student. But that sounds like a job for later.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
So Much For ISP
Also entitled, why is there a marching band outside my internet cafe right now? Although that has nothing to do with the post at hand. So remember way back when, when I mentioned that I'd be off to magical-sounding Nongan to study the Balinese trickster archetype? Change of plans. My original plan was to go play in East Bali for a day on the beach, then head up and start studying, and be in Singaraja about now (up in the hot and dry north). But instead I got food poisoning from some bad warung food (presumably) and spend a day or two recovering from a sleepless and generally unrestful night. Okay, that's manageable. So two days late I head out to the far east, make the long drive up through the hills (covered in rice fields, as you might have guessed, but even more beautiful due to the alternating mountain and ocean views) to Nongan. Nongan isn't actually that rural, but it's pretty far away from everything. This becomes important later.
Things were building to be a nice little adventure: I was in a far place, my teacher had spoken with the head of the village, and he was going to let me stay in his house, and I was going to meet with a bunch of people about tricksters and religion the next day. Of course I was a bit nervous, what with all these strangers and being far away from the routine and not knowing what to do for my project, not to mention recovering from gastronomic distress, but that's all part of the routine. Everything was going to be fine. Catch was, the head of the village (kapala desa) couldn't feed me in his compound, so I had to go with some relation of his to get dinner at the night market. This was the first warning sign: I know I shouldn't be upset with him, but he was awkward, mumbled, spoke Bahasa with a vocab I'd never heard before, didn't really want to explain himself, and was generally off. Just a strange kid about my age who wasn't my favorite out of all the kids I'd met here. As these things work out, he was to be my transport, and I should have listened to my instinctual aversions this time.
Dinner was at a night market up the road, and we zipped up on his motorbike, as people do in a place where cars are a bit too expensive. I was feeling a bit off appetite-wise, but ate anyways to keep my energy up, and planned on going home and sleeping until morning. We got back on the bike and set off back home, five minutes down a sleepy country road into the gathering cool of dusk in the mountains. I was mentally debating the merits of something or other when I saw something coming up in the road. I registered it was a rock, a little bit larger than a brick. I had enough time to simultaneously think "Hmm, what's that?" and "Is he going over it?" Then we went right over it.
It was largely quiet as far as collisions go. I remember the feeling of the bike bucking under me, then an image of me, on my back, sliding down the road. Then another confused image of me in the ditch by the side of the road, pulling myself up. I also remember thinking "oh, this is actually happening," and trying to figure out how to stop moving. Then the sound came back on and people started materializing out of the dusk to ask if we were okay. The kid was rattled, but still fine and moving. Taking stock of my own wounds, I noticed that my left leg and elbows were scraped up. Thankfully I was wearing my helmet- natural caution and stern warnings from SIT left me impervious to the bemused skepticism of the Balinese, who didn't think I needed a helmet for such a short distance (the kid wasn't wearing a helmet, but seemed fine. I don't know how he managed). Then I asked someone to look at my back, which was stinging. This elicited a loud "oh my god," and they insisted I go to the hospital. The hospital proved to be a rickety building with blood on the floor from another patient in the waiting room, so I declined their offers of treatment and made further calls to make sure the cavalry was on the way. Then I had the pleasure of treating my own shock.
After a bit, as my wait would end up being a few hours, I went back to the head of the village's house, and waited with about thirty family members and friends, eventually letting them wipe my back with some antiseptic things from my huge first aid kid (more good foresight!) Then the cavalry showed, one of our teachers, Marissa and three of the girls for moral support. We zipped off to Denpasar, where I had the pleasure of getting all the road grit scrubbed out of my stinging wounds, and then enjoyed the benefits of codeine-based pain meds as I finally got to sleep.
So, exciting story but not much for ISP work. I spent the rest of the week recovering, and now I'm much more healthy: bandage off the vertical scrape on my back, leg and other minor scrapes healing. Finished the last of my antibiotics today, hopefully won't have to apply new bandages tomorrow. Healing is progressing rapidly, and I'll hopefully be able to enjoy full water immersion by the end of my time in Bali. But right now, I'm happy it wasn't much worse than it could have been, and am no longer fretting about ISP. After all, I've got a pretty legit excuse. Only downside is that my adventure is probably going to be a bit tame from here on out, but I'll still keep y'all posted if anything new happens. But that's about it for me.
Things were building to be a nice little adventure: I was in a far place, my teacher had spoken with the head of the village, and he was going to let me stay in his house, and I was going to meet with a bunch of people about tricksters and religion the next day. Of course I was a bit nervous, what with all these strangers and being far away from the routine and not knowing what to do for my project, not to mention recovering from gastronomic distress, but that's all part of the routine. Everything was going to be fine. Catch was, the head of the village (kapala desa) couldn't feed me in his compound, so I had to go with some relation of his to get dinner at the night market. This was the first warning sign: I know I shouldn't be upset with him, but he was awkward, mumbled, spoke Bahasa with a vocab I'd never heard before, didn't really want to explain himself, and was generally off. Just a strange kid about my age who wasn't my favorite out of all the kids I'd met here. As these things work out, he was to be my transport, and I should have listened to my instinctual aversions this time.
Dinner was at a night market up the road, and we zipped up on his motorbike, as people do in a place where cars are a bit too expensive. I was feeling a bit off appetite-wise, but ate anyways to keep my energy up, and planned on going home and sleeping until morning. We got back on the bike and set off back home, five minutes down a sleepy country road into the gathering cool of dusk in the mountains. I was mentally debating the merits of something or other when I saw something coming up in the road. I registered it was a rock, a little bit larger than a brick. I had enough time to simultaneously think "Hmm, what's that?" and "Is he going over it?" Then we went right over it.
It was largely quiet as far as collisions go. I remember the feeling of the bike bucking under me, then an image of me, on my back, sliding down the road. Then another confused image of me in the ditch by the side of the road, pulling myself up. I also remember thinking "oh, this is actually happening," and trying to figure out how to stop moving. Then the sound came back on and people started materializing out of the dusk to ask if we were okay. The kid was rattled, but still fine and moving. Taking stock of my own wounds, I noticed that my left leg and elbows were scraped up. Thankfully I was wearing my helmet- natural caution and stern warnings from SIT left me impervious to the bemused skepticism of the Balinese, who didn't think I needed a helmet for such a short distance (the kid wasn't wearing a helmet, but seemed fine. I don't know how he managed). Then I asked someone to look at my back, which was stinging. This elicited a loud "oh my god," and they insisted I go to the hospital. The hospital proved to be a rickety building with blood on the floor from another patient in the waiting room, so I declined their offers of treatment and made further calls to make sure the cavalry was on the way. Then I had the pleasure of treating my own shock.
After a bit, as my wait would end up being a few hours, I went back to the head of the village's house, and waited with about thirty family members and friends, eventually letting them wipe my back with some antiseptic things from my huge first aid kid (more good foresight!) Then the cavalry showed, one of our teachers, Marissa and three of the girls for moral support. We zipped off to Denpasar, where I had the pleasure of getting all the road grit scrubbed out of my stinging wounds, and then enjoyed the benefits of codeine-based pain meds as I finally got to sleep.
So, exciting story but not much for ISP work. I spent the rest of the week recovering, and now I'm much more healthy: bandage off the vertical scrape on my back, leg and other minor scrapes healing. Finished the last of my antibiotics today, hopefully won't have to apply new bandages tomorrow. Healing is progressing rapidly, and I'll hopefully be able to enjoy full water immersion by the end of my time in Bali. But right now, I'm happy it wasn't much worse than it could have been, and am no longer fretting about ISP. After all, I've got a pretty legit excuse. Only downside is that my adventure is probably going to be a bit tame from here on out, but I'll still keep y'all posted if anything new happens. But that's about it for me.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
No News 'Till Nongan
So it's been kind of a light couple of weeks for wild tales of life in Bali, but that's what happens when everything normalizes and you don't go on any big excursions. We did see a kind of cool performance on Halloween, a modern interpretation of lots of different art forms done for, as far as I could tell, the Balinese intellectual/artistic elite. Wild stuff.
And then I'll be off into the darkness of ISP, which is my independent study project, an SIT institution. I'll be off for the month of November, starting now, spending three weeks in the field (mostly on my own among the locals) studying and one week writing. It's not as hardcore as I make it out to be, but right now it seems intimidating. This is because I'll be studying Pan Balang Tamak, the Balinese trickster character, and an interesting figure in folklore because of the reactive nature of his tricks. I'll report more later, but the really cool part is that he's worshiped as a minor deity in certain villages. One of these is Nongan, a tiny village in the East of Bali, and a Bali Aga village (these are the dudes who resisted Javanese influence when they fled Java as Islam started to take over, and still kind of maintain their old traditions). They're supposed to kind of be a bit intense, and I get to attempt to stay with the head of the village for a little less than a week to question their religious practices. Cool. Between that and a journey around Bali, I'll probably be out of internet contact for a while. But on the plus side, I'll have interesting stuff to say upon my return.
And then I'll be off into the darkness of ISP, which is my independent study project, an SIT institution. I'll be off for the month of November, starting now, spending three weeks in the field (mostly on my own among the locals) studying and one week writing. It's not as hardcore as I make it out to be, but right now it seems intimidating. This is because I'll be studying Pan Balang Tamak, the Balinese trickster character, and an interesting figure in folklore because of the reactive nature of his tricks. I'll report more later, but the really cool part is that he's worshiped as a minor deity in certain villages. One of these is Nongan, a tiny village in the East of Bali, and a Bali Aga village (these are the dudes who resisted Javanese influence when they fled Java as Islam started to take over, and still kind of maintain their old traditions). They're supposed to kind of be a bit intense, and I get to attempt to stay with the head of the village for a little less than a week to question their religious practices. Cool. Between that and a journey around Bali, I'll probably be out of internet contact for a while. But on the plus side, I'll have interesting stuff to say upon my return.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Haro
Haro is a Balinese word that I've grown quite fond of these days, largely due to Bu Ary's bad influence. It's kind of the equivalent of "meh" or "blah" in English; the textbook definition is an expression of disapproval/upsetness with one's self. I think I'll try and bring it back to the states with me.
Anyhow, I've been getting some feedback about that last post, namely that it's apparently bad to disparage one's own work in a public forum, especially if it's one's own public forum. But either way, I was less than satisfied with that post, and decided to let you all know. As I was writing. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was feeling neglected by compatriots in the western world, and the fact that I was stuck dealing with a persistent tropical cold (how do cold viruses survive in this heat?). For the record, the cold remains, but should be gone tomorrow.
Back to topic, this mood kind of persisted and grew as we went to Denpasar, capital of Bali, for what amounted to a working vacation in a nice hotel. Nothing spectacular, save for some interesting thoughts brought about by my ill humor and impending worry about ISP. What I'm building to is that I had a cool realization: I was standing at the window of my hotel room, looking out at the attractive skyline of Denpasar in the late afternoon, when I realized that I don't belong here. This isn't my island. Bali is a magical place, true, and quite appealing for tourism due to culture and natural beauty, but it's for the Balinese. Us westerners, we really only serve to mess things up here. The island is increasingly abandoning traditional ways in favor of the easy and lucrative life that supporting tourism promises. One lecturer pointed out (and I don't know the facts on this) that almost eighty percent of the island's income derives from tourism now. This is no longer an agricultural society, and it's having an impact on culture as people now turn what were formerly "extracurricular" pursuits (like art and music) into a profession, as tourists will come and pay good money for bits of foreign culture. So the culture gradually becomes commercialized, and loses its soul. This is fine, because Balinese culture is so strongly tied to religion, and religion can't be commercialized, right? Wrong. The influx of money leads to more and more ornate ceremonies, which could be considered a good thing as far as physical manifestation of devotion goes, but some people believe (and this is the gut feeling I get, even though I've only been here for about eight weeks) that this is leading to a kind of soullessness, a going-though-the-motions regarding what was formerly earnest expression of faith. I'd be skeptical if certain parties in Ubud a few years ago hadn't sold the TV rights to a big cremation to the European networks and actually turned a profit on what's supposed to be a sacrifice of time and money. Haro.
But it wasn't just me getting riled up about the evils of tourism (economic imperialism) that was getting me down. As a student, I really have no place on this island. As I watched the traffic, I realized that as much as I try to learn Balinese culture and live that life, I will always be a foreigner. Even Pak Tom, Bu Ary's American husband, isn't sure whether or not he'll be staying here for the rest of his life, and he's the closest thing I've seen to a westerner who's managed to become a part of the society here. But I'm not even a foreigner. I'm fifth business to this island. There are the locals, the people who live on this island literally and culturally. There are the tourists, of differing species (spiritual, surfer, European, Australian, family or party), who are here to have a good time and leave. There are the expats, also of differing species but really more on a spectrum of earnestness vs. obnoxiousness, who have decided to live here for profit or pleasure. And then there's me. I'm not quite a tourist, certainly not an expat, but never will be a local. Fifth business. And, at that moment in Denpasar, it seemed like I was really just a glorified tourist, abroad under the auspices of education.
And then I remembered the adventure, something that I think made all the difference. It didn't really solve any of these quandaries, but it helped me rationalize them. These doubts, this worry and wonder, all of this is part of the process of being a poor little mahasiswa (college student) lost in a strange land, feeling like he's been there for so long but really not yet a week over the halfway point of the journey. Everyone doubts, and the doubts will eventually become part of the story. In the meantime, I'm here on a journey (to the heart of the Balinese dream), and that alone sets me apart from all the other whitey on this island who think they belong here. I know I don't belong. My time is finite, but while I'm here I'm gonna get me some knowledge, and maybe some good will come of it later. Maybe I'll help the island. Maybe it'll be a selfish pursuit. But no matter how I look at it, I'm still better than the tourists. Haro.
Another great thing about haro is that you can misuse it all the time because it sounds so cool. That turned out to be a little more inspiring than I'd originally planned, so here's the short Balinese adventure of the week, a visit to our local temple's odalan, which is a yearly ceremony for those of you who don't remember. There's a big temple in Bedulu, Pura Samuan Tiga, that all the host families go to worship at because it's local, as well as a few people from elsewhere nearby. Because we got back in the afternoon, I got to go with my host uncle and pray at night, which ended up being so much cooler than daytime. We rode over and joined the throngs of happy worshipers walking into the temple, which was all lit up with floodlights. But not in the ugly parking lot-style that we'd use. Instead, they lit only the various temples and shrines, which served to highlight all the shiny and brightly colored offerings and statues within, while spilling enough residual light to illuminate all the worshipers sitting on the lawn praying (yes, there's a lawn at Samuan Tiga). Prayer done, we got to wander around and see the different gamelans that had come to play, pretend to listen to a guy reading the Ramayana in some language I don't understand, and watched some mask dancing, including the dancer making fun of one of the girls because he's related to her host father (so it's okay!). What set this one apart, though, was the neighborly feel: I ran into a few other students who came to pray with their families, and my Uncle saw lots of friends and family to banter with. There were only a few whiteys in the audience, but apparently they were local, and they wore proper formal clothes, so it was less of a "ugh, whiteys" thing than "oh, what are you doing her?" Good fun indeed.
Well, that's about all that there is to say I guess. I'll probably finish my art project tomorrow, and there aren't any other excursions planned before ISP, so that's the next big adventure for me. Apart from the usual big adventure of everyday living here, I guess.
Anyhow, I've been getting some feedback about that last post, namely that it's apparently bad to disparage one's own work in a public forum, especially if it's one's own public forum. But either way, I was less than satisfied with that post, and decided to let you all know. As I was writing. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was feeling neglected by compatriots in the western world, and the fact that I was stuck dealing with a persistent tropical cold (how do cold viruses survive in this heat?). For the record, the cold remains, but should be gone tomorrow.
Back to topic, this mood kind of persisted and grew as we went to Denpasar, capital of Bali, for what amounted to a working vacation in a nice hotel. Nothing spectacular, save for some interesting thoughts brought about by my ill humor and impending worry about ISP. What I'm building to is that I had a cool realization: I was standing at the window of my hotel room, looking out at the attractive skyline of Denpasar in the late afternoon, when I realized that I don't belong here. This isn't my island. Bali is a magical place, true, and quite appealing for tourism due to culture and natural beauty, but it's for the Balinese. Us westerners, we really only serve to mess things up here. The island is increasingly abandoning traditional ways in favor of the easy and lucrative life that supporting tourism promises. One lecturer pointed out (and I don't know the facts on this) that almost eighty percent of the island's income derives from tourism now. This is no longer an agricultural society, and it's having an impact on culture as people now turn what were formerly "extracurricular" pursuits (like art and music) into a profession, as tourists will come and pay good money for bits of foreign culture. So the culture gradually becomes commercialized, and loses its soul. This is fine, because Balinese culture is so strongly tied to religion, and religion can't be commercialized, right? Wrong. The influx of money leads to more and more ornate ceremonies, which could be considered a good thing as far as physical manifestation of devotion goes, but some people believe (and this is the gut feeling I get, even though I've only been here for about eight weeks) that this is leading to a kind of soullessness, a going-though-the-motions regarding what was formerly earnest expression of faith. I'd be skeptical if certain parties in Ubud a few years ago hadn't sold the TV rights to a big cremation to the European networks and actually turned a profit on what's supposed to be a sacrifice of time and money. Haro.
But it wasn't just me getting riled up about the evils of tourism (economic imperialism) that was getting me down. As a student, I really have no place on this island. As I watched the traffic, I realized that as much as I try to learn Balinese culture and live that life, I will always be a foreigner. Even Pak Tom, Bu Ary's American husband, isn't sure whether or not he'll be staying here for the rest of his life, and he's the closest thing I've seen to a westerner who's managed to become a part of the society here. But I'm not even a foreigner. I'm fifth business to this island. There are the locals, the people who live on this island literally and culturally. There are the tourists, of differing species (spiritual, surfer, European, Australian, family or party), who are here to have a good time and leave. There are the expats, also of differing species but really more on a spectrum of earnestness vs. obnoxiousness, who have decided to live here for profit or pleasure. And then there's me. I'm not quite a tourist, certainly not an expat, but never will be a local. Fifth business. And, at that moment in Denpasar, it seemed like I was really just a glorified tourist, abroad under the auspices of education.
And then I remembered the adventure, something that I think made all the difference. It didn't really solve any of these quandaries, but it helped me rationalize them. These doubts, this worry and wonder, all of this is part of the process of being a poor little mahasiswa (college student) lost in a strange land, feeling like he's been there for so long but really not yet a week over the halfway point of the journey. Everyone doubts, and the doubts will eventually become part of the story. In the meantime, I'm here on a journey (to the heart of the Balinese dream), and that alone sets me apart from all the other whitey on this island who think they belong here. I know I don't belong. My time is finite, but while I'm here I'm gonna get me some knowledge, and maybe some good will come of it later. Maybe I'll help the island. Maybe it'll be a selfish pursuit. But no matter how I look at it, I'm still better than the tourists. Haro.
Another great thing about haro is that you can misuse it all the time because it sounds so cool. That turned out to be a little more inspiring than I'd originally planned, so here's the short Balinese adventure of the week, a visit to our local temple's odalan, which is a yearly ceremony for those of you who don't remember. There's a big temple in Bedulu, Pura Samuan Tiga, that all the host families go to worship at because it's local, as well as a few people from elsewhere nearby. Because we got back in the afternoon, I got to go with my host uncle and pray at night, which ended up being so much cooler than daytime. We rode over and joined the throngs of happy worshipers walking into the temple, which was all lit up with floodlights. But not in the ugly parking lot-style that we'd use. Instead, they lit only the various temples and shrines, which served to highlight all the shiny and brightly colored offerings and statues within, while spilling enough residual light to illuminate all the worshipers sitting on the lawn praying (yes, there's a lawn at Samuan Tiga). Prayer done, we got to wander around and see the different gamelans that had come to play, pretend to listen to a guy reading the Ramayana in some language I don't understand, and watched some mask dancing, including the dancer making fun of one of the girls because he's related to her host father (so it's okay!). What set this one apart, though, was the neighborly feel: I ran into a few other students who came to pray with their families, and my Uncle saw lots of friends and family to banter with. There were only a few whiteys in the audience, but apparently they were local, and they wore proper formal clothes, so it was less of a "ugh, whiteys" thing than "oh, what are you doing her?" Good fun indeed.
Well, that's about all that there is to say I guess. I'll probably finish my art project tomorrow, and there aren't any other excursions planned before ISP, so that's the next big adventure for me. Apart from the usual big adventure of everyday living here, I guess.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Galungan Days/Slight Adventure
I think I've reached the point on this trip (conveniently about halfway through my time here in Bali) when things that would probably sound really super exciting, exotic and wild to me three months ago don't really stand out in memory anymore. Like in our latest excursion, we stopped by a Muslim fishing village (cool because Bali is both massively Hindu and land-oriented instead of sea-oriented) and were coerced into dancing to the local orchestra, a group of dudes playing what I'd interpret as Sulawesian gamelan (again, memory fails; I think I remember it described as being from Sulawesi, which is another island in Indonesia, but I'm not sure where the Bugis are from. I probably should have called it a Bugis fishing village, as that's the ethnicity of the people who live there. They so happen to be Muslim. Fun fact: the word bugis is where we get the term "boogey man" from, as the Bugis were feared pirates hired by various people to do dirty work, so bugis man became boogey man. Now back to your original programming). I don't remember where I was before that long paranthetical, so new sentence: the aforementioned dancing was for the amusement of local children, who turned out in droves to gaze at the silly westerners before joining in the dancing. Then we saw their mosque and rolled back out. And right now, looking back, it doesn't really register that these sorts of things don't happen to everyone every day. Adventure has become my middle name. Well, not really at all, but who's counting?
In continuing with the plan of not being able to relate everything that's gone on, maybe I could at least explain the title of this post. Galungan is one of the big Hindu festivals in Bali (it has an Indian counterpart by a different name relating to Durga's defeat of some demon), a time when the ancestral spirits come back to hang out at the family shrine and be honored. It also celebrates the victory of good over evil (only temporarily though, as there must always be evil with the good), but I couldn't really understand my family on that theological point, so let's stick with the rituals. It's kind of like Christmas, but with a heavy dose of Thanksgiving. The entire family starts preparations a good week in advance, but the real madness starts a few days before. Kids get out of school and many people have time off from work so as to be at home and help with the offerings, of which there are many. Most offerings are little palm or banana leaf basket-like objects, filled with flowers and food, but many are really huge, like the piles of fruit for temple ceremonies or baskets with roasted animals. Penjors, however, top all. These are giant bamboo poles, curved at the top, that people decorate and put out in front of their house along the road. A simple one I made with my father for the local temple basically just involved affixing curved palm leaf shapes to the pole, tying a big palm leaf mane around the bottom, and putting a young coconut on it (the penjor is symbolic of life and the universe and a giant snake, all sorts of things that my Indonesian isn't good enough to understand yet). It took us under an hour, and probably didn't cost that much. But the one the family made took three days, involved a few huge store-bought ornaments (intricately cut out of palm leaf, dyed and painted bright colors), felt balls, precisely folded palm leaf shapes, black fabric, a huge bamboo pole, and finally a flag with the "Om" symbol on it. It cost 450,000 rupiah (lots for an offering) and took three days of communal labor. Admittedly, they were showing off a bit, but the process isn't that far removed from decorating a Christmas tree.
Apart from the offerings, there's lots of cooking and family gemutleicheit (did I spell that right? Not many Germans here, only a vague Dutch feeling from their colonial presence). Everyone gets together to help out (even homestay students) and the time after the religious ceremonies (which involve visiting and praying at lots of temples) for visiting with family members. It was cool, and I'm spending way too much time on this, but as a last thought it really made me wish that we had more festivities in the states that involved this much tradition and ritual. I guess that's one challenge of a mostly secular society, but we can't really pull of religion in as low-key a way as the Balinese do, so we might just have to create some traditions of our own. I'm just saying, it's rare that there's ever that much of a good vibe surrounding anything holiday-oriented back home.
As I drone on about random things, I might want to include a summary of the excursion that took us to this fishing village. We were up to the hot and arid North Coast of Bali, a more diverse area in that there are many different religions represented. We saw some cool Buddhist temples and met with a fun group of kids from the university up there. The area really reminded me of home, home being Los Angeles, but that might be because I've been away for a long time. And then we went to try and climb a mountain (a sign near the bottom said "Slight Adventure," which described the excursion perfectly), but some of us happened to get sick the day before and didn't want to climb a mountain to see the sunrise. So instead I skulked and bemoaned my bad luck and resolved to climb it later, and then basked in scenery that legitimately looked like the Eastern Sierras.
In case my readers can't tell, I'm losing coherence, so apologies for what feels like a couple of weak posts. It's hot here. People don't think well when it's hot. People also don't like writing blog posts when there's absolutely zero feedback. So, friends, if you like what you read, say something so I don't feel like I'm all the way on the other side of the world. Which I am. But still, ground me, let me know if I'm actually having an experience or if I need to step my game up. ISP's a-coming, so hopefully I'll have a better experience for y'all next time.
In continuing with the plan of not being able to relate everything that's gone on, maybe I could at least explain the title of this post. Galungan is one of the big Hindu festivals in Bali (it has an Indian counterpart by a different name relating to Durga's defeat of some demon), a time when the ancestral spirits come back to hang out at the family shrine and be honored. It also celebrates the victory of good over evil (only temporarily though, as there must always be evil with the good), but I couldn't really understand my family on that theological point, so let's stick with the rituals. It's kind of like Christmas, but with a heavy dose of Thanksgiving. The entire family starts preparations a good week in advance, but the real madness starts a few days before. Kids get out of school and many people have time off from work so as to be at home and help with the offerings, of which there are many. Most offerings are little palm or banana leaf basket-like objects, filled with flowers and food, but many are really huge, like the piles of fruit for temple ceremonies or baskets with roasted animals. Penjors, however, top all. These are giant bamboo poles, curved at the top, that people decorate and put out in front of their house along the road. A simple one I made with my father for the local temple basically just involved affixing curved palm leaf shapes to the pole, tying a big palm leaf mane around the bottom, and putting a young coconut on it (the penjor is symbolic of life and the universe and a giant snake, all sorts of things that my Indonesian isn't good enough to understand yet). It took us under an hour, and probably didn't cost that much. But the one the family made took three days, involved a few huge store-bought ornaments (intricately cut out of palm leaf, dyed and painted bright colors), felt balls, precisely folded palm leaf shapes, black fabric, a huge bamboo pole, and finally a flag with the "Om" symbol on it. It cost 450,000 rupiah (lots for an offering) and took three days of communal labor. Admittedly, they were showing off a bit, but the process isn't that far removed from decorating a Christmas tree.
Apart from the offerings, there's lots of cooking and family gemutleicheit (did I spell that right? Not many Germans here, only a vague Dutch feeling from their colonial presence). Everyone gets together to help out (even homestay students) and the time after the religious ceremonies (which involve visiting and praying at lots of temples) for visiting with family members. It was cool, and I'm spending way too much time on this, but as a last thought it really made me wish that we had more festivities in the states that involved this much tradition and ritual. I guess that's one challenge of a mostly secular society, but we can't really pull of religion in as low-key a way as the Balinese do, so we might just have to create some traditions of our own. I'm just saying, it's rare that there's ever that much of a good vibe surrounding anything holiday-oriented back home.
As I drone on about random things, I might want to include a summary of the excursion that took us to this fishing village. We were up to the hot and arid North Coast of Bali, a more diverse area in that there are many different religions represented. We saw some cool Buddhist temples and met with a fun group of kids from the university up there. The area really reminded me of home, home being Los Angeles, but that might be because I've been away for a long time. And then we went to try and climb a mountain (a sign near the bottom said "Slight Adventure," which described the excursion perfectly), but some of us happened to get sick the day before and didn't want to climb a mountain to see the sunrise. So instead I skulked and bemoaned my bad luck and resolved to climb it later, and then basked in scenery that legitimately looked like the Eastern Sierras.
In case my readers can't tell, I'm losing coherence, so apologies for what feels like a couple of weak posts. It's hot here. People don't think well when it's hot. People also don't like writing blog posts when there's absolutely zero feedback. So, friends, if you like what you read, say something so I don't feel like I'm all the way on the other side of the world. Which I am. But still, ground me, let me know if I'm actually having an experience or if I need to step my game up. ISP's a-coming, so hopefully I'll have a better experience for y'all next time.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Munduk Pakel
I couldn't think of anything super-witty, so just read it like Mmmmmmmmunduk PAKEL, which is how some enthusiastic Balinese people would pronounce it. Anyhow, you guys might not ever get to hear about the art projects or the host family or any of that, because I realized that I can't keep trying to tell you everything that goes on all the time. Ever. What cool stories would I have to come out later? What secrecy would be left? And practically, it's hard to write those massive posts, and it must be hard for you to read too, poor things.
So in the interest of simplicity, let's stick to this latest adventure, five days in Ary's home village of Munduk Pakel, a little farming town way up in the ricefields in the west of Bali. And when I say little, I mean little: it's literally a one-street town with no post office (but it still has over three warungs and a little ice cream motorbike that rides through every afternoon). There's definitely a laid-back village vibe, as everyone knows everyone else's business and things get really sleepy in the afternoons, but it was incredible. Probably my favorite part of SIT so far. We drove and hiked through the best, greenest and most picturesque fields of rice, terraced all up and down these hills, into the village, where most people turned out to say hi and invite us into their homes so we'd have a place to sleep and food to eat. Munduk was interesting because, instead of the usual one large extended family per compound, there were around four different families living in a single compound, just building more buildings further and further back down or up the hillside, due to marrying-in and other complicated family dynamics that I don't have time to explain here in full.
And then we had lots of adventures. The laundry list: we practiced gamelan. Twice (although the second one kind of sucked because we're not very good and that practice was less structured, and as you can probably figure out a percussion orchestra without structure is just a lot of painful, painful noise. And intro gamelan is kind of repetitive and boring to begin with, but we had to start somewhere). We bathed in a tropical river every day, although mine was a solitary activity as I couldn't exactly bathe with the other male students (BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE). I worked in a rice field, which was good wholesome fun and games hoeing in the middle of verdant greenery, with the mud between your toes and the morning rain in your face, until my co-workers started a mudfight, involved me, and led me to step on my own hoe, splitting the ball of my foot. But it's okay now, as I think it just opened the really big callus I've got there and freaked me out about "cow manure fertilizer" and "tetanus" entering my body.
Let's see, we also... had a flirtation dance! This was much more fun than the terror that the words flirtation and dance inspire when associated so closely. The way it works: a bamboo gamelan orchestra (much cooler than the other one because it's not so brassy sounding) plays the most jaunty and upbeat tune I've heard since coming here, and repeats it twice so you, the lonely westerner missing music that sounds upbeat and familiar, can groove for a bit. Then the dancer comes out, does a prelude thing, and then picks visiting guests from the crowd to dance with her. You're supposed to kind of follow her moves, or at least dance something, until she sends you back or shame and embarrassment lead you to shake her hand in defeat. In case you haven't guessed, this is something the villagers do for their entertainment when guests come (although it used to be a way for guys to meet girls). Props go to the little old teacher from Tabanan district, apparently formerly a professional dancer, who looked like he was doing a choreographed part, and actually made the dancer herself laugh. Good fun.
We also (this never really ends) made coconut bowls, traditional medicine, visited a healer, saw a shadow puppet play (something I couldn't really understand because it was in Balinese, which in itself was for the benefit of the local audience as the main characters usually speak in Kawi, high Javanese. But it was fun nonetheless in a slapstick way), and went squirrel hunting with Putu. Putu deserves an introduction here: Ary's son by her first marriage, a nice and shy guy born and raised in Munduk. I'm convinced that if he went to high school in the late 50's, Putu would be the quarterback who shows up on his motorcycle, and everyone would cheer "PUTU! Yeah, you go man! Yay Putu!" Then he'd smile that quiet smile, light a cigarette, and ride off on his bike to more cheers and screams. Anyhow, he goes to school in Denpassar now but doesn't really like the city, which is easy to see after spending a few days in the village, so he returns whenever he can. Squirrels are also a pest to the farmers, so they pay a small bounty for tails. Anyhow, I finally managed to bond with this mysterious man, and he showed up as I started to pack to head back and asked me if I'd like to go hunting. This entailed him hiking a short trail with a gigantic air rifle, spending a lot of time looking up, and shooting a squirrel from some distance on the way home. He let me shoot a coconut.
And then we went back. Even though Bedulu is kind of a sleepy place, the traffic and proximity to the evils of Ubud made it seem so much less pleasant after that five day stint in what's about as real as the real Bali can get. Even though we got the candy-coated version of rural life, it seemed pretty content and idyllic, once you get over back-breaking rice farming and food shortages and poverty. Just sitting in the compound on a lazy afternoon after a mandi in the river, watching the world go by, was about as great as life can get.
Which is of course why I decided to spend the next few days volunteering at the Ubud Writers and Readers festival (or, Expat Appreciation Week), an event that I'll report back on in detail later, once I can form a clear opinion. Chances are it'll be pretty unfavorable.
I'm not entirely sure where adventures are taking me in the next weeks, but I think I'll be out of internet contact probably until next Monday. So in the mean time... well, I've used all my "keep doing your thing" endings up already, so I'll just say until next time. Also, keep me posted on the news, not current affairs. I find it really hard to believe that it's been a month at school and I haven't heard one wild and crazy story or piece of gossip. Come on guys.
So in the interest of simplicity, let's stick to this latest adventure, five days in Ary's home village of Munduk Pakel, a little farming town way up in the ricefields in the west of Bali. And when I say little, I mean little: it's literally a one-street town with no post office (but it still has over three warungs and a little ice cream motorbike that rides through every afternoon). There's definitely a laid-back village vibe, as everyone knows everyone else's business and things get really sleepy in the afternoons, but it was incredible. Probably my favorite part of SIT so far. We drove and hiked through the best, greenest and most picturesque fields of rice, terraced all up and down these hills, into the village, where most people turned out to say hi and invite us into their homes so we'd have a place to sleep and food to eat. Munduk was interesting because, instead of the usual one large extended family per compound, there were around four different families living in a single compound, just building more buildings further and further back down or up the hillside, due to marrying-in and other complicated family dynamics that I don't have time to explain here in full.
And then we had lots of adventures. The laundry list: we practiced gamelan. Twice (although the second one kind of sucked because we're not very good and that practice was less structured, and as you can probably figure out a percussion orchestra without structure is just a lot of painful, painful noise. And intro gamelan is kind of repetitive and boring to begin with, but we had to start somewhere). We bathed in a tropical river every day, although mine was a solitary activity as I couldn't exactly bathe with the other male students (BECAUSE THERE ARE NONE). I worked in a rice field, which was good wholesome fun and games hoeing in the middle of verdant greenery, with the mud between your toes and the morning rain in your face, until my co-workers started a mudfight, involved me, and led me to step on my own hoe, splitting the ball of my foot. But it's okay now, as I think it just opened the really big callus I've got there and freaked me out about "cow manure fertilizer" and "tetanus" entering my body.
Let's see, we also... had a flirtation dance! This was much more fun than the terror that the words flirtation and dance inspire when associated so closely. The way it works: a bamboo gamelan orchestra (much cooler than the other one because it's not so brassy sounding) plays the most jaunty and upbeat tune I've heard since coming here, and repeats it twice so you, the lonely westerner missing music that sounds upbeat and familiar, can groove for a bit. Then the dancer comes out, does a prelude thing, and then picks visiting guests from the crowd to dance with her. You're supposed to kind of follow her moves, or at least dance something, until she sends you back or shame and embarrassment lead you to shake her hand in defeat. In case you haven't guessed, this is something the villagers do for their entertainment when guests come (although it used to be a way for guys to meet girls). Props go to the little old teacher from Tabanan district, apparently formerly a professional dancer, who looked like he was doing a choreographed part, and actually made the dancer herself laugh. Good fun.
We also (this never really ends) made coconut bowls, traditional medicine, visited a healer, saw a shadow puppet play (something I couldn't really understand because it was in Balinese, which in itself was for the benefit of the local audience as the main characters usually speak in Kawi, high Javanese. But it was fun nonetheless in a slapstick way), and went squirrel hunting with Putu. Putu deserves an introduction here: Ary's son by her first marriage, a nice and shy guy born and raised in Munduk. I'm convinced that if he went to high school in the late 50's, Putu would be the quarterback who shows up on his motorcycle, and everyone would cheer "PUTU! Yeah, you go man! Yay Putu!" Then he'd smile that quiet smile, light a cigarette, and ride off on his bike to more cheers and screams. Anyhow, he goes to school in Denpassar now but doesn't really like the city, which is easy to see after spending a few days in the village, so he returns whenever he can. Squirrels are also a pest to the farmers, so they pay a small bounty for tails. Anyhow, I finally managed to bond with this mysterious man, and he showed up as I started to pack to head back and asked me if I'd like to go hunting. This entailed him hiking a short trail with a gigantic air rifle, spending a lot of time looking up, and shooting a squirrel from some distance on the way home. He let me shoot a coconut.
And then we went back. Even though Bedulu is kind of a sleepy place, the traffic and proximity to the evils of Ubud made it seem so much less pleasant after that five day stint in what's about as real as the real Bali can get. Even though we got the candy-coated version of rural life, it seemed pretty content and idyllic, once you get over back-breaking rice farming and food shortages and poverty. Just sitting in the compound on a lazy afternoon after a mandi in the river, watching the world go by, was about as great as life can get.
Which is of course why I decided to spend the next few days volunteering at the Ubud Writers and Readers festival (or, Expat Appreciation Week), an event that I'll report back on in detail later, once I can form a clear opinion. Chances are it'll be pretty unfavorable.
I'm not entirely sure where adventures are taking me in the next weeks, but I think I'll be out of internet contact probably until next Monday. So in the mean time... well, I've used all my "keep doing your thing" endings up already, so I'll just say until next time. Also, keep me posted on the news, not current affairs. I find it really hard to believe that it's been a month at school and I haven't heard one wild and crazy story or piece of gossip. Come on guys.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Playing Tourist
Although I had a good number of spectacular Pak Wayan quotes to choose a title from ("Whether you have other dogs beyond the funny one, people don't care" and "Boys, all 2,000 of you" spring to mind), I had to go with the descriptive title here. I suppose that, no matter how superior a student abroad may feel to the swarms of ignorant tourists clogging his island, a man's got to travel and enjoy the oceans of the South Pacific while he's in country. And so I did. Our weather cleared up from monsoon-y and a few of us headed to the southern peninsula of Bali, the Bukit, to visit a place called Ulu Watu, known for its important temple and spectacular surfing.
For starters, the Bukit is wildly different from the rest of Bali. The area I'm staying in, Bedulu, is in a very green and wet part of Bali just below the central mountains. When I ride the bemo into Ubud (have I mentioned bemos? They're the public transportation here, big rickety vans that follow the market routes. There's no real set passenger limit, as we've fit probably 16 in a van, and price is negotiable depending on your bargaining skill. Successfully flagging down a bemo and paying the local fare makes me feel almost as cool and local as when I can banter in Bahasa Indonesia with the other passengers) to visit with the Internet and see what lovely things everyone has had to say to me in my absence, I'm surrounded by palm trees and random rice fields and other tropical vegetation. Apologies from deviating so far from my subject; the Bukit, by contrast, is really dry and arid, much more like the chaparral hills of Southern California or what I imagine the Outback would be like. The climate and vegetation, combined with all the surfers and beaches, actually made me feel a bit homesick. Apparently the Bukit was historically poor, too dry to grow rice and originally separated from the rest of Bali (Tommy Suharto connected the two and messed up some ecology in the process), so the people subsisted largely on selling salt. That was, of course, before tourism. Now there's a big resort on the eastern side of the peninsula and lots of expert-level surfing on the west, where I was headed.
We checked into a hotel (at $40 a night for one room, it was damn cheap by American standards, considering the splendid pool and ocean view. but the $400,000 rupiah tag made my Balinses price sense cringe, especially because we couldn't barter) and headed off to the beach, which wasn't really what we expected at all. The road (no sidewalks, which proved challenging to us non-motorbike-with-surfboard-holder-riding folk)lead us to a series of concrete steps, very steep and sandy, that went down the face of a cliff. Along the cliff some entrepreneurial souls had built a large collection of tin-roofed huts housing warungs (cheap restaurants), surf shops, and the like, all with amazing views of the ocean. At the bottom of the cliffs was the little strip of sand, hidden among giant rocky columns, which opened into a kind of cave that the surfers could walk out of to get to the waves. There was a viewing platform on a large seaward outcropping, which we climbed a series of rickety stairs to get to. From there the Indian Ocean unfolded, a perfect South Pacific blue, with the white cliffs of the Bukit stretching out to either side before bending back and out of sight behind us. The waves were the largest I'd ever seen, and the most picturesque, easily 6-10 feet tall on average with a big barreling break, way far out to sea because of a shallow reef that the surfers would walk out on. And the surfers were spectacular and probably more than a little insane, tackling waves that looked like the drowning and pulverizing variety. Absolutely five stars amazing natural beauty.
So enough about that, let's talk about me. We spent one sunset and one late afternoon there, chilling on a little strip of beach beyond the rocky cliffs and watching life go by (not to mention a few hermit crabs). We also spent a good deal of time in the pool, eating in a warung we found that served good pizza and Bali's own tasty beer, Storm (the only stout I've ever had that tasted like kalamata olives. In a good way), and walking along the hot roads to get everywhere. The Ulu Watu scene is, as a t-shirt has it, bloody bagus, but a little weird. The Balinese themselves were naturally a little more reserved and unfriendly, doubtless from years of dealing with the tourists, of which there were few (as one friend characterized it, surfers and the sorts of girls who want to pick up surfers). But the prevalent vibe wasn't that of an over-touristed beach world, but much more of a surfer hangout that happened to be in Bali. In fact, the whole weekend felt like a pseudo-Balinese experience, rubbing shoulders with westerners and enjoying the sun and surf in an area of arid natural beauty. It was weird, but very relaxing and nice, minus a slight sunburn (in fact, I'm probably the darkest I've been in my life right now, which isn't saying much). One day I hope to be a good enough surfer to return and do Ulu Watu as it was meant to be done, but in the mean time I'm satisfied with our little break from constant cultural immersion.
Oh, and I finally ran into some temple monkeys. Although the area was traditionally poor and slightly forgotten, Ulu Watu is home to a very important temple, the Pura Ulu Watu. It's a shame that the Balinese don't really like the beach (it's associated with danger in Balinese Hinduism), because ocean temples are spectacular. This one, for instance, sits on the very edge of the cliff almost at the bottom of the peninsula, looking back up at the cliffs. The ocean was just as blue, and the drop down was even more sheer and spectacular. The grounds (I guess that's what they would be called) were also incredible in that arid Bukit way, and I would have loved to go explore through the scrub along the cliffs. And, most importantly, the area had a large resident group of temple monkeys. Technically macaques, they seemed to just sit around and feed off trash and food that tourists brought for them to eat. Some were fat, some were old, some were cute, and some were small, but they were all, for the most part, indifferent to us and good-natured. There were a few instances where some wanted to grab a camera or something, as I gathered by the fact that they ran towards us with beady little monkey eyes on our electronics, but by showing no fear and leaping back cursing they got the message that we were not to be trifled with. They also had a little monkey playground set up, with a rope swing and water basin to play in. It's a shame they were all doubtless rabid and ready to kill at a moment's notice.
Tomorrow, I'll have been in country for one month already. That's kind of amazing, but also feels pretty right considering all the stuff that's gone down while here. My writing juices are mostly spent after another overly long post, so I'll promise yet again to talk about the homestay family and my art project and all that other stuff later. But before I go, credit to Jake for the inspiration to change blog titles once I speak the language (and I also didn't want to offend the locals with Hunter S. references). The current title is, fittingly enough, Bahasa Indonesia for "Friendship Adventure." Good fun.
For starters, the Bukit is wildly different from the rest of Bali. The area I'm staying in, Bedulu, is in a very green and wet part of Bali just below the central mountains. When I ride the bemo into Ubud (have I mentioned bemos? They're the public transportation here, big rickety vans that follow the market routes. There's no real set passenger limit, as we've fit probably 16 in a van, and price is negotiable depending on your bargaining skill. Successfully flagging down a bemo and paying the local fare makes me feel almost as cool and local as when I can banter in Bahasa Indonesia with the other passengers) to visit with the Internet and see what lovely things everyone has had to say to me in my absence, I'm surrounded by palm trees and random rice fields and other tropical vegetation. Apologies from deviating so far from my subject; the Bukit, by contrast, is really dry and arid, much more like the chaparral hills of Southern California or what I imagine the Outback would be like. The climate and vegetation, combined with all the surfers and beaches, actually made me feel a bit homesick. Apparently the Bukit was historically poor, too dry to grow rice and originally separated from the rest of Bali (Tommy Suharto connected the two and messed up some ecology in the process), so the people subsisted largely on selling salt. That was, of course, before tourism. Now there's a big resort on the eastern side of the peninsula and lots of expert-level surfing on the west, where I was headed.
We checked into a hotel (at $40 a night for one room, it was damn cheap by American standards, considering the splendid pool and ocean view. but the $400,000 rupiah tag made my Balinses price sense cringe, especially because we couldn't barter) and headed off to the beach, which wasn't really what we expected at all. The road (no sidewalks, which proved challenging to us non-motorbike-with-surfboard-holder-riding folk)lead us to a series of concrete steps, very steep and sandy, that went down the face of a cliff. Along the cliff some entrepreneurial souls had built a large collection of tin-roofed huts housing warungs (cheap restaurants), surf shops, and the like, all with amazing views of the ocean. At the bottom of the cliffs was the little strip of sand, hidden among giant rocky columns, which opened into a kind of cave that the surfers could walk out of to get to the waves. There was a viewing platform on a large seaward outcropping, which we climbed a series of rickety stairs to get to. From there the Indian Ocean unfolded, a perfect South Pacific blue, with the white cliffs of the Bukit stretching out to either side before bending back and out of sight behind us. The waves were the largest I'd ever seen, and the most picturesque, easily 6-10 feet tall on average with a big barreling break, way far out to sea because of a shallow reef that the surfers would walk out on. And the surfers were spectacular and probably more than a little insane, tackling waves that looked like the drowning and pulverizing variety. Absolutely five stars amazing natural beauty.
So enough about that, let's talk about me. We spent one sunset and one late afternoon there, chilling on a little strip of beach beyond the rocky cliffs and watching life go by (not to mention a few hermit crabs). We also spent a good deal of time in the pool, eating in a warung we found that served good pizza and Bali's own tasty beer, Storm (the only stout I've ever had that tasted like kalamata olives. In a good way), and walking along the hot roads to get everywhere. The Ulu Watu scene is, as a t-shirt has it, bloody bagus, but a little weird. The Balinese themselves were naturally a little more reserved and unfriendly, doubtless from years of dealing with the tourists, of which there were few (as one friend characterized it, surfers and the sorts of girls who want to pick up surfers). But the prevalent vibe wasn't that of an over-touristed beach world, but much more of a surfer hangout that happened to be in Bali. In fact, the whole weekend felt like a pseudo-Balinese experience, rubbing shoulders with westerners and enjoying the sun and surf in an area of arid natural beauty. It was weird, but very relaxing and nice, minus a slight sunburn (in fact, I'm probably the darkest I've been in my life right now, which isn't saying much). One day I hope to be a good enough surfer to return and do Ulu Watu as it was meant to be done, but in the mean time I'm satisfied with our little break from constant cultural immersion.
Oh, and I finally ran into some temple monkeys. Although the area was traditionally poor and slightly forgotten, Ulu Watu is home to a very important temple, the Pura Ulu Watu. It's a shame that the Balinese don't really like the beach (it's associated with danger in Balinese Hinduism), because ocean temples are spectacular. This one, for instance, sits on the very edge of the cliff almost at the bottom of the peninsula, looking back up at the cliffs. The ocean was just as blue, and the drop down was even more sheer and spectacular. The grounds (I guess that's what they would be called) were also incredible in that arid Bukit way, and I would have loved to go explore through the scrub along the cliffs. And, most importantly, the area had a large resident group of temple monkeys. Technically macaques, they seemed to just sit around and feed off trash and food that tourists brought for them to eat. Some were fat, some were old, some were cute, and some were small, but they were all, for the most part, indifferent to us and good-natured. There were a few instances where some wanted to grab a camera or something, as I gathered by the fact that they ran towards us with beady little monkey eyes on our electronics, but by showing no fear and leaping back cursing they got the message that we were not to be trifled with. They also had a little monkey playground set up, with a rope swing and water basin to play in. It's a shame they were all doubtless rabid and ready to kill at a moment's notice.
Tomorrow, I'll have been in country for one month already. That's kind of amazing, but also feels pretty right considering all the stuff that's gone down while here. My writing juices are mostly spent after another overly long post, so I'll promise yet again to talk about the homestay family and my art project and all that other stuff later. But before I go, credit to Jake for the inspiration to change blog titles once I speak the language (and I also didn't want to offend the locals with Hunter S. references). The current title is, fittingly enough, Bahasa Indonesia for "Friendship Adventure." Good fun.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Anjing is Not an Occupation
This is a direct quote from my Bahasa Indonesia teacher, the illustrious Pak Wayan (a man who eats pissan goreng, fried banana, with ketchup, and also named his dogs "Matt Lloyd" and "Lapinki." My apologies if I already mentioned that fact). Whether it's the super-rainy weather or my bizarre sense of humor, I thought that was hilarious this morning and decided to make it the title of this post. Oh, and anjing means dog. Glad we got that covered.
So I realized that I forgot to mention in that last post why the Balinese are so friendly. Or, more accurately, how, because this innate friendliness is cultural. Everywhere you go, people smile and say hi and ask where you're going, not to be creepy or anything, but just to know. They love that we're college students trying to figure out their language and smile and laugh when we can't speak it. The laughter isn't mean, it's just their way of releasing tension from a slightly tense/awkward situation. Also, it is really funny to see a bunch of whiteys stumbling around your market trying to buy cultural items for school. The sense of humor here is also wonderful- lots of sass and making fun, but entirely in a "no hard feelings way." Example: last night, my family and I were sitting around chatting, and they started making fun of my sister for not speaking English, saying that she gets zeros on all her tests and doesn't like speaking it with me for that reason. She kind of made the "I know you're making fun of me and I don't like it" face, and probably sassed back in Balinese (the language I'm not learning) and then shrugged it off completely. Of course, they make fun of me too, like when I wear the dress sarong and stuff, but it's just because I'm a tall lanky white boy.
Side note: all you single tall lanky white boys best head down to Bali. They love pasty flesh and I've had more grandmothers proposition me to marry their daughters than... well, like five grandmas, but still. Balinese girls and white guys. The hidden connection. Also, all your babies would be living examples of hybrid vigor, and the exchange rate is in our favor. Evolution and economics. Get on it.
The big reason for that digression was to explain how nice my old homestay family was about me moving out, but that's really all I need to say now. They thanked me for staying, held no grudges, and told me to come back and visit. And when I did, they gave me a big bag of rambutans (oh I will miss rambutan. It's a sweet tropical fruit, white and grape-like on the inside and red and hairy/spiky on the outside. Not found in the states).
Okay cool back to topic (or lack thereof): I saw another temple ceremony this weekend. It was the temple in Batuan's yearly ceremony (Odalan), except that apparently every five years there is a super big ceremony, and this is a really important ceremony. So that's like ceremony times three, call it four because I'm a westerner and don't know any better. So we got all decked out and headed over around four in the afternoon to check out the later part of the festivities. They had blocked off the street in front of the temple for the crowds and crowds of fancily attired worshipers, all sitting in the streets in their white and yellow (apparently it's the new fashion trend) dress outfits waiting to go in. We waited, and they finished up something inside the temple requiring gamelan in the temple, and then a bunch of priest-type dudes hurried out carrying big offerings and loaded them into cars before speeding away somewhere. Now might be a good time to mention the fact that the entire temple was lavishly decorated: big banners with dragons and other beasties on them, cloth wrapped around all the statues, huge bamboo decorative streamer-type pillars all over, and lots and lots of offerings strewn all over the ground. And this was only outside. Inside comes... now: next on the agenda was a short wait and then a parade: a bunch of women under a cloth came out of the temple, followed by people carrying offerings/shrines/artifacts (I think) and masks and things that had been blessed. This ended with the temple's two barongs, giant dragon-lion masks that danced around. After these guys, everyone else got up and sped off around the corner of the temple, following the procession. We followed, and as we were marching around I think they called us out over the loudspeaker, prompting friendly Balinese inquiry as to where we were from. We went in, were told that it wasn't time for whiteys yet (probably not, but that's what it seemed like), and then went out to watch the super-efficient team of street sweepers clean up the mess.
When it was time to go in, we had to pray first to purify ourselves. This was very complicated: we had been given a dish of offerings, and we had to do certain things in a correct order. First we were given incense, then we prayed with only the smoke. Than we took flowers of one color, prayed with them, flicked them away, then prayed with another color, and then repeated for two more big offering things with leaves, flowers and a little coin. Then we smoke-prayed again and had to do the holy water thing with the priest: get splashed on the head, drink three times (or pretend if you don't want bowel complaints), wash your head three times, then get some rice and put it on. And I probably forgot some steps there. Anyways, I don't think I messed up too badly, but concentration superseded any form of spiritual feeling I might have felt. Then we got to wander the temple. The offerings were spectacular: big shrine-like things made of fruits and sugar, all super colorful and unfortunately starting to spoil. This was especially true for the offerings that worshipers brought, including a few whole roast suckling pigs. Between day-old food and the smell from the kitchens, which I have a hard time handling sometimes, I skipped out pretty quickly. But it was really fun, like Christmas and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving and a little bit of Halloween rolled into one. Only even more fun, and traditional for a long time (I want to say thousands of years, but it might only be one. We haven't learned history yet). And they do stuff like this multiple times a month. If western religion was this fun, maybe we'd be a bit more spiritual.
Then we waited a very long time to watch some gamelan and topeng mask dancing, which was fun, but by that point I was too tired to register the fact that there were transvestites doing standup comedy after the topeng. True story. I don't think that's common, but I could be wrong. And then we went home. Moral of the story: festivals are really ornate but at the same time not very stressful, like a block party with way more setup. Balinese people apparently don't sleep either. And transvestites are really funny? I might be missing something there, but whatever.
And the post officially reaches "too long" status. I'll save my introduction to host family characters for a later date. Teaser: my brother's toddler son spends two thirds of his time pantsless. And he dances. Thanks for bearing with me this long, if you skimmed to this point you're a bad person. And I'll work on having more adventures to keep y'all entertained.
So I realized that I forgot to mention in that last post why the Balinese are so friendly. Or, more accurately, how, because this innate friendliness is cultural. Everywhere you go, people smile and say hi and ask where you're going, not to be creepy or anything, but just to know. They love that we're college students trying to figure out their language and smile and laugh when we can't speak it. The laughter isn't mean, it's just their way of releasing tension from a slightly tense/awkward situation. Also, it is really funny to see a bunch of whiteys stumbling around your market trying to buy cultural items for school. The sense of humor here is also wonderful- lots of sass and making fun, but entirely in a "no hard feelings way." Example: last night, my family and I were sitting around chatting, and they started making fun of my sister for not speaking English, saying that she gets zeros on all her tests and doesn't like speaking it with me for that reason. She kind of made the "I know you're making fun of me and I don't like it" face, and probably sassed back in Balinese (the language I'm not learning) and then shrugged it off completely. Of course, they make fun of me too, like when I wear the dress sarong and stuff, but it's just because I'm a tall lanky white boy.
Side note: all you single tall lanky white boys best head down to Bali. They love pasty flesh and I've had more grandmothers proposition me to marry their daughters than... well, like five grandmas, but still. Balinese girls and white guys. The hidden connection. Also, all your babies would be living examples of hybrid vigor, and the exchange rate is in our favor. Evolution and economics. Get on it.
The big reason for that digression was to explain how nice my old homestay family was about me moving out, but that's really all I need to say now. They thanked me for staying, held no grudges, and told me to come back and visit. And when I did, they gave me a big bag of rambutans (oh I will miss rambutan. It's a sweet tropical fruit, white and grape-like on the inside and red and hairy/spiky on the outside. Not found in the states).
Okay cool back to topic (or lack thereof): I saw another temple ceremony this weekend. It was the temple in Batuan's yearly ceremony (Odalan), except that apparently every five years there is a super big ceremony, and this is a really important ceremony. So that's like ceremony times three, call it four because I'm a westerner and don't know any better. So we got all decked out and headed over around four in the afternoon to check out the later part of the festivities. They had blocked off the street in front of the temple for the crowds and crowds of fancily attired worshipers, all sitting in the streets in their white and yellow (apparently it's the new fashion trend) dress outfits waiting to go in. We waited, and they finished up something inside the temple requiring gamelan in the temple, and then a bunch of priest-type dudes hurried out carrying big offerings and loaded them into cars before speeding away somewhere. Now might be a good time to mention the fact that the entire temple was lavishly decorated: big banners with dragons and other beasties on them, cloth wrapped around all the statues, huge bamboo decorative streamer-type pillars all over, and lots and lots of offerings strewn all over the ground. And this was only outside. Inside comes... now: next on the agenda was a short wait and then a parade: a bunch of women under a cloth came out of the temple, followed by people carrying offerings/shrines/artifacts (I think) and masks and things that had been blessed. This ended with the temple's two barongs, giant dragon-lion masks that danced around. After these guys, everyone else got up and sped off around the corner of the temple, following the procession. We followed, and as we were marching around I think they called us out over the loudspeaker, prompting friendly Balinese inquiry as to where we were from. We went in, were told that it wasn't time for whiteys yet (probably not, but that's what it seemed like), and then went out to watch the super-efficient team of street sweepers clean up the mess.
When it was time to go in, we had to pray first to purify ourselves. This was very complicated: we had been given a dish of offerings, and we had to do certain things in a correct order. First we were given incense, then we prayed with only the smoke. Than we took flowers of one color, prayed with them, flicked them away, then prayed with another color, and then repeated for two more big offering things with leaves, flowers and a little coin. Then we smoke-prayed again and had to do the holy water thing with the priest: get splashed on the head, drink three times (or pretend if you don't want bowel complaints), wash your head three times, then get some rice and put it on. And I probably forgot some steps there. Anyways, I don't think I messed up too badly, but concentration superseded any form of spiritual feeling I might have felt. Then we got to wander the temple. The offerings were spectacular: big shrine-like things made of fruits and sugar, all super colorful and unfortunately starting to spoil. This was especially true for the offerings that worshipers brought, including a few whole roast suckling pigs. Between day-old food and the smell from the kitchens, which I have a hard time handling sometimes, I skipped out pretty quickly. But it was really fun, like Christmas and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving and a little bit of Halloween rolled into one. Only even more fun, and traditional for a long time (I want to say thousands of years, but it might only be one. We haven't learned history yet). And they do stuff like this multiple times a month. If western religion was this fun, maybe we'd be a bit more spiritual.
Then we waited a very long time to watch some gamelan and topeng mask dancing, which was fun, but by that point I was too tired to register the fact that there were transvestites doing standup comedy after the topeng. True story. I don't think that's common, but I could be wrong. And then we went home. Moral of the story: festivals are really ornate but at the same time not very stressful, like a block party with way more setup. Balinese people apparently don't sleep either. And transvestites are really funny? I might be missing something there, but whatever.
And the post officially reaches "too long" status. I'll save my introduction to host family characters for a later date. Teaser: my brother's toddler son spends two thirds of his time pantsless. And he dances. Thanks for bearing with me this long, if you skimmed to this point you're a bad person. And I'll work on having more adventures to keep y'all entertained.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Bali is Rice
I was eavesdropping (eavesreading) Marissa's facebook correspondence and thought that she said "rice" instead of "nice" and it was too good to pass up. Also forgive if there are and stray colons or semicolons: I'm writing this at the Pondok Pekak lending library, a place I love, but the keyboard is a little fussy about wanting to include all types of punctuation when I just need one.
So yes, Bali really is rice. Every meal and every where, rice rice rice. But I actually came here today to talk about how 1.) everyone is really nice in Bali and 2.) bad that last post was in terms of details. I mean, come on, I forgot to mention the wonders of bucket baths twice a day, squat toilets, the fact that the beaches I've been to are black sand, with gigantic waves that break basically vertically and actually make swimming legit dangerous, and the super-cool toke, gigantic lizard that actually says what the Balinese hear as "to-kay!", but we westerners hear as "gecko". Cool stuff. So yeah, bad Juje on that one. But I have a great excuse, and one that involves lots of squat toilets: traveler's diarrhea, which was making me behave irrationally, feel tired, and... well, you saw the name. But thanks to the power of wide-spectrum antibiotics and rest, I'm back on top of everything, here to tell you about life south of the equator.
This bout of ill health unfortunately coincided with move-in and adjustment period at the new homestay, the house (well, Balinese compound, so a really big collection of single rooms and pavilions and assorted temples/shrines housing the entire extended family) of a wonderfully sweet family, an elementary school teacher and woodcarver son and sisters and everyone. They were great people and I feel very guilty about what happened next, but you can blame/thank Ary and geography. That compound was located way too close to the main road through Bedulu, so every night at four in the morning (actually all the time, although there was once a break at three in the morning) big trucks would come speeding down the street and, in my sleep-deprived and sick state, sounded like freight trains going by right next to the bed. Combined with being sick, I wasn't doing so hot (actually the day I wrote last), and Ary asked what was up. I said I was sick and not sleeping, so she went and visited the house, decided that it was too loud, and told me to move over my protests about "staying one more night" and "feeling bad." Because, you see, this was a first time homestay family, and they were really excited, and it wasn't their fault. But I did move, and now I am healthy and sleeping and in a really nice huge compound (really nice, all green and jungly and Bali architecture-y) with a fun new family that likes to make fun of me. Just like home and college! More on them as the days go on, because I have to go get a muffin.
That's right, muffin. I found the muffin place in Ubud, a blatant expat hangout called Bali Buddha that hits just the right balance of expat comfort (jazz, western food, International Herald Tribune), Balinese vibe (laid back, open air, thatch roof) and not-too-hippie sensibility (organics and recycling). All in all, bagus as we say here to pretty much anything when we don't know the English. It loosely means good. And they were playing David Fathead Newman's "Hard Times" when I last went there, which ensures them a repeat visit.
In the mean time, we're learning and things. I'm about to start an arts project, probably gamelan or woodcarving or both, and we've got another temple festivity on Saturday. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted. In the mean time, keep doing your things all over the world, and I'll be doing my thing right here. Also, if you want something from Bali, it'll be really cheap, so send me an email and I'll work on it.
So yes, Bali really is rice. Every meal and every where, rice rice rice. But I actually came here today to talk about how 1.) everyone is really nice in Bali and 2.) bad that last post was in terms of details. I mean, come on, I forgot to mention the wonders of bucket baths twice a day, squat toilets, the fact that the beaches I've been to are black sand, with gigantic waves that break basically vertically and actually make swimming legit dangerous, and the super-cool toke, gigantic lizard that actually says what the Balinese hear as "to-kay!", but we westerners hear as "gecko". Cool stuff. So yeah, bad Juje on that one. But I have a great excuse, and one that involves lots of squat toilets: traveler's diarrhea, which was making me behave irrationally, feel tired, and... well, you saw the name. But thanks to the power of wide-spectrum antibiotics and rest, I'm back on top of everything, here to tell you about life south of the equator.
This bout of ill health unfortunately coincided with move-in and adjustment period at the new homestay, the house (well, Balinese compound, so a really big collection of single rooms and pavilions and assorted temples/shrines housing the entire extended family) of a wonderfully sweet family, an elementary school teacher and woodcarver son and sisters and everyone. They were great people and I feel very guilty about what happened next, but you can blame/thank Ary and geography. That compound was located way too close to the main road through Bedulu, so every night at four in the morning (actually all the time, although there was once a break at three in the morning) big trucks would come speeding down the street and, in my sleep-deprived and sick state, sounded like freight trains going by right next to the bed. Combined with being sick, I wasn't doing so hot (actually the day I wrote last), and Ary asked what was up. I said I was sick and not sleeping, so she went and visited the house, decided that it was too loud, and told me to move over my protests about "staying one more night" and "feeling bad." Because, you see, this was a first time homestay family, and they were really excited, and it wasn't their fault. But I did move, and now I am healthy and sleeping and in a really nice huge compound (really nice, all green and jungly and Bali architecture-y) with a fun new family that likes to make fun of me. Just like home and college! More on them as the days go on, because I have to go get a muffin.
That's right, muffin. I found the muffin place in Ubud, a blatant expat hangout called Bali Buddha that hits just the right balance of expat comfort (jazz, western food, International Herald Tribune), Balinese vibe (laid back, open air, thatch roof) and not-too-hippie sensibility (organics and recycling). All in all, bagus as we say here to pretty much anything when we don't know the English. It loosely means good. And they were playing David Fathead Newman's "Hard Times" when I last went there, which ensures them a repeat visit.
In the mean time, we're learning and things. I'm about to start an arts project, probably gamelan or woodcarving or both, and we've got another temple festivity on Saturday. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted. In the mean time, keep doing your things all over the world, and I'll be doing my thing right here. Also, if you want something from Bali, it'll be really cheap, so send me an email and I'll work on it.
Friday, September 11, 2009
More Like "Fear and Loathing in Ubud"
Also known as "Where da white women at?" (answer: Ubud, destination for spiritual neo-hippies of every stripe and upscale cultural travelers), here we go posting live from Bali. I'm in a much nicer internet cafe in aforementioned Ubud right now, a short van ride from the village where I'll be spending most of my time here, and really at a loss for what to tell everyone. Bali is a lot of things, most of them very exciting, some unpleasant. For example, right now I'm suffering from exhaustion and bowel complaints due to a combination of my house being right next to a big road and something I ate; at the same time, I'm on an island populated by some of the most friendly people ever, pretty good food (except for that which makes me ill), rituals and temples everywhere, and stunning tropical ricefields.
You know what would make the most sense? Taking it from the top. The super-long flight was uneventful save for the usual excitement in Hong Kong, a glorious airport with sleeping chairs and good food but lots of scary Asian-ness going on. We got in to Bali having missed the first of September completely and were whisked off to a palace by our academic director, Ary, self described as a "real killer." She's a little Balinese woman who will be leading us on our merry journey through the tropic, and she takes no sass from no body (who does this sound like?). Apparently one of the girls dropped out right before we all left, so now it's me and twelve other girls, something that I recently realized was karma for making fun of Peter's mostly female entry. I remain unrepentant though. The girls are cool enough for girls, and I've come to accept the fact that I must befriend these strange creatures in order to remain connected to life in America.
So back to that palace: apparently it's one of many used by a king who doesn't have much power any more, so they rent it to people like us who want to stay in a palace. Then began orientation: lots and lots of Indonesian, an odd language without tenses and many prepositions, and cultural immersion. SIT is so kind to us that they will actually drive us a distance away from everything we've become accustomed to and kick us out of a van so that we can practice our Indonesian with total strangers in rural areas. But the drop-offs were fun, as were excursions to the crowded/scary markets to get traditional clothing. We've also already been to a tooth-filing ceremony (think cooler Bar Mitsvah, where everyone shows up and kind of schmoozes while the file-ees have a priest do minor dental work, then everyone eats) and a cremation. The cremation was sadder though, as it was for the wife of one of our instructors who died the third day we were there. Also I think that's where I ate whatever it is that's been messing with my health.
After our stay in the palace, we were left to our own devices to bargain for public transportation to Bedulu, village where I'm staying, near Ubud, which I have mixed feelings about after seeing the "real" Bali. We've also moved into our homestay families, but I'll get back to you on that once I settle in more. They're really sweet, so I feel bad that I can't really communicate with them.
Well, I'm taking it just a day at a time, I suppose (as my boy Omar would say), so I'll hopefully do some more specific/higher quality postage in the new future. In the mean time, all of you out there need to stop sippin' that haterade with my word choice. Real friends/family, hello! I am alive and well for now, and I can't wait to regale you all with my soon-to-be adventures in this strange, strange land.
You know what would make the most sense? Taking it from the top. The super-long flight was uneventful save for the usual excitement in Hong Kong, a glorious airport with sleeping chairs and good food but lots of scary Asian-ness going on. We got in to Bali having missed the first of September completely and were whisked off to a palace by our academic director, Ary, self described as a "real killer." She's a little Balinese woman who will be leading us on our merry journey through the tropic, and she takes no sass from no body (who does this sound like?). Apparently one of the girls dropped out right before we all left, so now it's me and twelve other girls, something that I recently realized was karma for making fun of Peter's mostly female entry. I remain unrepentant though. The girls are cool enough for girls, and I've come to accept the fact that I must befriend these strange creatures in order to remain connected to life in America.
So back to that palace: apparently it's one of many used by a king who doesn't have much power any more, so they rent it to people like us who want to stay in a palace. Then began orientation: lots and lots of Indonesian, an odd language without tenses and many prepositions, and cultural immersion. SIT is so kind to us that they will actually drive us a distance away from everything we've become accustomed to and kick us out of a van so that we can practice our Indonesian with total strangers in rural areas. But the drop-offs were fun, as were excursions to the crowded/scary markets to get traditional clothing. We've also already been to a tooth-filing ceremony (think cooler Bar Mitsvah, where everyone shows up and kind of schmoozes while the file-ees have a priest do minor dental work, then everyone eats) and a cremation. The cremation was sadder though, as it was for the wife of one of our instructors who died the third day we were there. Also I think that's where I ate whatever it is that's been messing with my health.
After our stay in the palace, we were left to our own devices to bargain for public transportation to Bedulu, village where I'm staying, near Ubud, which I have mixed feelings about after seeing the "real" Bali. We've also moved into our homestay families, but I'll get back to you on that once I settle in more. They're really sweet, so I feel bad that I can't really communicate with them.
Well, I'm taking it just a day at a time, I suppose (as my boy Omar would say), so I'll hopefully do some more specific/higher quality postage in the new future. In the mean time, all of you out there need to stop sippin' that haterade with my word choice. Real friends/family, hello! I am alive and well for now, and I can't wait to regale you all with my soon-to-be adventures in this strange, strange land.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Here We Go
As I sit in my backyard, burned out from stressing too much about the packing and the check-in and all that, I've kind of got to wonder why on earth I want to leave all this for something new/wild/potentially dangerous/scary. And the answer is adventure, this crazy idea that I've got in my head that I need to go off and do something new/wild/potentially dangerous in order not to feel like everything has become too tame. It's much easier to get into that mindset when you're sitting around a dorm room feeling stircrazy, but harder when you're about to step on that 747 for the next fourteen and a half hours. This is a much bigger adventure than any of my other wilderness excursions or going to college or even heading out to a party you don't want to go to. This seems pretty damn real to me, but at the same time unfamiliar, thus the fear. In the end, though, I know all this worry is pointless. I'll go to Bali. I'll get really into it after a few weeks of adjustment. I'll deal and adapt. And in the end, I'll be pretty happy. So maybe all the daydreams about my triumphant returns to LA/Williamstown are silly, but they're keeping me going right now. We'll see what the daydream is in a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I'm off. This is it. Let's take that hill. I'll be seeing y'all later, hopefully posting at you with something resembling regularity and substance. Shoot me an email if you've got stuff to say (if you're a person to be emailing me, you know the address. If not, then I probably don't like you anyways). Future Balinese friends: hello! I'm very nervous about meeting you. The title here is a reference to a book I enjoyed, not a comment on your island or an indication of my behavior while I stay there. And one last word to future me: this better be worth it, punk, otherwise I'll be waiting in your subconscious with a big "I told you so" and a few other choice words not fit to publish on this family blog. Otherwise godspeed, we're all excited for what happens next.
In the meantime, I'm off. This is it. Let's take that hill. I'll be seeing y'all later, hopefully posting at you with something resembling regularity and substance. Shoot me an email if you've got stuff to say (if you're a person to be emailing me, you know the address. If not, then I probably don't like you anyways). Future Balinese friends: hello! I'm very nervous about meeting you. The title here is a reference to a book I enjoyed, not a comment on your island or an indication of my behavior while I stay there. And one last word to future me: this better be worth it, punk, otherwise I'll be waiting in your subconscious with a big "I told you so" and a few other choice words not fit to publish on this family blog. Otherwise godspeed, we're all excited for what happens next.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Token Dude
Not to have the pre-departure posts eclipse the actual news from Bali or get out of hand or anything, but I thought I'd share that I got the list of everyone else who'll be going to Bali. It's me and thirteen girls. I will be the only western guy around (discounting instructors/tourists) for three and a half months. The expedition has taken on an air of farce, and it's a sign of how bewildered/burned out I am that I can't even place what I think is a reference there. T minus one week to departure.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Visa
So I now have a visa. It came in the mail last week, just my passport in a really big envelope with this official looking sticker on one of the pages, signed and ready for me to spend an inordinately long amount of time in a very foreign place. In case you couldn't tell, this post catches me at one of those "I really don't want to be going to Bali" moments. I'm leaving college (where I spent the summer) and my friends/good times to go home for a few days, an equally friendly and safe experience, before going off into the great unknown. My question is why, when I've got everything in my life all lined up and nice and cozy and generally in control, do I want to leave it behind and do something that I don't have even the faintest inkling how it will turn out (nice sentence structure there)?
Time for the "reasons why I want to go to Bali" section of the blog. Way long ago I was sure that I'd want to study abroad in college. I was thinking Australia, maybe Italy, something fun and western and stuff like that. I really didn't think much about it when I got to college, being more occupied with the heady "oh look I'm in college!" rush, but when sophomore year and decision time came around, I decided that the thing I'd like to be most in this world is a JA, the Williams equivalent of an RA, but much cooler because you are more of a friend and mentor to your wards than a warden. However, the application process is extremely competitive (because everyone wants to do it), so I looked at studying abroad as a backup. I decided that I would have to do one or the other with my junior year, or otherwise I would feel like I squandered an opportunity. While staying at college and raising freshmen was the most appealing, I looked at my studying abroad ideas from years ago, and did some tweaking. If I were to give up a semester of glorious college time, I'd have to do something that would be very difficult/almost impossible to do after college. I also wanted an adventure, something out of the ordinary, but nothing too wild and scary. And above all, I wanted to become a part of whatever culture I decided to live in for three months instead of just being an observer. So Bali just kind of fell into place: a homestay in one of the most friendly and welcoming cultures around (I hear), but at the same time a culture completely different from my thoroughly western ways. And then when I, after some excruciating time on the waitlist, didn't become a JA, I found myself heading for Bali.
So I guess it's a bit rough, what with the process and all. I didn't really weight the implications of my naive desire for adventure and now find myself scared and bitter that I won't be on campus in the fall. Looking at it the other way, because I'm not a JA and most of my friends will be gone in the fall too, being on campus would have been an even more bitter/lonely experience as just another junior. Besides, classes and the general campus vibe are more fun in the spring, even though the weather blows. I spend a lot of time now thinking about my triumphant return to Williamstown, but first I have to get myself through this semester. And by through I mean I have to get to Bali and then be wowed by the charm of being abroad. I always get like this before some big change (like college) and then end up enjoying it. It's just hard to deal with right now. So I decide to share with the internet, always a great call. In other Bali news, my girlfriend's visa hasn't come yet, which is also immensely stressful, so hopefully that shows up soon. In the mean time, more fretting alternated with mild excitement for me.
Time for the "reasons why I want to go to Bali" section of the blog. Way long ago I was sure that I'd want to study abroad in college. I was thinking Australia, maybe Italy, something fun and western and stuff like that. I really didn't think much about it when I got to college, being more occupied with the heady "oh look I'm in college!" rush, but when sophomore year and decision time came around, I decided that the thing I'd like to be most in this world is a JA, the Williams equivalent of an RA, but much cooler because you are more of a friend and mentor to your wards than a warden. However, the application process is extremely competitive (because everyone wants to do it), so I looked at studying abroad as a backup. I decided that I would have to do one or the other with my junior year, or otherwise I would feel like I squandered an opportunity. While staying at college and raising freshmen was the most appealing, I looked at my studying abroad ideas from years ago, and did some tweaking. If I were to give up a semester of glorious college time, I'd have to do something that would be very difficult/almost impossible to do after college. I also wanted an adventure, something out of the ordinary, but nothing too wild and scary. And above all, I wanted to become a part of whatever culture I decided to live in for three months instead of just being an observer. So Bali just kind of fell into place: a homestay in one of the most friendly and welcoming cultures around (I hear), but at the same time a culture completely different from my thoroughly western ways. And then when I, after some excruciating time on the waitlist, didn't become a JA, I found myself heading for Bali.
So I guess it's a bit rough, what with the process and all. I didn't really weight the implications of my naive desire for adventure and now find myself scared and bitter that I won't be on campus in the fall. Looking at it the other way, because I'm not a JA and most of my friends will be gone in the fall too, being on campus would have been an even more bitter/lonely experience as just another junior. Besides, classes and the general campus vibe are more fun in the spring, even though the weather blows. I spend a lot of time now thinking about my triumphant return to Williamstown, but first I have to get myself through this semester. And by through I mean I have to get to Bali and then be wowed by the charm of being abroad. I always get like this before some big change (like college) and then end up enjoying it. It's just hard to deal with right now. So I decide to share with the internet, always a great call. In other Bali news, my girlfriend's visa hasn't come yet, which is also immensely stressful, so hopefully that shows up soon. In the mean time, more fretting alternated with mild excitement for me.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Pre-Departure Blues
The hardest part about leaving, in addition to the uncertainty, is this kind of intangible sorrow that follows whenever I have to say goodbye to people. Even though I'm only going to be gone for a little over three months and will have some form of internet to communicate with whoever wants communicating with, it still sends a little pang when I sit down and realize that I won't see person X or group Y for a very long time. I just spent the weekend seeing off three friends, one of whom is going away to Paris for a full year, and it was pretty difficult. Personally, I think it's the perceived loneliness of abroad combined with that fear of the unknown- it would be much easier to do Bali if Bali was just like this summer's group of friends transported to another country. That way there would be no missing out on anything, everyone would still be together, all that good stuff. (As an aside, I'm pretty lucky in that I get to go abroad with one of my very good... the hell with it. My girlfriend is coming with. No sense in hiding that. So that's a pretty solid social base/support net I have there). But still, continuing my misplaced parenthetical thought, it's difficult to leave friends behind, even if all the friends are leaving each other behind. It's nice that we're (well, I am) so happy and delighted and entertained by everyone that it bums us out so much to go, but at the same time it's just making the transition even less pleasant.
Just thought I'd share that, more for me to look back on than for you, unless you happen to be one of these aforementioned friends being left/leaving others behind. In which case, you're not alone, we can have a nice big blues fest and then rejoice in the thoughts of our eventual reunion. In more pertinent news to the trip, still no word on visa acceptance yet, but I'm sure it'll be on its way soon enough. Only for distant thoughts of packing and attempts at getting back into an excited mood.
Just thought I'd share that, more for me to look back on than for you, unless you happen to be one of these aforementioned friends being left/leaving others behind. In which case, you're not alone, we can have a nice big blues fest and then rejoice in the thoughts of our eventual reunion. In more pertinent news to the trip, still no word on visa acceptance yet, but I'm sure it'll be on its way soon enough. Only for distant thoughts of packing and attempts at getting back into an excited mood.
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Beginning
So here we go. This latest internet project will hopefully be a chronicle of my soon-to-be adventures in Bali, where I'll be spending my fall semester studying abroad. I say hopefully because I am both unsure of my internet access in country and have oh so many trepidations about, you know, going to a foreign country and spending three months learning the language/dodging Dengue fever-carrying mosquitoes/becoming culturally immersed. Had I started writing when I planned to, this first posting would have been really kind of a downer. The past few months have been kind of bleak as far as thoughts about going abroad go; the initial excitement feelings of planning the trip turned swiftly into fear and desperation and general reluctance to actually carry out my plans. Of course, this kind of thing happens every time I make a transition (like going to college and things that I objectively know are good), but still it's no fun. Until the other day when I got an email of reassurance from the friendly people at SIT actually giving me a schedule, which made all the difference. My two biggest fears (I think) were contracting one of the festive diseases I've been slowly being vaccinated for and general lack of knowledge about what life in Bali would be like. The fear of illness should go away once I get there and spend a month healthy, but having something concrete to base my daydreams around has really cut down on the panic factor of going abroad. So hooray for that.
Cool, so now we have a little bit of backstory for this endeavor. As I said, internet access will probably be a bit sporadic, but I should manage to keep you guys posted on my adventures at least semi-regularly. So... what's new before we go to country? Oh, the usual, packing and whatnot. I mailed my visa app today, so this is a kind of celebratory posting I guess. One more stress off my back. I might check back in if I get bored with my reasons for deciding to go to Bali, but that'll come in a little. I'm in country in less than a month, so expect to hear more from me in the future. In the mean time, hello world/future self/audience of eager readers. Let the chronicling of past expectations and thoughts begin.
Cool, so now we have a little bit of backstory for this endeavor. As I said, internet access will probably be a bit sporadic, but I should manage to keep you guys posted on my adventures at least semi-regularly. So... what's new before we go to country? Oh, the usual, packing and whatnot. I mailed my visa app today, so this is a kind of celebratory posting I guess. One more stress off my back. I might check back in if I get bored with my reasons for deciding to go to Bali, but that'll come in a little. I'm in country in less than a month, so expect to hear more from me in the future. In the mean time, hello world/future self/audience of eager readers. Let the chronicling of past expectations and thoughts begin.
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