Oh Boy... what 2 months can bring!

Let's see... How about a few pictures for each of the 8 weeks I missed...

A trip to the Indonesian Moscow Circus - where Bryan was inducted to play a guitar slingin' Cowboy to the delight of all our new friends. Now we just explain his goofy behavior by saying "He was in the circus."

Made, the gardener, teaches Zoey to count to ten with flowers.
Satu Dua Tiga Empat Lima Enam Tujuh Delapan Sembilan Sepuluh!

Rice Harvest in Front of Uma Cantik... After two weeks of scaring the birds away from the padis, they worked from dusk to sun-up to miss the heat. These pictures were taken during the last hour of harvest at sunrise.

After discovering our garbage was sometimes ending up in the bottom of a nearby ravine, we went on the Rubbish Adventure, visiting each of the stops along the way in the local trash collection process in order to gain a better understanding of how to take care of our garbage. The excavator at the end of the rainbow... Singaraja's new landfill. We traded 8 bags of garbage from the ravine for 128 flies in our van. (Orcas Exchange: we dearly miss you.)

BALI Coffee! A plantation visit set up by a friend with owner Nyoman who walked us through the process and sent us home with a kilo of our first "green beans" to roast.

Bryan's sister Paula joins us for three weeks. Her first ceremony, the biggie... Galungan: the day to celebrate the good spirits' triumph over evil.

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A New Home for the Next Adventure... at Lovina Beach - an acre of beachfront with a ten room hotel, restaurant, shop and funky beach house for us.  (more photos: Photo Gallery of the future Lilin Beach Villas & Blue Door Restaurant

Zoey goes to pre-school at the Windows to the World School!

Zoey's 2nd Birthday

Zoey's 2nd Birthday, a set on Flickr.

What a magical day. I promise to write the details soon. For now... a few pics.

Perhaps the Best Reason to live within a few degrees of the Equator

It isn't as if I needed one more reason to love Bali. The "what's to love about Bali" column is chock-a-block (to use the New Zealand term), filled to the brim and overflowing. The funny thing about Tropical Fruit is that as a kid in suburban America, I associated these words with a chemically induced, too bright,  fuschia-colored Kool-Aid drink. And rattling around in the back of my head is the picture of a smiling cartoon character pitcher with legs that now makes me think they were going for the beer association in our parents. The flavor of Tropical Fruit is a familiar one for say bubblegum or name-your-corn-syrup-candy but I don't think I ever associated the flavor with actual fruit. Until now.

When I try to describe how different fruits here taste, it goes something like "an apricot crossed with a peach" etc... but of course failing miserably in capturing the essence of the actual flavor. I do pretty good getting the texture across. The snake skin fruit, Salak, reminds me of biting into a clove of elephant garlic, or so I would guess. Well, enough rambling and onto the actual reason for this post... Mangosteen.   Or manggis in Indonesian. Take out the two gg's and you have manis,  their word for sweet.

I'll skip the failed analogies here and just say that I read Queen Victoria offered up 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could could bring her a fresh one. They are quite simply my new favorite fruit. Easy to open. Easy to navigate the stones. None of the rind gets messed up in the fruit. I would venture to say you could easily eat this fruit in the dark at a movie. Lastly, the rich purple of the ripened mangosteen in contrast to the kermit green leaves is a Cezanne come to life.  I'm off right now to put a few in the fridge for a change. If this makes them taste any better, I'll have my first healthy addiction.

Land Ceremony

 

Gordon and Lorraine during prayers

We’ve made our first set of expat friends from this trip. Lorraine and Gordon from New Zealand. They are very early in the process of building a home just up the road from where we are staying in Kayaputih. The building of their road started a few days after we arrived. They had been waiting for the holy man to choose the auspicious day for their beginning. He chose the day dedicated to the celebration of all things metal. However, that was several weeks off in the future, so they learned that they could move dirt for the road as long as they didn’t place any stones or remove anything from the land.

Arrival of the Priest

On the chosen day, the priest came and completed the required ceremonial offering to the spirits for the use of the land and hence the safety of the workers during the project.  When we met them, they didn’t know much about what would take place at the ceremony except that a chicken would be sacrificed. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I  immediately asked if we could come.

There’s nothing like the mention of something being sacrificed to get one’s imagination stirring. I remember traveling with some art students in Paris when I was in my twenties. We waited in line to be admitted to a performance art show in Montmartre. We were turned away after they exceeded their limit of patrons dictated by the fire department. Later I found out that the show had included the sacrifice of several chickens by an artist that painted in blood. I’ve never been so grateful to a fire marshall in all my life.

Call it acclimating, but somehow here in Bali, the notion of offering a chicken to the spirits in exchange for the prosperous and safe use of land seems  quite practical.  From the ceremonies I have witnessed thus far, I knew that it would look nothing like the sacrifices of Hollywood movies. I knew even the dead chicken would look right at home, artistically woven into a fabric of offerings that appealed to the “lower” demons.

A Sacrificed Chicken

As it turned out I think there were five very small chickens, this here being the largest, gracing the offering basket that was set in front of the priest. As he chanted, a woman responsible for creating the various banten (offerings) waved a metal container to disperse the incense and presumably the prayers. The specific hand gestures of Balinese prayers are intricate and the priest dispersed several different types of flowers and leaves with an artful one-handed flick of his thumb and forefinger while ringing a bell. 

Workers assembling a M*A*S*H -like mess hall during the ceremony

Our friends were invited to join the ceremony and were guided in making offerings and prayers.  Afterwards, they joined us for coffee, introducing us to Wayan and Kitty, the name holders for the title of their land. As foreigners are not allowed to own land outright in Bali, you must enter into a contract with a local whom you trust if you want to build a home. You can also navigate the maze of company structures, some that allow foreign ownership of assets and land in various proportions.

As you might guess, it takes time to find the right arrangement. Hati-Hati, Pelan-Pelan.  “Caution Caution, Slowly Slowly” is the mantra we have heard again and again from both Balinese and Expats alike.  The more I listen, and gather experiences from the people I meet, one thing is pretty clear. We will never avoid every pitfall in the process of trying to live here and make a living.

Someone once told me though that “Just living is risky business”. So, I suppose, whatever business we may find here, it may well be risky living and I suppose that would be the point. A special thanks to Lorraine and Gordon for sharing their adventure with us.

Maybe Too Much of a Good Thing...

This framed sign (and T-shirt!) was the brainstorm of a curmudgeony group of beer drinking expats at Nuri's, our favorite warung (small restaurant) in Ubud. Run by an guy named Brian from New York, it is our "Hamburger Away from Home".