Owen's Report on Our Last Weekend

Durian on the left, snake fruit in the middle and mangosteens on the far right

This past weekend, we went to Bedugul in the mountains of Bali.  We ate a stinky fruit called durian and when my mom farted it smelled like durian that had gone through a person, which is REALLY bad. She says they were in the top three of her life in badness. 

Henry going through the tunnel

Owen walking on two cables

We went to this place called Treetops which was like a ropes course in the sky and with ziplines. There was this course thing where I had to walk across this big ditch with just two cables to attach my carabiners. There was this part where I went on this super long zipline and I had to crawl through barrels and go on this skateboard thing. And I had to walk across this bouncy net.  And stand on this swing thing where you would slide across this space before you got to a zipline. And you also had to weave yourself through these pieces of wood or else your carabiner would get tangled.  And you also had to walk through horse stirrups. And swing and hit this net like it was a flyswatter. 

Pretty darn high

And then we spent the night at this lodge. And we wrecked the top floor. And we tried to watch a movie called Chicken Run on a big screen, except it would not work, the projector would not project the movie so we had to watch this movie called Enchanted. It's about this girl who gets transported out of her magical world. And we had to watch the movie downstairs in our room. And when we were waiting for them to try to fix Chicken Run, Dad told stories and we goofed around and stuff. 

Sweet, sweet Henry walking across a log

And my mom thinks that Henry is acting annoying right now. And a couple of minutes ago he sang this crazy Bali song about how living in Bali you know where you're going. And I think the easiest word in Indonesian is Baik which means fine. My favorite fruit is mangosteens. Or maybe it is actually snakefruit. And my little brother goes in the pool too much and he gets green hair and then I call him a weirdo. And I have a sore throat. 

Love, Owen

ps I was the one who did the most for the first person who has been to Treetops in their life-Sarita said that. 

pss Henry is acting awesome right now. He is just plain coloring, not acting annoying or anything. And maybe Henry watches less tv here.

Fifth Time is a Charm

The last couple of days I have had a very Balinese experience.  We decided to go to Sumatra for spring break to see the orangutans and Pulau Weh, an island off the northern most tip of Sumatra.  I have been researching flights and narrowed it down to flying on Lion Air through Jakarta into Medan and out of Banda Aceh.

I went to book the flights online and 'verified by visa' would not accept my credit cards, any of them.  I called all the credit card companies before going to notify them that I would be in Bali, but I never thought to notify 'verified by visa' so I presume this was the challenge.  

I decided to go to a travel agency that was recommended, but they were unable to book tickets in their Ubud office and said I would have to go to Denpasar, the capital, which I try to avoid.  

Our driver Gede said, "no problem, just call the airline and book over the phone." "How will I pay?" I asked.  "When you get to the airport," he responded.  I questioned whether they would really hold a reservation without payment, but figured it was worth a try.  When I got home, I called the airline and after a long, comical phone call with me spelling in a mixture of Bahasa Indonesia and English all of our names and explaining that yes my last name really is Husband and that the boys' last name is Husband-Meyer not Meyer with Husband as a middle name, the reservation was complete, except payment.  She asked for my ATM card number, but it had to be from a specific list of only Indonesian banks.   Then she said, "no problem, you just have to go to the airport by 11pm tonight to pay."  This was not going to happen.  

I brainstormed for a bit and decided to call Paul, our very helpful Canadian neighbor who has an Indonesian bank account and a local ATM card.  He came over, I booked the flight and when we got to the payment portion it said we had 3 hours to get to an ATM machine to pay for the tickets.  You can pay for tons of things here via ATM; electrical bills, cell phone, who knows what else. He said, "no problem, I will take you on my motorbike to an ATM and you can pay for it."  Off we went, but at the ATM, I wasn't able to use my ATM card or his ATM card.  Neither of our issuing banks were on the list, but we didn't understand from the instructions that the ATM card had to be from the certain list and not that you had to use an ATM at a bank on the list.  This was explained to us by a security guard at the second bank we tried.  

The next day, I went to a different travel agent that advertised that they sold tickets on Lion Air.  After about 1.5 hours of sitting there while they entered all of our info, not really much besides our names, birth dates, the flight info we wanted and my cell number, I paid cash and walked out with 4 tickets for each leg of our flights.  It turned out that the boys' names were too long so they had to be manually entered into Jakarta, whatever that means.  Once the agent realized this, things sped up quite a bit. 

All in all, a pretty boring story, but I had to get it out and also I thought I would share some of the realities of living here. In the end, it took me about 6 hours to book our tickets, but I have them now.

Bali Blues

The view from Cafe Lotus, a 10 min walk from our house

Last week Owen had a couple of weepy days where he was really missing friends at home. I think the newness and excitement of being here is starting to wear off and he was missing familiar.  We aren't just on vacation, this is life.  I know this is normal and to be expected but I want to be able to help him with his sadness, yet there isn't much I can do.   At one point he said to me, "I don't want to leave Bali because I like it here, I just want to be able to bring my friends here."  I thought this was insightful and summed it up pretty well.

The last couple of days, it has been my turn.  I miss friends and family, I miss familiar, I miss being able to get around more easily on my own, I miss seasons and change in weather, I miss wearing a sweater, I miss easy protein sources for the boys and more.  

On the other hand, I hardly feel like I can complain.  Yesterday, I went on a bike ride with 2 other women from school through the rice paddies, along an irrigation channel, through villages and along the road to a spa in Ubud where we got massages for $10 and then lunch.  I have borrowed the bike and I love the sense of freedom it gives me. I am enjoying not having as many responsibilities and having a more simple life. 

I do feel like we have started to settle into a routine which is nice and we are getting to know people well enough to know which kids work well with ours, who will call an hour late, who will change plans three times, who will follow through etc.  

Well, enjoy Spring and take a hike in the wildflowers for me when they come out.  

Ceremonies

Ceremony is very much a part of life here.  In the past week, we were able to participate in two different ceremonies.

The first was at our house for Kuningan.  Kuningan marks the tenth and last day of Galungan and is the time for commemoration as the ancestors return to the heaven after ten days dwelling on earth.  The Balinese express their gratitude to the gods for mercy to the human race. It is a time for holiday, visiting each other and fun.  Wayan, our pembantu (staff) came to the house to make elaborate offerings and lead us in a ceremony.  There are 5 places in our house where offerings were made, each with three tins of fruit, Balinese cakes, sweets, flowers, and a couple of special decorations specifically for Kuningan.   After making all the offerings at the various sites we knelt in front of our home temple and we followed Wayan's instructions on what color flower to hold between our fingers in prayer for each round of praying and then how to take the holy water.  First, three splashes on the head, then three sips in your hands with the right hand on top, followed by the placement on the rice on the forehead and the lower neck.  


This past Friday, we repeated the same ceremony for the rice harvest ceremony at the Green School. This time, however, we were praying to the Goddess of rice and  God of water and making offerings to ensure a good harvest.  After the ceremony, the kids all went in to the paddies and cut the rice.  It will later be used for lunch at the Green School.    

 

Growing

Recently I have been thinking about how much we are growing, in many different ways.  Both boys seem to be sprouting.  I looked at Owen's feet a couple of days ago and I swear they seemed 2 sizes bigger than the day before.  I guess they are like plants and all the sun and the rain makes for a rapid growing season.  

In addition, we are all growing in non-physical ways.  Kids here are more independent.  Plus, we have found that the parents from the Green School are a bit more hands off and we have been seeing both the pluses and the minuses of it.  We are struck by the sense of competency and confidence that our kids are developing.  When someone isn't there to point out the hazards, of which there are many, or show you the way figuratively it forces one to rely on oneself.  As parents we are also becoming more comfortable with allowing the kids to adventure a bit more solo.  Today, Henry and Owen and several friends headed down a path away from our friends house where we were celebrating Sarita's birthday to go see a monkey that was chained up on the road.  They were far out of our sight, walking out to the road and going to see a monkey and we said okay.  I did set some parameters. 1) Put your shoes on. 2) Don't feed the monkey. 3) Don't touch the monkey and 4) Be careful of cars and motor scooters.  They seemed to have a great time, no injuries and met the owner of the monkey and came back with stories about the monkey.  

Both boys are also becoming quite confident swimmers.  It is amazing what daily swimming does to the learning curve.  It is exciting to see Henry swim all the way across the pool.  Owen is now diving down for diving toys and having more fun playing in the water with his newly gained confidence.  


This weekend we did another hash run and it was amazing seeing Owen lead the pack and Henry keeping up along narrow, muddy rice paddies, and small, slippery concrete walkways along waterways and up treacherously sleep jungle slopes, pulling himself with roots and vines. It was like a scene out of Romancing the Stone but my kids were Indiana Husband-Meyer.

Needed Day

We all came back from Gili Air feeling a bit tired and under the weather.  It had been a great trip, but a lot of togetherness.  We were very anxious for the kids to return to school so we could have a bit of a breather and do some sight seeing that we had been wanting to do for weeks.  Rock and I have had only about 4 five hour breaks from the kids since school ended on Dec. 16 so we have been feeling a bit wrung out and not full of the patience and reserve that we would like.  However with some colds brewing to various degrees, we thought this break might disappear.  I think my all time Bali low was hit when we walked down to a restaurant near our house to order dessert so we could make it to bedtime.  There was a pond full of fish, a creek running by, and we had our own gazebo like structure to lounge in.  It seemed like plenty to keep the boys out of trouble.  All was going well until a bench fell on Owen's foot and then he kicked his brother in the eye because he thought Henry was going to touch his ouchie foot.  We now had two sobbing boys in an otherwise tranquil setting and we had to bug out just as our dessert arrived.

We put the pieces back together and in the morning the boys were well enough to go to school.  We decided to go to Gunung Kawi, an 11th century temple complex north east of Ubud.  The complex comprises 10 rock-cut candi (shrines) carved into the cliff face. They stand in 7m-high (23 ft-high) sheltered niches cut into the sheer cliff face. These monuments are thought to be dedicated to King Anak Wungsu of the Udayana dynasty and his family and concubines.  It was a quiet day there with few other tourists and we were very happy.  We descended the 270 steps through gorgeous terraced rice paddies to the temple below with a beautiful river running through it.  We felt a level of calmness and freedom we hadn't felt in awhile.  

After visiting the temple, we went to a coffee and tea farm where we got to taste many different types of coffee and teas including the famous luwak coffee.  Luwak coffee is made from coffee beans that have been collected from the scat of the luwak animal also known as a civet.  It is a smallish animal that looks like a cross between a fox and a raccoon.  The luwaks choose the best coffee cherries to eat and then while in the digestion tract, they go through a fermentation process.  Once the coffee is pooped out, the scat is collected and washed to extract just the beans.  These are then roasted for an hour, pounded for 2 hours and sifted to get the coffee grounds.  The coffee is smooth and considered the most expensive coffee in the world.  A pound or so of grounds costs $120.  We stuck with a $5 cup that we shared.  

Trip to Gili Air

On Wednesday, we headed to another island, Gili Air, with about 18 other families for four nights of fun.  I somehow ended up organizing the trip for the group and it luckily went off without a hitch, or at least without any major hitches. 

We loved the slowness of the island and the lack of cars or motorbikes.  While there, Owen went scuba diving and Henry snorkeled for his first time. We saw a couple turtles swimming in the ocean and a bunch of baby turtles in a hatchery.  It was another experience where we looked at each other and said, "this would never happen in the states."

On the first full day there, we took a glass bottom boat on a snorkeling trip to a couple of the nearby gilis (islands) in search of turtles. Owen and I had a magical moment where we the only ones following the snorkeling guide, hoping to see a turtle.  It appeared that we were out of luck as we headed back to the boat that was waiting for us.  As we got close to the boat, the guide said, "look a turtle."  It took several tries for me to find it when I finally realized that the large rock-looking mound on the bottom of the sea floor was a huge turtle.  He swam down and brought it up to Owen who got to pet it and swim with it for a bit.  This was a dream come true.  We then went to Gili Meno where we had lunch, waited out a rain deluge and then visited a turtle hatchery.  


The next day, Owen took a morning scuba class in a pool, learning some scuba basics.  We thought this would be it, since technically you aren't supposed to scuba before 10 years old, but then they said he could go out on the boat that was leaving at 2 to scuba in the open water.  It was a trip that some other kids were going on who were a bit younger and it was a shallow dive.  I asked if I could dive with him since I haven't been diving in about 10 years and was certified 16 years ago.  When he first got out there, he was nervous and even asked to go to the boat once or twice.  I encouraged him to try just a bit longer and soon he relaxed and settled into it.  At one point while diving, he motioned to the dive master that he wanted to go up.  When we got to the surface, the dive master asked what was wrong and Owen said, "I just wanted to tell you how awesome this is."  Even under water he can't stop talking.  The dive master suggested that they talk about the dive when we got back on the boat and enjoy the dive while we still had time.

The other highlights included a banana boat ride for Owen, a horse and cart ride around the island, walking and biking around the island, building a huge sand fortress with about 10 other kids during a torrential downpour and dinners on the beach with the kids playing on the beach and the adults getting a little adult time.