I'm living in a small town called Baturiti with Ketut, the Kepala Desa (village head), Ninin his wife and their youngest son Krishna. Ketut has a restaurant just up the road where tourists come and eat and enjoy the vista over the terraces, vegatables not rice, and his son Aguss who's my age and married has another overlooking Pura Ulan Danu Bratan, one of the more famous temples in Bali, 20 minutes up the hill in Bedugal. So they're pretty comfortable, to put it
mildly, extremely generous and Trina and I, the other teacher living here, are very spoilt.
We've been here about three weeks now and have another three before the program finishes. My daily routine goes something like this : get up at 6 and greet the sun, enjoy yummy Balinese coffee whilst writing my journal, teach from 7:30 until 11:00 and then I have the rest of the day free. Often I'll come here for a swim before heading to Ketut's restaurant for lunch.
Here is a place called Bali Camp, an American-Balinese initiative which is kind of a software development centre and set up like a conference centre. Nestled into the side of a hill below is an amazing swimming pool with an overflow extending into smaller rockpools. It overlooks more terraces and in the afternoon when the cloud rolls in you can just see the occasional banana and palm tree silhouetted through the mist. The first time I came here it was a bout 5
in the afternoon, rapidly going dark and I realised I'd just been dropped into the middle of faeryland. It's truly magical annd I get to come here whenever I want. Hee hee!
Baturiti is in the middle of Bali, cradled by the lower slopes of the mountains. They grow tonnes of vegetables here, the rainy side of the mountains and have a speciality to the area called rice tea. basically it's roasted red rice. Just add boiling water, lots of sugar and stir. It's really good and the locals are very proud of it, frequently explaining that you can't get it in other parts of Bali! Further up in the mountains bali's best coffee and cloves are cultivated, so we don't go short for anything, except maybe a little sun sometimes!
Yesterday Putuh and Nyoman took Trina and I to Kuta to the longed for sea and sand and surf. Haven't swum in the ocean for a couple of weeks and it was fantastic to get all salty. We went to a really nice, and surprisingly cheap restaurant afterwards where they gave us free back massages after dinner. I think favours were asked as no one else in the restaurant seemed to be benefiting.
The hospitality of the Balinese is famed but still underrated. Perhaps because we're teaching voluntarily and are guests of a pretty important guy, but people seem to be bending over backwards to be nice to us. Last weekend Aguss, Ketut's son, and his wife Irama, invited four of the teachers from the programme to their house in Denpasar. They organised for us to see
a Kecup Dance (same same one of the early scenes in Baraka where the men are seated in a circle performing mad vocal percussion and waving their arms around) on Friday night, took us out to dinner, a Barong Dance sat morning and then we went up to Kintmani to eat at Aguss' friend's restaurant and stare at the volcano. Sometimes it just never stops and then it does and its so peaceful and beautiful.
So I'm enjoying teaching and learning lots and enjoying when I'm not teaching and life is pretty
perfect right now. The last year or so has been pretty difficult but I feel I've finally arrived at a place in my head where everything is working out.
This morning I walked into class and every single kid could pronounce TH as in thirty three and a third. Last week we spent a fair bit of time working on it and I really didn;t think that many would get over the embarrassment of me making them stick their tongues out whilst they said it! So maybe these plans of teaching and travelling aren't so far-fetched!
So now I'm going to try and get back home which might be interesting because bemos stopped running at least 15 minutes ago at 4 and are pretty impossible in the afternoons anyway. But there's always someone asking where are you staying. "Oh Ketut J.! I take you there". Everyone knows and respects this guy. Totally sorted!