Weekend Excursions

this weekend we went to a 3 month old baby ceremony. i do not know much about the ceremony, i watched it, but am not entirely clear what the greater meaning behind it is. the baby was blessed several times, and what i gathered from others, was that many of the rituals performed were order to keep away bad spirits. it was very neat, adn they offered us lunch afterwards, which was the spiciest food ever! the dessert was unripe mango, something quite delicious! as well as a bali orange, which is an exact perfect combination of a grapefruit adn an orange.

following the ceremony, which took place about an hour north in sangeh (near Ubud), we drove to the monkey forest near by. this pretty much speaaks for itself, it is a plot of land reserved for about 600+ monkeys and tourists can go and feed them etc. it was nice, except that i got peed on. not so nice.

this week we attended another hindu ceremony, called karya ngenteg linggih. again, i am not sure of the greater significance, and when asking indos why they are celebrating they just say, "because it is an important village ceremony". anyays, the whole village takes part (in this case, Bapak Nika's village, Manngu) and walks fromt he temple through the village streets for a few hours, singing adn playing a mobile gamelan set. VERY SWEET.

in terms of classes, painting/sketching is going well adn we have begun woodcarving. this may take some time to perfect...

also the 17th as independence day. (merdeka atau mati!!)