Weekend Trip up North

First headed to Git Git waterfall for a little morning FREEZING swim. Some shots of Arak made that a bit easier...but it was beautiful. Still had the voice of the travel nurse in the back of my head "Don't you dare swim in fresh water! There are parasites in it!"

O well...I couldn't resist...

Some beautiful flowers on the way there...I think I have a trillion photos of just flowers.

Offerings at the waterhole

At Lovina Beach on the north coast...it was very hot. Apparently at 6 a.m. dolphins swim right off the coast, maybe I'll make it next time. Although I'm not too into dolphins, saw and did that at Sea World.

The to the a sacred hot spring (air panas) that is supposed to cure disease...


So I'm not that into the healing powers of sulfur and thousands of bacteria...I lasted about two seconds in the hot spring. Something just made me feel like i was standing in a pool of piss.

We were lost for a good hour on the way back...a little bit of off-roading on empty, but no worries in Bali. We got some sweet views of the volcanoes to the West...

Our First Performance!...Let the dancing begin!

The preparation for Balinese dancing is very critical. It takes longer than the actual dancing and would probably be unbearable for any longer period of time. So we went to Bapak Nika's village to prepare for the dance in his village temple in Munggu where we were told not to dance for the audience, but for our (respective) god...I'll just say, I really hope I satisfied God, since, well, I'm no dancer...

But here is my prep...hair teasing, layers of foundation and makeup, fake lashes, painted lips...

The group in final form, pre-performance. I think we look pretty good/no one back home would recognize us...I'm on the bottom-left.

Also, pre-performance. At the temple finally, waiting to go on. There were other performances as well that night. It is still unclear to me if this was some kind of dance competition, or just a performance. Regardless, the kids running around the temple loved us. To them, I think seeing a white person in full Bali gear is the equivalent of a cat walking on its hind legs...

Mid-show. We did ok. Some costume pieces fell off...Sinu lost her whole hair piece. The audience laughed a lot. But I really am convinced it wasn't because we were THAT awful, rather, seeing bule's dance their dance is just hysterical to them. Then again, we could have been that bad...

Post-show. I look like the wicked witch of the west.

New Moon Again

The fireworks are going off in the distance...I wish we celebrated the new moon like this at home!

To those concerned, I did not feel the earthquake in Sumatra.

I spent my free day lounging on the beach...reading a great new book that I just found in my bag. Thank you to a wonderful, thoughtful colleague at GE, I now have amazing reading material and I highly recommend this book: The Innocent Anthropologist. I can't put it down!