Beautiful Bali

I am pleased to tell you that I arrived here in Bali on July 11 safe and sound, although tired. All my flights were basically on time, I had no trouble at security, and my luggage arrived in good condition. Even though we are 14 hours ahead here in Bali than in Alberta, I didn’t really have any trouble with jetlag thankfully but I slept very well my first night here.

Arriving on the same flight as me were Geri’s (my mentor) brother and his family, from California. They are here for about 2 weeks and it has been great getting to know them. They brought all the supplies for the Kid’s Day Camp (“Waterworks”) that we are doing this week. I have never seen a day camp planned so fast- Saturday we had a meeting, yesterday (Sunday) we are set up, and today we started! I am in charge of crafts, and help with the songs as well. I’m so excited about it, today was a lot of fun! In my next update I’ll let you know how it goes.

One of the craziest things here is the traffic! The streets are narrow, and there are motor bikes everywhere. The bikers squeeze in wherever they can and are just all over the place. The legal limit for people on a bike is 5, and it is only mandatory for adults to wear helmets unless they are wearing a religious head piece… so children do not have to wear helmets. Thankfully, I have seen some kids that have worn helmets.

Everyone I have met so far has been very nice, and I met a lot of kids and parents yesterday and this morning; everyone was very nice welcoming. Hopefully I will start having my Indonesian language lessons soon so that I can start communicating better with my neighbours- even though they know some English. It is incredibly beautiful here, lots of flowers and large green plants everywhere. The weather has been great: cooler in the mornings and hotter in the afternoons, but not unbearably. It is winter here and there is a nice breeze that cools it off.

The first night here I stayed at Barry and Geri’s house, and yesterday I moved into the guest house which is right behind the community buildings, so that’s nice. One of the community's helpers lives right beside me and a very nice family lives like a 5 minute walk away (I'm using their internet!). I haven’t been able to do much looking around at this area so far. I have been to the beach a couple times to eat, its very nice. I have been a bit homesick and lonely, and it still seems surreal that I’m in Bali and I’m going to be here for a year, but slowly I’m starting to get more accustomed to it.

I just went for my first authentic Indonesian motorbike ride with the secretary, we went for lunch and then the supermarket. It was pretty fun! It only gets scary when there are other bikes or trucks really close. Yesterday and today I went to a little restaurant here for authentic Indonesian food. Basically you just go up to the counter and point to what you want and they give you a little tag for about however much it will cost you. Of course, I don't know what anything is so I just randomly point. I ended up with really good stuff though, some of it was really spicy but for the most part it was ok. With a coke it ended up being, both days, Rp.
. 13,500- which is like $1.35.. for a whole plateful of really good food, and at the grocery store I got a basketful of things, like fruit, veggies, meat etc, and it was about $15. I definitely could get used to that! Everything is pretty close and there are little stores everywhere, so thats nice.

I'm trying to upload a couple pictures- if they will actually come up, I don't know, I hope they do. They are pretty large files though and the internet is slow...maybe I'll try to figure out how to make the files smaller. ... still waiting....

Ok, thats ridiculous. I'll try again soon, I know people would like to see some pictures.