Littletree started her own blog, called The Life of Littletree
It seems that she plans to write about all manner of things; her adventures, science, kittens, and ALL the things!
You can check it out here: http://thelifeoflittletree.blogspot.com/
The kids are learning so much here; Littletree has her own budget to work out, which means doing her own haggling and calculating foreign exchange rates, as well as budgeting for her meals, bicycle rental and expenses.
Each day, Littletree gets a budget of 100,000 Rupiah, which is about $10. Her room at the homestay and breakfast are provided, but other than that, she has to budget all of her other expenses, including meals, drinks, snacks, bicycle rental, scuba lessons, tours, snorkelling trips, excursions, souvenirs, trinkets, coconuts…
The life lesson in budgeting and calculating money has been invaluable; she’s not only learning very well her 10,000 times tables, she learned very early on that if she splurges all her money on buying pearls from the hawkers on the beach, then she wont have enough left over to rent her bike the next day – or buy dinner! She’s also learned that she can eat a good meal of local food at local Warungs for only a dollar, and save up for when she wants something special, like a glass-bottom boat tour on the reef.
The kids are learning so much; not just arithmetic and accounting!
They’re climbing trees, and snorkelling and scuba diving; learning about the reef and marine life. Littletree even attended a lecture about conservation on the reef and joined in with a local clean-up project to collect rubbish from the beach and reef.
Learning to speak Bahasa Indonesia, and practising with the locals, making friends with local children and learning about their culture and customs, as well as all the social interactions… I couldn’t possibly imagine a richer learning experience.
And despite all the exciting world out there, I can still hardly keep Littletree’s nose out of her book!
And the girls are all keeping journals and spending a lot of time writing and illustrating their adventures on the island – somehow rather a lot of the daily budget seems to get spent on stationery.
While Littletree has been having an awesome time snorkelling on the reef almost every day, the kids have also been drawn to go scuba diving. At first, I thought Littletree was too… well… little. But it turns out the PADI dive centre offers “fun dive” courses for children starting at ten years old, so I said she could do the training session in the pool, and see how she goes.
Several of the kids here for the home school adventure did the course together
Watched the training video and listened to all the instructions from the dive master
Got kitted up with wetsuits and masks – they even had a small sized tank and scuba equipment to fit Littletree
Then they went through the training, learning how to use the apparatus, respirators, equalise ear pressure, underwater sign language, and so on.
And finally, practiced diving!
By the end, Littletree was quite proficient, and given the go-ahead from the dive master to join the group out on the reef… but finally, she decided instead to go to a lecture about the delicate ecology of the reef. She then joined in with a clean-up effort organised by the dive school to collect rubbish from the beach and reef, and protect the dune areas where turtles are laying their eggs.
Littletree came home very excited, happy to have done her bit for the day as a “wildlife warrior”.
It was my 34th birthday on Friday! I had a lovely day; spent some quiet time with Littletree, enjoyed my delicious Indonesian breakfast, and then went to lie on the beach and watch the storms rolling over Lombok in the distance while sipping iced drinks.
One of the best things about Gili Air is that while the volcano on Lombok draws in lots of clouds and storms – we can often hear the thunder and see the lightning from here, but right where we are, it’s sunny and gorgeous, and we get the cool breezes pushed out by the storms. Makes for very pretty sunsets too!
In the afternoon I sat with my friends and had birthday cake – it was a delicious rich chocolate brownie with ice cream and whipped cream. Yum! and not at all like the “cake” I had last year.
Then we all ambled over to a beachside bar for dinner and cocktails, and lots of laughs…
And, of course, I was treated to a gorgeous birthday sunset
Selamat Makan!
So, since I didn’t manage to make all the food-related drool-worthiness fit into one post, here’s a snapshot of our standard dinner: the fish barbecue!
We start by choosing a fish (or prawns, crab, lobster…) and tell them how we want it grilled (rare, medium or well-done).
We can choose if we want the fish served with rice, chips or baked potato, with salad and veggies.
It comes, perfectly done, with dipping bowls of garlic and sambal (chilli paste). So delicious!
Apparently, this is terribly dangerous, because I inevitably overeat.
Then, there’s the treats – the organic restaurant on the beach serves a criminally-delectable warm chocolate brownie with ice cream.
Oh, it’s a hard life! And of course, there’s all the local warungs serving fried rice and curries. Yum!
One of the best parts of being in Indonesia is the food.
Every morning we sit with the family at our homestay and have a traditional breakfast (well, Littletree usually gets a banana pancake, but I have the Indonesian food)!
It starts out with a really good, locally grown coffee from Lombok, and a carefully-folded paper cone (traditionally, the food is wrapped up in a banana leaf, sadly, those are a thing of the past in most places, as waxed paper has taken over).
We unfurl the paper to reveal a surprise…
Rice with a few different things; spicy fish or chicken curry, sauteed vegetables, peanut sauce, fried tempeh or tofu, shredded coconut, sambal… all manner of local dishes, every day something else.
And every day, delicious!
Eaten with three fingers on the right hand, of course, though using a spoon and fork is also acceptable.
For dinners we often get a fish barbecue, but since the internet here is shaky at best, I’ll have to save that for another post.
Apparently, it was Mothers’ Day (these things always catch me by surprise), and Littletree took it upon herself to get me a present – a gorgeous new sarong; perfect, because I needed a new one. And it’s even green! How did she know that’s my favourite colour?
Then about half the families here for the unschooling camp went to the organic restaurant for a fancy feast, and a bunch of the bigger kids got together to put on an after-dinner show for all the mums!
It was pretty awesome, and hilarious!
Once we’d spent our one day in Bali and got every thing organised, it was up at 6am to meet up with the other home schooling families to get on the boat for Gili Air!
Ironically, the kids who felt carsick in the mini bus to the harbour were fine on the boat, and vice versa; the kids who were fine in the bus felt seasick on the boat. But it was a fairly quick and smooth journey. Naturally, we let FlatTyler have the window seat on the boat.
After a quick stop on Lombok, we were away to Gili Air – here’s our first view of the island (yep, it’s very small!)
One of the other home schooling families was already there to greet us at the dock, as well as Abas, from the homestay we stayed at last year. It felt like arriving home!
We dropped our bags off in our room and went straight for the beach, to hang out at Zipp Bar; our favourite spot, so we could show Flat Tyler the beach
And spend the heat of the afternoon sipping icy fruit juices while the kids got settled and swam.
We ended the day with a walk up to the north end of the island to watch the sunset, happy to be here at last.
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