Last fling in Bali

So after our last night in Gili Air, which we enjoyed under a full moon

And a fascinating breakfast alongside the cutest tiny little ants ever which were kind enough to clean up the drips of honey Littletree spilled from her pancake

And Littletree had said her billionth goodbye to the Indonesian kids in the family who ran our villas

We got on the boat to Bali…

It was not the best boat ride ever; of course, they were overbooked and we couldn’t get seats – I managed to make enough hullabaloo for the guy to let us sit up on the roof so we could at least sit down, and lo! There were seats up on the roof anyway; no idea why they just wanted to keep the rooftop vacant.

We landed on Bali to find it pouring with rain and many of the streets flooding

(So glad we were in a minibus and not on a moped!)

And happy to arrive to our hotel to relax after the journey. The next morning, it cleared up a bit and we spent the day wandering around, ingressing and sightseeing a little, marvelling at what counts as a petrol station on Bali

– I even found a bar that was made just for me

And having hacked all the portals we could, and gotten more massages than should be humanly possible, we set out for the evening to find the awesome night market we ate at last year, only last year, we’d gone there with some people who knew the way, and I only vaguely knew the rough area we needed to go to. I tried googling, but ended up somewhere very, very not where we thought we were going.

A surprise adventure!

By sheer chance we found ourselves wandering after dark around a random neighbourhood; thanks to googlemaps on my phone I vaguely knew where we were, but no idea how to get to where we wanted to go. At the point that Littletree was fed up with walking and just wanted to eat, we walked into the first place we came to, but Littletree got a bad vibe from it and wouldn’t even walk though the door.

Next door to that place we tried again, and it turned out to be a duck restaurant and we got the most delectable dinner ever! Duck fried rice, duck fried noodles and a spicy green curry duck. Oh, it was divine!

And finally, after even more massages; time to get on the plane back to Australia…

Learning all the time

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.

Feasting part two

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!

Mandolin!

Before we left Bali, I made a visit to the music man.

This guy is amazing. He's just a sweet, quiet guy, sitting in the back of a tiny little hole-in-the-wall shop - about half the size of a one-car garage, making guitars, ukuleles and mandolins.

Unlike most stall holders on Bali, he's not standing out the front, hawking his wares or hassling people to come in his shop. He doesn't quote inflated prices that you then have to haggle over. He just loves his instruments, and they are truly incredible works of art - guitars with Balinese filigree carving, ukuleles clearly made with love and care...

He sits, works, and plays music. If you go into his shop, he'll have a friendly chat, jam with you, show you the latest masterpiece he's built (with a gentle, humble manner), and not try to sell you anything.

I love this guy so much, I stop by his shop every time I'm on Bali... I play a little music, I drool over his craftsmanship...

And this time, I bought myself a mandolin! just a simple, cheap mandolin, but I love it! It was $60, with a hand made, very high quality case. I used to play mandolin years ago, but I haven't had one in years... I've been vaguely planning to get a new mandolin for a while, but unable to afford it.

I'm so stoked to not only get a mandolin, but to support a local craftsman. Honestly, I also support this particular guy because he's so quiet and humble. I suspect he makes just as good a living as anyone else selling stuff in the area, but without the intense hassling and overcharging and bargaining. I think everyone should support this guy, and artisans like him.

Most of all, I love my new mandolin, and I’m so happy to have it!

Early Bilbies

Littletree has gone away for the holidays to stay with her grandparents in Israel, so she’s over there now celebrating Passover.

We haven’t ever really celebrated Easter before, and she’s well-informed about the Pagan origins of the holiday, and knows that technically, it’s a Spring rite, and therefore should be observed around the full moon after the Vernal Equinox, which isn’t for another six months for us up here in the Southern Hemisphere. We’ve talked at length about Ishtar and Oestre and the significance of rabbits and eggs.

This year, Littletree declared that she doesn’t mind about all of that stuff, she just wants to have the “wake up in the morning and have a surprise easter egg hunt with hidden chocolates”. She explained to me that she knows that the “Easter Bunny” would just be me pretending, but she asked me to do it for her anyway. And to do it early, since she would be away on the “proper” Easter – as she wisely pointed out; it’s irrelevant when we do it, since it’s not really Easter anyway, and the whole holiday is just a made-up thing.

Fair enough.

So off I went to a purveyor of processed egg-shaped chocolate confections to purchase a small hoarde of goodies for Littletree to find. A dozen “egg-sized” chocolate eggs, a small bag of “mini” eggs, and an Easter Bilby.

The Easter Bilby is an important and noteworthy part – here in Australia, rabbits are a massive plague of a pest, and meanwhile, the Bilby is a cute little Australian native animal that sort of vaguely looks like a bunny, and they’re highly endangered since the introduction of European settlers to the country (said settlers were also the foolish imports who brought the rabbits with them). Anyway, Australia tries to cull feral rabbits, and promote saving bilbies, and somehow, eating chocolate bilbies at Easter instead of bunnies is a part of that. Or something. At least it’s educational.

Anyway, Littletree awoke on the morning before she left to find a little trail of chocolate eggs outside her door

She started collecting them up in her shirt

Until she found that the trail led out into the garden to a basket

There were eggs hidden all around the house

and around the garden

Littletree got quite the stash!

She did plan to save the Bilby, but after about an hour she came to me, all distressed, and said, “mama, the worst thing ever happened – I was playing with my Easter Bilby and the wrapping just fell off of it, and then it broke, so I had to eat the broken bits, and then it was uneven, so I had to eat more to make it neat… and now it’s all wrecked.”

The poor child – she had to eat the whole thing!

She did save all the eggs to take to her cousins in Israel though – apparently they don’t get chocolate there, only matzah.

Learning Elvish

Littletree was doing a crossword puzzle today. The clue was "A small fairy who plays tricks on people (three letters)".

She could not, for the life of her, guess this one.

When I told her it's Elf, she said, but Elves aren't small fairies who play tricks on people. Elves are tall and fair, honourable and skilled with bows. They aren't small fairies at all"

Another clue was "a small plant (5 letters" starting with "sh").
She could not guess shrub, and it turns out she didn't know what a shrub is at all. I said, "you know, a small bush, as in bring me a shrubbery!"

She knows what a shrubbery is, because she has a cultural reference for it.
Then she started rubbing my back and saying shhhhhhhh. "I thought that's a shrub: shhhhhh-rub" (yup, she shares my sense of humour).

And she's totally right. I now understand much more why my child, who is incredibly bright and well-educated, doesn't do so well on standardised tests. She not only hasn't spent the past 4 years being trained to do standardised tests, she has a completely different set of cultural references.

It doesn’t mean she isn’t educated – she is very educated, and has a wealth of knowledge in many areas that would put a lot of college students to shame. It just means her sphere of learning follows a different path than the one prescribed.

One more trip around the Sun

Now that we've all survived another trip around the sun, and as we embark on another, entitled, 2013, I want to wish everyone a Happy and Awesome New Solar Revolution

Naturally, being a “new year”, I’ve been having long discussions with Littletree about what a year actually means – one trip around the Sun for the Earth, and how different cultures mark the start of each year at different times, and how different calendars calculate such things. And that rabbit hole of research led us, like so many things, to learning about the Sun, and the NASA website…

She pointed out the same thing I remember saying to my mother when I was about her age – what’s the point of calling it a “new” year, when every day starts a new year. And for each person, a new year really starts on their birthday.