I just returned from my nearly month-long trip to the "Island of Gods"- Bali. I was blessed enough to see rice paddies that seemed to roll endlessly along the mountains of Ubud, sit on the edge a boat that was being followed by a pod of over 20 dolphins, climb a volcano to see the sunrise and even catch a few waves in between. My trip started out by meeting up with my friend Sam and the Neubauer family at the airport in Denpasar. Sam and I went to Conserve School together when we were in high school back in the States, an environmentally-minded semester-long boarding school in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin. As luck would have it, Sam also is doing a Rotary exchange and living in Jakarta this year, and it was incredible to finally be able to see him and catch up. His family was visiting from Racine, WI and we were both there waiting for them at the airport after they had finally arrived in Bali. Together we went to Ubud for a few days and were totally in luck when the cremation ceremony for a member of the royal family in Ubud was to be held just a few blocks down from our hotel. It was a beautiful ceremony that involved having all members of the extended royal family present and dressed to the nines, leading a procession of a black cow that was to be set aflame. The whole ceremony involved traditional dances and music preformed by the people of Ubud and the whole city had come out to share in the event.
Sam's mom had also planned for us to visit a traditional medicine-man during one of our drives around the neighboring towns of Ubud, which everyone got a kick out of but afterwards we all agreed that it had worked! He felt our shoulders and rubbed his hands along our feet, feeling for bad spirits that could be causing aches and pains.
A couple days later, I got up with Sam's family at 2 in the morning to do a sunrise climb up Gunung Batur, a active volcano about an hour outside of Ubud. Though I wasn't exactly feeling up for a 3 hour hike when I was attempting to sip some coffee during the drive out to the base of the volcano, it was an experience that I will never forget. The sight of seeing the clouds beneath me literally took my breath away. Even though we were high up, there was still a family of monkeys hanging around the mountain and following the other climbers around the mountain.
During the rest of my time with the Neubauers, we went snorkelling around Menjangan Island, went art shopping around the streets of Ubud and ate our way through a considerable amount of Kringle cakes that Sam's mom had brought from Racine. I am so grateful to them for letting me join on their adventure and being able to get to know them better.
After I said goodbye to Sam and his family, I met up with my Balinese friend Bika and went with her to Lovina to look for dolphins. Lovina is on the Northern point of Bali and is famous for all of the dolphins that gather there during sunrise to look for fishes in the shallower waters. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw literally dozens of dolphins leaping around me, their graceful fins diving in-and-out of the waves alongside our little boat. Afterwards we went back to her house in Denpasar and I got to spend a few days surfing around Kuta and Padang Padang. I'm a little sunburned and bruised up, but ther feeling of gliding alongside the shape of a wave is one I'm just hooked to.
I've still got one week left in Indonesia, and I'll be spending a couple more days in Surabaya with my host family, and then my last few back in Makassar with friends before going back to Chicago! I'll post again before I go home, though.
I don't know what else to say other than indeed this truly has felt like a life in a year.
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