Mooventures

Week 2 of our Bali adventure started off on Friday in Paradise. You may think I’m kidding, but I’m not. If you ever get to Ubud, Bali, make sure you stay here, because it’s a little bit of paradise on earth!

Taman Bebek is a small, quaint homestay made up of cottages and rooms, and the property is sprawled across a beautiful part of Ubud amidst rice paddies, rolling hills and above the local river.  Each of the rooms its own unique design and style and the ones we saw were all incredible. Here are some snapshots of the room we stayed in:

We wandered around the property and along the way saw some really amazing landscapes!

Saturday (September 22) was Christina’s birthday!! It started off with breakfast on the terrace:

We then spent the rest of the day wandering the street our hotel was on. We stumbled across a space that looked like it could have been an art studio/hang-out lounge, but there was not one around to tell us more. Since there was no one to stop us, we took some photos:

The rest of the day we spent by the pool and in the evening we went to Mozaic for dinner.  Mozaic serves French fusion cuisine in a garden setting.  They have a fixed menu that changes daily depending on what is fresh.  This place was all about ambience. When you first walk in, you’re seated at a couch where you order drinks and they preview the menu for you. 

After you’ve been able to enjoy your drink, they lead you to another part of the restaurant where you’re seated for a 7-course meal.  They were kind enough to add a little birthday flair to Christina’s dessert:

Our last night in Ubud, we went to see a series of traditional Balinese dances performed at Ubud Palace Courtyard which is supposed to replicate what it looked like during the 16^th century.  The dancing was interesting, but they do a lot of expression with their eyes and to be honest, their jumpy eyes started to freak me out a little. I don’t know if these photos capture it, but here is a glimpse:

After our weekend in Paradise, we traveled to Lombok which is another island off the coast of Indonesia. Lombok is becoming an increasingly more popular vacation spot boasting the Gili Islands for water sports, the Rinjani volcano for trekking, and amazing beaches for surfing on the south coast.  Due to time restraints of our trip, we were only able to get to the south coast which is the part with the beautiful white sand beaches.  We took the local (a.k.a SLOW!) ferry from Bali for $2.00 and it took 6+ hours.  We could have opted for the fast boat which takes 45 – 60 minutes, but costs upwards of $45. Here are some photos from our slow ferry ride:

Unfortunately, Christina suffered an injury as we were getting off the ferry and she ended up with a fractured finger. We spent our first morning there driving to the doctor in the ambulance. While the reason for our field trip wasn’t fun, it was interesting to be able to see parts of Lombok that we wouldn’t have had the opportunity otherwise. 

Once we got back to the hotel, we spent our days lazing by the beach and pool!

We went back to Bali for our last night and stayed in a town called Kuta.  It does have beautiful beaches and they are very popular with the surfers. However the rest of the town is a quite crowded with tourists and at night it becomes overwhelming! I think the closest thing I can compare it to is NYC Times Square on New Years Eve.  We focused our time in watching surfers at the beach! 🙂

And that wraps up Bali! Would I go back? Absolutely!

On September 14, my dear friend Christina arrived in Jakarta all the way from Oakland, CA!! Before she knew about my travel plans after India, she had already booked a trip to Bali and when she realized where I’d be she asked me to join her. The trip was also to celebrate her birthday, and after our time there, I can honestly say it is the BEST birthday celebration I’ve ever been a part of!

We left for Bali on Sunday, September 16, and our first few days we spent in Seminyak, which is one of the many beach towns along South Bali. We stayed at a small homestay called Teka Teki which means “puzzle” in Bahasa. Sort of ironic, since we were very puzzled when we showed up and there was no one to greet us or show us to our room.  It was quite nerve-racking since we had quite a difficult time finding the place on our taxi ride from the airport.  One challenging feature of a lot of the roads is that they are too narrow for cars to drive down – only motorbikes can get through. After a stressful arrival, we made it here:

And then we went to dinner at a local restaurant and had some delicious Balinese food!

The next 2 days were filled with time at the beach and shopping at the various boutiques around town.  On Tuesday night, we went to a very popular restaurant called Ku De Ta.  The thing to do is have drinks on the beach to watch the sunset and then have dinner. We did it all and it was amazing!

On Wednesday, we moved to another town in Bali called Ubud.  This town is known for its rich Balinese culture and various activities.  Around Ubud are temples, ancient sites and villages producing handicrafts.  There are also a surrounding countryside with lush rice paddies and towering coconut trees.  We spent our first few days in Ubud at this homestay:

On Thursday, we woke up early for a Balinese cooking class at Warung Enak with our awesome cooking teacher Rai Sri.

The class started with a visit to the local market.  It was quite busy when we got there at 7:15am.  These photos are merely an attempt to capture some of what we saw:

We then went back to the restaurant and started to make a 7-course meal. Here was the menu:

*Grated Cassava Filled with Palm Sugar

*West Javanese Spicy Fruit Salad, with guava, mango, pineapple & cucumber

*Manduranese Chicken Broth with shredded cabbage, bean sprout & boiled egg

*Poached Trevally in Spiced Herb Broth of lemongrass, ginger, chilli, pandan, & lime kaffir leaf

*Duck Satay Lilit

*Fermentation Rice & Cassava on Passion fruit caulis & shredded young coconut

*Boiled Flour with Palm Sugar inside, tossed with grated coconut

Needless to say we were STUFFED beyond belief by the end of the class!! We decided to walk back towards the hotel, and along the way we stumbled across a funky art museum belonging to the artist known simply as Symon.  We got to chat with him for a few minutes and he was quite the interesting fellow.  Here is a brief description that has been written about the artist:

“Symon has lived in Bali since 1978 and is best known for his bold portraits of Balinese people, done in vivid tropical colours and often to an exaggerated scale, as in his series of Big Heads. His energetic and sometimes whimsical take on Balinese life and landscapes makes a refreshing change from the more sedate traditional views so popular with many other Ubud artists.”

Here are some snapshots of the space and some of my favorite paintings. For more info, you can check out his website at: www.symonstudios.com.

Here are some other things we saw along our walk:

And that wraps up the first half of our time in Bali. Next post will be about week 2!!

For the past 14 years I have been an educator.  While my classroom time has always been in early education (pre-K, K, 2^nd grade), through coaching, mentoring, and tutoring I have been able to work with kids of all ages.  I guess you could say I define myself as a teacher.  It’s all I’ve known and done since I graduated from university.  The fact of the matter is, I LOVE TEACHING!  Do I love ALL aspects of it? Of course not – I don’t think there’s a teacher who does!  But the joys that come from teaching are hard to rival: watching a child enter your classroom not knowing any letters of the alphabet and leaving in the spring being able to read; observing a group of 20+ students come in as individuals and leave as a community; being able to witness independence as it happens…the list goes on and on. Anyone who knows me can attest that I have had my fair share of tough times during my career, but I like to think I came out of those situations a better teacher and a stronger person.

This past February, I had an “experience” that altered my entire view of me as a teacher.  Without going into too many details, I will just say this: I had a meeting with some supervisors under the guise of something that needed to be discussed, and when I went into the meeting, I realized it was all a set-up to sabotage me.  There were a lot of very hurtful things said that attacked me as a teacher and person. Needless to say, I walked out of that meeting feeling like my world had just been turned upside down.  I didn’t understand where all of this negativity and hatred towards me was coming from.  I was hurt, angry, and confused.  I remember my initial reaction was, “I’m totally calling in ‘sick’ tomorrow” because I didn’t want to go back.  But after talking with a friend, I remember her saying, “You have to go in tomorrow – whatever you do – DON’T call in! If you do, it shows they got to you, and they win.”  She had a point, and I decided to go in the next day – and every day for the rest of the year. But I feel like from that day forward, I wasn’t the same teacher I was before. I felt I had been betrayed by my supervisors and I didn’t feel I could trust them (or anyone, really) with anything. What’s worse, was I started to doubt myself as a teacher, despite being in my 14^th year.  I did what I had to do though – I put my nose to the grindstone and made the students in my class the only priority in my work life.  It was a rough 4 months but I made it to June.  Along the way, I decided not to return to that school but I didn’t have anything lined up.  This is very out-of-character for me, but I knew that there was no way I could return given what had happened.  So, I gave my notice and left for India in late June, and have been traveling around southeast Asia ever since.

One of the things I’ve been contemplating while traveling is what is next for me.  My confidence in teaching isn’t exactly stellar after what happened in February, but I also can’t picture myself doing anything else.  Outside of teaching, one of the things I’ve been most passionate about is athletics.  I decided to apply to Northeastern University for the Masters in Sports Leadership program.  Here is an excerpt from my personal statement that sums up why I decided to apply:

            “As an educator of urban youth for the last 14 years, I am dismayed at the shrinking opportunities for youth to participate in these kinds of sport activities.  Simply put, there aren’t enough fields, courts, coaches, or infrastructure and the cost is just too high for families.  I think back to how sports impacted my life while I was growing up, and I am challenged to make these opportunities accessible to all.  My vision is to have a year-round community sports program that specifically serves urban youth.  Through grants and private or corporate funding, the program would operate on a sliding scale based on what families can afford.  The program would offer a variety of sports throughout the year and would start by teaching the basic skills of each sport with an emphasis on teamwork and positive sportsmanship.  Besides learning how to play sports, the bigger goal would be that kids would learn about conflict resolution, collaboration, and healthy competition.  By learning and playing a sport together under the leadership of a coach, children would have the opportunity to experience these challenges, and in the process not only learn about themselves, but about their peers as well.  I have seen how sports can positively impact and change the course of a young person’s life.  My goal is to make this available to every child who desires it.”

I am excited to share that I was recently accepted into the program and will begin in January 2013!  I am thrilled about having the opportunity to start something new and pursue another interest I feel strongly about. I recently was thinking about this upcoming new direction I’m taking and I realized there is a good possibility I may not teach again. I’m not going to say never – life is too unpredictable to make such a statement.  I feel that teaching has defined me over the last 14 years and now…well, it’s going to change.  I am hoping that I contributed to future generations in some small way during my teaching career and I hope I can continue to do so in my new pursuits. It’s weird to think about not having that identity anymore.  Hope you all will stick with me as I start to build a new one.