going abroad

as kayla likes to say... today we are going abroad :) to malaysia that is and before we go im taking a little break from the heat in the aircon of the internet cafe.

So I have settled in to this hill town of Ubud. It really feels like home, and I guess will be for another few months. Today though I have the smallest hint of homesickness which is a first since I left San Fran. I think its mostly for my bed and maybe some blue bottle coffee. and of course my sister, and my mom, and phone calls to my girls :) Although I do have a phone here now. As well as a motorbike, and i'm secretly starting to play guitar again which always makes me feel like im 16 hanging out in howard park :)

I want to post pictures, but everytime I come here I forget my camera and whenever Im at Flava I can only be online for about a minute before I get distracted. So Flava by the way is Noel's restaurant which is absolutely beautiful. The food is delicious and the smoothies amazing and you drink tequila with powdered coffee on the lime. yum. more beautiful than the lounge however is his wife who is my new favorite. Wine!!!! (yes wine im writing about you!). They are having a baby next month (maybe sooner?) and the belly is so cute... i like to kiss it and put my cold beer on it when its hot outside... hee hee. On earth day we painted it like an earth... however wine doesnt actually look pregnant in the normal sense as she's 8 months preggers and still looks like a model... a model who likes to nest :) for those of you who know noel... he could not have found a better partner... and noel's hair is long by the way which is oh so cute and sort of hilarious :) pictures will be forthcoming. ill include one of the bright green car as well.
for those of you on my charades team ive moved on to backgammon, and for those of you still in india ill be back for a week before i go home. san fran peeps: im only coming home for 4 days so you best be ready to have a good time :) im bringing some peeps back with me too and theyre actually not from fairfield. i know... shocking. i say home although i guess i dont really live there anymore but we can pretend for a few days :) Ill be in Chicago for a few days and then to Peru. pretty bad eh?

by the way... ive turned brown and sometimes when i catch my reflection i dont know its me... its really funny since im usually so white to be this dark. maybe ill get a wrinkle now that im getting older. shit :) although all the kids in my english class think im about 12. we drew pictures the other day to practice describing words and every kid wrote something about my hair :) i want to cut out all the pictures of me and make a little album... this might sounds weird that i want an album of my many portraits but if you saw how they depicted my hair you may want a copy for yourself. i love teaching them... one group is 14-25 and the other group 7-9 and they are teaching me indonesian and i get to write on a board with brightly colored markers. I finally gave away my last sharpie the other night (its been a slow process as every time i move locations i meet another person who really wants one... especially in india), so the marker writing is helping me get over drawing on the walls of southeast asia.

If you live in fairfield... i have treats coming :) wonka will be selling some of my bali selections and you should def go and check out the sale. Some really beautiful stuff will be there.
by the way if anyone is coming out here this summer let me know... i need someone to bring me a pair of jeans and some medium format film. you know... the important things in life. maybe a new york times too :)

balibalibali

I don't even know where to begin…. The last month has been crazy with so many changes and adventures. The Gili's. well that's a long story but maybe ill try to be brief. So jenny came to visit for 2 weeks (at the end of which I was planning on going home although now im staying until its time for peru) so we decided to chill in Ubud and then hit up Cinadasa and the Gili's. We stayed at Tania and Lempot's place in Cinadasa which is amazing (they were friends of friends, now are family). They have a hotel of sorts right on the water that is made up so several "lumbongs" (I have no idea how to spell it) which are traditionally where one stores rice. What it becomes however is a little two level hut made of bamboo and grass with a beautiful upstairs bedroom, a downstairs outdoor eating area and seated table, and the most bangin outdoor bathroom filled with plants and flowers and occasionally frogs.

This was where we met out little Gili family (we all headed out the next day) which consisted of Tanya, Lempot, their three kids, Marcus and Kaled (who I had randomly already met in a bar in Ubud), Kayla and Mara. We took a boat and on the way met some French zookeepers, and a man whose name I forget but he joined us with his son eliot. Kayla and Mara have since become my roommates, coworkers, travel partners and mostly are just really fucking rad girls. I mean seriously rad… so anyway, we were a mixed bunch from all over this world and made the Gili's our home for about a week. It was amazing. Our room was shit but I didn't really stay there much, as there wasn't really electricity and the water was usually turned off but it was about a dollar a day and connected to the café we really made home. Kava Café it's called and you walk in to prerolled joints, the cheapest most delicious Indonesian food, raised pillowed platforms on the water, fresh fruit and Bintang. We were in and out of the water about 15 times a day and even when we got hot dancing at the bar we'd jump over the wall and quickly swim before we went back to dancing. There were lots of bonfires and lots of boys with guitars as well as dj's and dancing on the beach and on top of bars, lots of wandering to new surfing beaches and playing pingpong on the beach.

All 3 islands have no motorized vehicles…. Only horse drawn buggies, although you can walk around the biggest one in about 2 hours, so really no need for even that. We kayaked between the islands and snorkled and dove and hung out with turtles and like everwhere I go I met boys from Cambridge, England. Its really so weird. It doesn't matter where I am, even in Rishikesh, even on my birthday, every white boy I meet ends up being from Cambridge. But anyway, that's a side note and the point will be that the water is the most amazing color of turquoise, the surfing is great and the rocket shakes don't work very well J but we did make the peacock constellation we found the mascot of our trip and may appear on my arm someday soon as a tattoo.

So now I am back in Ubud. Been here for a little bit actually, and after a few days of recuperating aka floating in the pool, we're back in action. I have a few jobs although I'm not fully immersed in any of them yet… working on it though J Im teaching English at a youth center as well as at an orphanage and training to be a doula (midwife's assistant). I live in the clinic's ashram, which basically means that we have a house with some other people on my favorite side of the town. I live with Kayla, Mara, Eda, and sort of these guys Kumar and Thor. although Im not sure if Kumar actually lives with us, he's my favorite roommate J so Kayla and Mara… I don't really know how to describe them except that they're the perfect people for me to have met right now. I mean seriously, we do interpretive dance when the bar gets boring and they're adventure seekers and we all like different types of boys, they went to my sister's college and are hilarious and intelligent. It's really quite perfect actually. We are heading to Malaysia on Friday for a week so we can explore and get new visas. Then back for work and play. Yesterday was earth day here and we set up a booth for the clinic where we did face painting – can you believe the first request was a horse? I mean who fucking face paints a horse? The rest were butterflies and tigers so it got easier J - and sold trees for the Ache clinic and mostly I just hung out with tanya's kids and drank beer and explored the jungle setting of the party and mixed a few beats and had a private Michael Franti (he and noel i guess are friends?) concert under the stars and then headbanged to some Italian Jimi Hendrix wannabe and drank more Storm pale ale which is my favorite and then jumped on the trampoline and then danced to house beats and then left on my friends' fast motorcycle only to lose my shoe and then end up at Puri's house with the same old doing the same old that really just makes me so happy. Yes. Earth day. Oh… and interesting to note we also at our booth had a "friend sign up sheet" which means that people could sign up to be our friends? Im not sure about that but we did meet a lot of people yesterday and promoted our upcoming party to the expats in the hood.

Ok. More later... have to go to work.

Ps. This is a flight confirmation number and I am storing it right here as I have no pen or paper…. Unnecessary info but still I felt like sharing J

Y4CFAQ

changes.... going through changes....

ahhh bali. i am going through changes in bali. the dirt and grime of india has been washed off in the outdoor showers and been replaced by motorcycle rides and frangipani. the hindu culture here is going strong with offerings outside of all the house and stores and restaurants all day long. little palm leaves turned into boxes filled with flowers and sweet smelling incense smoke. the people have the most amazing smiles and the $2 meals come prettily plated on tablecloths with fresh organic ingredients.

so many things have happened but ill focus on yesterday while i can remember it :) jenny flew in the day before and we did some swimming in a private stone pool and then explored monkey forest. she crashed early from the jet lag and i ended up hanging on the stone ground with the members of an indonesia rock band, playing charades and drinking homemade vanilla vodka. the vodka left me sleeping in late followed by some papaya and cappuccino and then late to drive south to the beach. we grabbed sarongs and suits only to discover that we werent heading back to ubud that day, although we did end up coming home at 4 or 5 in the morning, after planning to go stay in some bungalows and then changing to shared bedrooms in an amazing beachside compound, that switched again to passing out in noel's bright green car. but anyway.

so we roll down to the beach in kuta, which is bali's version of i dont know where... but somewhere that is covered in clubs and vacationers. i mean COVERED in clubs. all down the beach is just club after club speckled with some shopping and followed by a club. its sort of disgusting and sort of amazing at the same time. we decided to park at some friend named issa's house who turns out to be bizzaro willy shultz and is drunk off his ass in the early afternoon when we arrived. now i had ended breakfast with a margarita so this was fine with me and we grabbed beers and headed to the beach where i ended up not having the patience to change into a suit and stormed the waves in my undies. i love bali :) the water is turqoise and the sand is soft. people come along and offer you pedicures while you tan. i have however been splurging on almost daily $5 massages and spa treatments so i passed. too bad.

after the sun went down we showered at his jungle sprawl - i cant call it a mansion if it consists of about 7 buildings, connected by candlelit paths of stone and jungle but whatever - and made plans to head over to his mom's on the cliffs... but me being me i got distracted by the easter eggs his dad and little brother were dying. his dad by the way was just as hot and like all hot older men here was living with some young balinese girl :) i love it.

so anyway, confused by the beers we headed to his mom's only to remember that robbie (the indonesian rock star) who is lakota noel's sister's boyfriend's band was playing at a mall. so we turned to the mall. the "mall" ended up being an actual mall but actually situated on the actual beach. i mean huge. on the beach. i dont know how they managed to secure such a property but it meant the concert was surrounded by waves and filled with young indonesian punk kids who were so cute mashing around. they killed it and we drank more beer and had a birthday dinner for robbie during which i drunkenly bartered my way into a pair of fake gucci stunners for a couple bucks after repeatedly knocking over all the displays. it was hilarious for me and confusing for the sales lady. embarrassed we headed to the bathroom where a little girl was standing on top of the toilet taking a shit with the door open while about 8 people waited in line. we quickly left there and i found myself in louis vuitton where everything was only about $5 so i think the black market is allowed to have stores in malls which is also confusing, and then back to the beach.

we forgot about issa's mom's headed back to his dad's for a little moonlight skinny dipping. which was actually amazing. of course we all know when im drinking all i want to do is swim but this was one of the most beautiful pools ive gotten to be in. first off its long like a lap pool going from shallow to deep while all along the left side is the width of another pool but shallow for laying around and then rolling into the deep. in the middle of the marble perimeter grows a frangipani tree that drops its flowers into the water and makes everything smell like god. hee hee. bali is the most sensual place i have ever been. it beats italy. so we made crowns of flowers and swam around the floating candles and i felt as though i had had an amazing night and was ready for sleep. however, after getting out and enjoying some "treats" we decided to dress again and head to the club. which club im not sure but the first one was cheesy and filled with what i think were escorts of both the sexes. the music blew so we wandered down to some place where people were wearing indian headresses and the music was much more jump around. so we jumped around... i have been missing going out dancing so much travelling through india - ive had to resort to dancing around with my ipod - so this gave me back all the energy drinking all day drained and then we continued to dance through the late night warm downpour and back into the pool where maybe i passed out for little bit on a couch and then somehow found myself back in the green car heading to ubud.

today we go to a balinese wedding. they file their teeth down the day before the wedding because it supposedly takes the "animal" out of people so they stay faithful. im not so sure i have much faith in the so-called faithful, but i hear there are lots of flowers so i am excited.