Everything is New

So I am safely in Bali! I am living in a family run volunteer house, sharing a room with 7 other girls. The living situation ios pretty good, despite having an outside bathroom. The shower water is freezing cold and you have to force yourself to stand under it. However, it's so hot and humid here that it's not so bad! We have a little kitchen to the side of our room which is outside again but means that we can boil water if we want tea or coffee. Usually if we want a drink we just head to the coffee shop out the front of the house. The people that run it are incredibly friendly. The local people all shout hello to us as we walk past.

This week is orientation, so we are just leaning about the culture etc. Yesterday we went for a walk into the nearest town (Ubud) and went round the markets. We decided to get some proper traveller trousers and so did a bit of haggling which was so much fun. We managed to get a shopkeeper to go from 1 pair for 150,000 to 4 pairs for 200,000. It feels like you're spending loads of money but in fact that's about £12. Not too bad for 4 pairs of trousers!

After we went to the monkey temple. The monkeys were CRAZY! They were grabbing one girls maxi skirt and hissing at each other. There were loads of cute, baby baby monkeys. Shame they grow up to be so ugly!! The temple was surrounded by greenery. It looked like it was in the middle of the rainforest. I have hundreds of monkey photos - found it pretty hard to restrict myself.

In the afternoon we had a culture class where we were told about local customs and what we should avoid doing. We managed to sit on a table which we thought was a bench and apparently that's a definite NO NO. Pretty embarrassing. That meeting didn't go on for too long so we went to explore the village pool. It was like a tropical paradise with palm trees and several pools for us to try! It was so nice because its very humid here so its hard to feel fresh. In the evening we went to a Balinese dance show. It was pretty crazy with people dressed up as monkeys with popping out eyes. After the show was done they made a fire using coconuts and petrol ansome guy dressed as a hobby horse (which is a symbol of trance out here) came out and danced around it before running straight into it and kicking the flaming coconut across the floor towards where we were sitting. He proceeded to do this several times until his feet were completely black and he had to lie down!!! By the time we got home I was so exhausted that I had to go straight to sleep after!

So then TODAY we were treated to banana pancakes and watermelon for breakfast before heading to our language class. On our way we walked into the wrong house for our lesson and everyone in the house just smiled, waved an said hello. Absolute not phased by the fact that 4 foreigners were traipsing through their house! When we finally realised we were lost the family's son took us to the right place. We were leaning Bahasa and it was so hard. He would put a load of phrases on the board, get us to memorise them them and then test us in front of the whole class!!! It was so embarrassing and my pronunciation was so bad. I reckon it was actually offensively bad. Tomorrow we have language class again and I think I should probably do some revision for it!

When we got back to the house there was a genuine cock fight going on behind the house!!! It was even worse than I thought it would be. Knives were attached to their feetto their feet and the men pulled out their feathers to get them all mad before setting them oneach other. I couldn't watch.

In the afternoon we went for a 3 hour walk across the rice paddies. Halfway through there was proper monsoon style rain and we had to find shelter under a tiny outcrop of roof! The paddies were beautiful and so tropical. It was like being in a real life butterfly garden! It was even more beautiful than it looks in the guidebooks.

The houses here are lovely. They all have family temples which take up most of their land. One of their Gods (Shiva I think) is believed to live in the south part of the house and it is the god of fire and so the kitchen is always in the south part of the house. Also, every morning families put offerings made of flowers and food outside their front doors which look lovely but it's almost impossible to walk down the street without treading on at least one (and yes, that's also disrespectful here!)

State of Grace

Despite knowing that I needed to get up at 3.30am in order to get to the airport, I still left my packing until the night before.. and then realised that I didn't have a sleeping back to take so had to make an emergency trip to Tescos to pick one up (and some kettle chips - they were a necessity too). I finished packing just after midnight and then, of course, was too stressed/excited/nervous to sleep.

Check in at Heathrow was pretty uneventful. I had a horrible coffee from Costa which the barrista tried to charge me $4.50 for (I can't find the pound sign on this keyboard), but turns out she pressed the wrong button and it was only $2.30. The flight was pretty good, I started watching Argo but swapped for the slightly more light hearted Hunchback of Notre Dame - never disappoints.

I am now waiting out my 9 and a half hour layover in Doha airport which (apart from the free to use computers) doesn't offer much entertainment. Apparently Singapore Airport has a swimming pool and a butterfly garden which I will definitely be making use of on my return. I keep wandering past the Qatar Airways Lounge looking in longingly hoping they'll take pity on me. I'm not holding out much hope on that one though - don't think I'm dressed quite smartly enough.

Day 1

Electric Feel

I have had my last shift at work and will hopefully never have to work in retail again! My manager was really sweet though and sorted out an amazing goody bag for me which had make up, perfumes and skincare things inside! To celebrate it being my last day as a customer assistant, Mike came over with a bottle of champagne - might have been overdoing it a bit, but it was a nice thought!

Panic is starting to set in about my trip now. A couple of days ago I convinced myself that I would definitely contract Japanese Encephalitis whilst in Bali and since then have also managed to worry about monkeys stealing my phone and snakes nesting in my backpack. The real and ever-present fear is that I am never going to be ready to leave. My to-do list keeps growing and nothing seems to be getting crossed off.

The plan tonight is to start packing, although I have no idea where to start! I'm taking all of my old scruffy t-shirts but can't pack them because I need them for school this week. I'm working in the reception class and I'm doing painting with them so I come home looking like a twister mat! We're doing textured painting so they have to mix different things into their paint, like soil, sand, flour, and pieces of bark. Then they just all have to slap their mixture onto the cardboard in an abstract way. It comes out looking a bit like this (though the picture doesn't do it justice):

The kids went quite crazy for it and one little boy painted so vigorously that his paint/soil combo spattered up onto my face!

Hopefully the kindergarten out in Bali will have paints and I can do things like this with them. If not then I will go to the nearest shop that sells paint and buy bottles and bottles of the stuff. I'm going to photocopy pages from a colouring book and take them with me alongside boxes of crayons. I know the kids won't be able to speak any English but a language barrier won't get in the way of colouring/painting. 

5 days until departure

Stupidity Tries

Yesterday was my Mum's birthday and so my Mum, my sister, Mike and I went to some open gardens in Pebworth - a little village just outside Stratford-Upon-Avon. I thought that this would be the perfect time to get a base tan before I go away because it was so sunny and hot! On went the shorts, the vest top, sandals and sun cream. Perfect.

We drove for just over half an hour to get there and when we finally found our way to the carpark, we were ushered into a space by a 12 year old boy - clearly bribed into helping out by his garden-loving mother with an ice cold Irn-Bru.

We had a really nice day nosing around in other people's gardens and stroking their pets, followed by a cold beer in a lovely country pub garden. It was especially nice because, for once, Mum allowed me to be the map reader (see below).

When we were in the car home, singing along as loud as we possibly could to our summer mix tape (thanks Mike!) I noticed a tingling sensation on my left arm. Looking down, I could see that my right arm was full on glowing red.

When I got home I tried to assess the damage: one am burnt red, the other still ghostly white; awful tan/burn lines on one shoulder and a single burnt knee. Seems as though I'll be going to Bali looking like a sun-burnt zebra. Not quite the look I was going for..

19 days until departure.

If I Go, I'm Goin'

Things are (very) slowly starting to take shape for this Bali trip! Today I had my injections - Typhoid, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B which thankfully weren't painful at all. I did still treat myself to a Starbucks afterwards though - I'm going to miss coffee frappuccinos a lot.

The pharmacist who did my jabs for me today was very nice but did mention travelers' diarrhea at least 10 times during our rather brief appointment. It actually became a bit uncomfortable just how many times he brought it up. So, I bought myself a nice Carex moisturising hand sanitiser to keep away all the germs that the little kiddies might be harbouring!

Other things I have bought:
#1. Mosquito repellent: I now have a lifetime supply of mosquito repellent. In fact, I have so much of the stuff I don't know how I'm going to pack my clothes into my bag as well! I'm terrified of Japanese Encephalitis, Dengue Fever and any other diseases those little beasts might give me so figured it was best to stock up.

#2. Phone card: My pay-as-you-go SIM card has arrived so I can take a phone with me just in case. The last time I took a trip without a phone my plane went down (had to put an oxygen mask on and everything!) and I was stranded in London for the night, terrified out of my mind and with no way to contact anyone. So, moral of the story is: always take a phone!

#3. A gap yahh t-shirt: No trip to South East Asia is complete without an awful t-shirt that screams "I'm here to find myself dahhling". I chose a baggy white one with VIBES written across the front. Pretentious much?

#4. A rucksack: Or, to be more precise, a travelpack. I think I caused myself a lot of stress when choosing my backpack because I didn't want one that loaded from the top. Instead, I wanted one that zipped all the way around so that I could actually get to all my things. However, finding what I wanted at a price I could afford/justify was a bit trickier than I imagined. Thank God for Ebay!

Next thing on my "to buy" list is a mosquito net - also more expensive than you would imagine.

24 days until departure.

Pistol Dreams

Right. Let's see how I got to this point.

#1. I graduated last summer with a degree in archaeology which definitely qualifies you for absolutely nothing. Shockingly, employers don't respond too well when "good trowelling technique" is listed as one of your key skills on your CV.

#2. I start a primary PGCE in September. I absolutely cannot wait to get started! I got my place a couple of days before Christmas and have been counting down the days until it begins.

#3. In order to pass the time (and to save up a bit of money) before #2 I have been working in a very popular high street shop which seems to be my own personal hell. The long hours, the constant pulling forward and the customers hurling abuse proved too much a few weeks ago and I decided that instead of using the money I've saved up for something useful like a new car or rent I thought I'd blow it on a trip to the other side of the world - Bali!

I knew I wanted to volunteer when I went away so I decided to apply to work with IVHQ. I travelled to Nepal with them for 3 months when I was 19 and, because I had such a good time before, I thought I'd go with them again. I'm going to be volunteering in a kindergarten so my backpack will be loaded up with crayons, colouring books, skipping ropes and anything else fun I can think of to take for the children.


27 days until departure.