Day Four, Five and Six

Ok, first and foremost....ooops! I have been a bit slack with writing blogs and I am sorry to anybody (namely just Mum) who has probably checked this page every hour on the hour for an update.

So, Wednesday night I don't think I have written about. Pretty fun, Ina and Gopal came over for dinner and we cooked spaghetti bolognese. It was pretty tasty, really tasty in fact. We just stayed in and drank arak from a plastic bag. Classy, all the way. You know how I roll. ;)

I didn't really bother posting about day four because nothing that interesting happened. It was Chinese New Year on Thursday and everybody had the day off. It was good to have a day off, coz I just had a nice sleep and got up at 9. I sat in my little bale just outside of my villa because the internet is better quality from that spot. I researched some tesol ideas for green school and collected from resources from here and there. I watched a bit of tv as well, just lounged around basically. To be honest, probably the most noteworthy thing to mention about Thursday is that, being Chinese New Year, and also because just across the river behind my villa is a pretty big temple (i can only see bits and pieces of it through the jungle), every half an hour or so a man at the temple began chanting. Not in an annoying way, and it wasn't all that loud either, in a really beautiful singing kind of chant. Every half hour though, I swear- total devotion. But that was my day, enjoying what Ant referred to as 'the easy-life'...

So that brings us to day five- Friday. I have to be honest, this blog is the only reason I am keeping track of days right now. I have NO idea what the date is. Nobody here really does. Everything this is organised in 'tomorrows'. Or in my case, 'tonights'. Friday was an early start, wanted to meet Dagmara at Starfish to organise Green School syllabus. I couldn't leave though because it was raining, so I didn't get there until about 10.30. We still brainstormed heaps of ideas and got a bit done so that was good. Besides a quick trip to a local warung for late lunch with Ina, I stayed at Starfish all day until about 9pm. I taught a class again, the same one as on Wednesday, beginners english. The kids are super cute, and I'm going to be taking the class on until I leave now. Should be fun. During the day though, Ina wanted to cook again so I offered to have people over again. This time, we wanted some homemade local food so Gopal agreed to cook. We also invited a few other people from Starfish... Dagmara came, and also Ketut and Sudi two of the guys that work in admin. Then there was Carla, and of course Ina and Gopal. Gopal cooked Mi Goreng, it was so good. So many ingredients I have just never seen or used in my life! We all squeezed in around my dinner table and ate and drank and talked. The original plan was to have dinner and a few drinks, then head to a club somewhere. And we did eat, and we did drink... but we kept drinking and drinking... We had bought 3 litres of arak, again stored so nicely in old drink bottles... and then Gopal brought around a bottle of red label (which by the way retails at 600,000 RP here, like $70, it's A LOT). So we finished off the bottle of red label and all three bottles of arak and got pretty roudy.

Let me explain a bit more about my new friend Gopal before I move on. He is a bit older, although he is totally immature and probably borderline ADHD. He works (I assumed very successfully) as a drum-maker. I don't really know the professional term. He makes instruments from wood, to put it plainly. He makes didgeridoos and drums mostly though. Be he collects the wood himself, from all over the world, the places he has mentioned to me on just two occassions include Japan, Australia, East Timor and South Africa. He climbs palm trees to collect different materials and everything. Totally amazing character. Anyway, I tell him that my boyfriend plays drums (see Dave, I haven't forgotten about you yet... hehehe), and tell him maybe we'd come up to his workshop one day when Dave gets here. So on Friday night he rocks up, with groceries etc, but also with one of his personally designed Didgeridoos (its circular, like a coiled snake, but sounds pretty damn cool) and one of his drums too. He tells me it's a gift for Dave (which of course I have accepted as a gift for me). It's so amazing, Gopal is pretty talented. I've come to realise that Balinese people are exceptionally talented at basically everything they try. This drum took him 4 days to make, and he normally would sell it to Africa. It's an african drum of course (see the photo below).

So back to my dinner party... Gopal is playing this drum and is really good, if I weren't so tipsy on arak and whisky I would probably worried about how loud it got in my little villa. But luckily my only neighbours aren't here at the moment so no problems. And then the power decides to flick on and off about 10 times in 10 minutes, finally deciding to stay off for a good half hour or so. We just continue on drinking and talking and finding the whole situation hilarious. Then we remember we were going to head into Ubud for a drink somewhere and begin to organise hows and wheres... But it's already 2am. Most places closed half an hour ago, except of course one of the local favourites...CP Lounge. The same place I went on the Wednesday night. So we all head down to CP lounge, where Gopal buys another bottle of red label to share with the group and from there I remember talking to a French guy called Charly for like...an hour. And he speaks about as much English as I do french so it was an interesting conversation... Then I decided I was definitely drunk enough for one night and got a ride home. Started writing this blog (and talking to my mum on FB chat which was a total fail) and then literally couldn't hold my eyes open any longer and crashed.

What a night. I have unofficially renamed this post "How to Throw an Ubudian Party".

So that brings us to today, which consisted in part of sleep. A lot of sleep. I got up at midday and just mosey-ed about, cleaned up the mess which wasn't that bad because these Balinese just can't stop cleaning or helping when you invite them over, always trying to show how thankful they are. Then I got a call from Dagmara and headed out for lunch at one of her favourite Warungs. It was pretty tasty, not something I'd usually eat, kind of buffet style with all local delicacies. So tasty though. Went for a swim afterwards and now I'm getting ready to go to dinner with Ina and then crash a local wedding. Just another night in Ubud really. Now for the fun part though... Photos...

OK... Photos are totally hard to upload through this medium, so instead I might upload to facebook... sorry! xx