Day 8 & 9

Again, I must apologise for not writing sooner. It's been pretty crazy busy here and I literally had very little time to myself (especially time to myself with my computer and decent internet connection).

So Day 8 was a long day. I was recovering slightly from a post-beach hangover. Not the alcohol variety, the sand everywhere, just a tad sun burnt on the nose, and general achy feeling from playing too much beach volleyball. It was great fun though.

Today was a pretty important day for me though- it was my first Starfish staff meeting. I even got sent the text message to remind all the teachers to come. There were still only 4 people there, but still... It was new to me. And nothing like your normal staff meeting in a school. Ina ran the meeting today because Dagmara was on her first day at Green School.

I spent the rest of the day trying to help out here and there with tasks around Starfish, and also trying to get new ideas for Green School but I can't get internet access at the school so it can be difficult. Dagmara then came back and explained that our preparation was basically irrelevant and we need to do something completely different. I think we are already so attuned to creating lessons for starfish, and forgetting that the kids at starfish are the underprivileged locals, whereas the kids at green school are the (in many cases anyway) spoilt children of the elite, or so they think they are. They don't take to our fun and lighthearted lessons as well and we almost have to impress them before they will take the lessons seriously. Oh well.

So, I spent some time debriefing this with Dagmara, and decided that internet was going to be necessary for some good ideas etc. I went back to my villa and realised I only had about an hour and a half to do this work, get ready, and leave for Kuta. So I'm rushing around, trying to get ready while different pages are loading, copying and pasting like there's no tomorrow. But I get a fair bit done so I feel ok about it. My driver arrives and I'm still getting ready so I just grab my stuff and race out the door.

My Driver, Wayan, is a friend of a friend...of a friend. I think. Ina was recommended him by a friend, and Ina then recommended him to me. He doesn't speak very much English and likes to use this time in transit to practice. So the whole way to Kuta, I pretty much was teaching anyway. But he was really sweet and agreed to wait for me until Midnight in Kuta so he could drive me back to Ubud. This is about a hour drive at this stage, longer again I think because traffic in Kuta, especially Jalan Legian, is just insane. But I made it and found my way to the White Rose Hotel...

The receptionist politely informs me that the room I am searching for is Room 2038, and as I'm walking around I realise just how huge this hotel is. Quite nice looking too, and I later find out, is completely booked out! That's pretty crazy for February right? But I give most of it very little thought at the time because.... Hells yeh, Jess and Ali are here! Woohoo!

I took them down Poppies 1 (I think it was one, I can never remember which is which) for dinner at TJ's Mexican Restaurant. I'd previously only had a Margherita here once, but I'm so glad we got a chance to eat here because it was amazing! I had a stuffed baked potato....and a few more Margheritas. :)

Then I took the girls to the Hard Rock Hotel. Pretty much one of my favourite places to hang out in Kuta. It's expensive, for Bali standards, but where else could you sit down amongst a plethora of memorabilia of almost all of the greatest rock artists? And the drinks are pretty good too. The mojito faces were coming out, and after making good friends with the girl who served us all night, we all jumped up on the bar and had a few photos. Good times. Oh, we also saw how the Hard Rock celebrates their guests birthday. It was pretty intense- like a quarter of a gamelan, all walking in procession, the front man wearing a tradition mask and carrying a whipped cream cake, which of course ends up all over the birthday girl/boys face. Very funny.

The night is young, or so I feel, but we call it a night because my driver is waiting. I swear though, as soon as I sat down in that car, the whole day caught up with me and I could have just passed out into some sort of sleep coma right there. I felt like one of those kids who tries so hard to stay awake but cannot physically hold their eyes open! hahaha, funny.

Anyway I got home and went straight to sleep. Which brings us to day 9 right? Tuesday. Or yesterday if you want to think of it presently. Yesterday was another almost full day at Starfish. Ina picked me up again (I love love love Ina) and we had lunch at Pizza Bagus. It's an Italian restaurant here, if you didn't already pick that, and the food was just amazing! Then we went straight on to Starfish with Dagmara in two as well. She had had another stressful morning at Green School, probably thanks to my totally rushed efforts with the planning the day before. So today, I have my organisation pants on- I am gonna show this planning who's boss! I sat in an internet cafe for about 2 and a half hours, just finding ideas, writings stuff down, and most importantly printing stuff out. Something I haven't been able to do, and it makes a huge difference to my planning ability to have something on paper in front of me, not just on my screen.

I get back to Starfish and after a bout a gazillion interruptions of people and students and volunteers arriving and phone calls... I finally get a chance to show Dagmara the plan for tomorrow, which she loves. I am totally stoked and know I can keep this up now, hopefully with only a decent amount of effort on my part. It's already 9 oclock at this stage, and Ina and I have invited people to my house again to cook. I said to start at 9-9.30, so I'm running a little late. Luckily no one is there when Dagmara and I get home, so I have a chance to Skype call Dave and Dagmara sneaks in a quick swim in the pool. I think it was exactly what both of us needed for 10 minutes to unwind from the day.

Ina brought some new people around to dinner, a couple of German guys she met. I swear she knows ever German guy in Ubud. Pretty interesting people really, one is a Physio on holiday, the other lives here and works in a waste processing plant of some sort. We had bolognese again, and of course ended up at CP again. This time we got there in time for the band, which we usually miss. The were doing some cover songs as you expect in Bali. Quite a nice rendition of Sex on Fire was even belted out at one point.

It was pretty much a normal night out last night actually, and I am sporting the usual arak headache this morning too. Arak is not a great drink I've come to realise. It's not distilled properly, and it's not a the cleanest drink in the world, so while it tastes really stong, you don't really feel the effects. Then, all the pain comes in the morning. I think I'll stick to Bintang please... infact, maybe not so much of anything for a little while. :)

Well, this has been long and again I have to get ready for work. Post again soon, I'll be in Kuta for the night tonight so maybe another long two-dayer coming up, not too sure!

xx