Bali week 1

I have just gotten back to Ponorogo after 3 weeks away. I think I'll talk about my time away in three posts, week by week. This is week 1, which was a VIA Indonesia conference. All the VIA vols in Indonesia gathered in Ubud, Bali to discuss the future of the program and address any current problems. VIA is a consensus based organization so there was a lot of lengthy discussions, including one that lasted until 11 or so at night.

I enjoyed the conference a lot, for several reasons. 1) it was refreshing to be able to speak English naturally to people who I knew would understand me! 2) we ate a lot of really delisious western food that I can't get in Ponorogo like pizza, burgers, pasta, hummus, cheese, cake, pastries and so much more 3) It was just really good to hang out with American friends who share similar values 4) I wasn't stared at because there are so many tourists on Bali


Here is the sunset one of our first evenings there. We were staying in this awesome bungalow place and we had all the rooms in one building. I was on the top floor and the view was beautiful.


One evening we went to a dance called Kecak which tells a traditional Hindu story but what is interesting about this dance is that instead of the usual Gamalan orchestra, 100 men chant all the parts of the orchestra.

This is a man asking a blessing before the dance begins






Here are the men in the orchestra


And the dancers






After the first dance there was a fire dance that was basically a guy running and kicking a big fire.


Here are some photos of us hard at work





And not so hard at work, taking a walk




One day we went to a moneky forest