Eid ul Fitr

Due to the Muslim holiday IALF was closed so we only had in Country training sessions at the VSO office to attend on two days this our third week in Indonesia. For me this was a good opportunity to consolidate all we had learnt the first week in language training. The big challengue this week was finding places to eat; many of the food stall proprieters are Muslim and had gone home to Java.

1 October 2009

We had all borrowed bicycles from VSO so we headed off to Kuta. Most of the day we lazed on the beach but the others did go surfing and all managed to stand on their boards during the hour session.

2 October 2009

Dorothea and Sam had stayed in Kuta over night and John was burnt and ached too much to go again so I cycled to Kuta alone. On the four journey I covered four different routes; not intentiaonally.

4 October 2009

Since I had been living in Denpasar with Ibu Rini the local university gamerlan orchestra had been practicing all hours of the day and evening. I went to the park this evening and it was full of families having picnic teas - either stuff they had brought or from the pedlars who wandered round the field - and they were listening to what I think was the gamerlan competition. As well as several orchestras with

different ranges of instruments there were two sets of dancers. There was a lot of Hindu ceremony involved with the giving of offerings and sprinkling of oil and water both on a temporary temple and on the players and their instruments. I was engaged in conversation by a couple of locals including one man who really did not speak any English which was quite challenging and we had to give up when it got too dark for me to read the dictionary. The only downside to the evening was that I had to walk over grass and despite the insect repellent got badly bitten.