Monday, December 24, 2012

Bedugul and Christmas

Austin-

This Saturday, we got the opportunity to go visit another school related to Slukat in the mountain village of Bedugul. The drive up there was beautiful: winding roads up the side of a mountain. We were told to bring jackets because it was supposed to be cold, but none of us believed that it would be too cold for us (it was!). The views were amazing because we were almost in the clouds. Our purpose for going was to motivate the students, because the area is a little more remote than Slukat and most of the students do not go to an Indonesian school there. Needless to say, the kids were very excited to see westerners in their village. They gave us a short tour of the village, which was stopped short because of rain (it rains every day there). We ate a delicious Balinese dinner and then went to sleep at the school. The next morning we went to the house of one of the founders of the school, who had recently died. The family and friends were making preparations for the ceremony, but the mood was not somber as one might expect. They explained to us that in the first few hours after the death, everyone was very sad. But after a day or two had passed, everyone was happy that he was going to a better place. It was very refreshing to see such optimism after a sad event. We helped with making some of the preparations for the funeral, and were fed an amazing lunch and invited to the ceremony on the 31st (hopefully we can make it back up there).
On Christmas Eve we were invited to a Christmas Eve party at Vishara's (our Austrailian program coordinator) house. It was honestly, one of the most beautiful houses we had ever seen. There were a lot of people there, and they fed us as much pizza, pasta, and pound cake as we could eat. It was so nice, and they really made sure that we still felt the Christmas spirit so far away from home.

 All of us in our Sarongs
 Snow man made by a student at Slukat
 Volunteers helping make offerings for the funeral ceremony
 Christmas eve party photo
 Another good photo from the party
Yellow temple in Bedugul

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