#springbreak16

If you follow my life very closely, then there are two things you probably know about me. If you don’t follow my life very closely, that’s fine. But you’re missing out. So here are the two things, in no particular order.

1. Every year since I have lived in Indonesia, I have gone to Bali for Christmas break. And more importantly, though the group of people I travel with has changed every year, there is a core group of three people who have gone every single year: Yohanes, Peco, and me. We are the only constants, year to year.

2. This most recent Christmas break, Peco wasn’t able to join us. It was our first Christmas in eight years without him.

If you follow me on any type of social media, you probably saw my many posts appealing for prayer for a girl named Eva who very nearly lost her life last summer. Eva is Peco’s wife. Her life is a story of God’s healing and provision. But that healing took time. Lots of time. In fact, her body is still healing. But just last month, her doctors in America (where their 2 month vacation ended up being a 9 month rehabilitation process) finally gave her the green light to come back to Indonesia. So Peco, Eva, and little Ayla came back to Indonesia two weeks ago. They flew straight to Bali, where they spent a few days adjusting to the weather and the time difference. Yohanes and I (among other friends) flew there at the beginning of our spring break last week to meet them.  They arrived in Bali on Thursday, we arrived on Sunday.

Brace yourself for lots of pictures. Lots of low quality phone pictures.

Four of us traveled from Java to Bali. We took motorbikes to the bus stop, a bus to Solo, a minibus to the airport, then an airport to Bali. We like to include as many forms of transportation as possible. Here’s the four of us in the angkot (minibus) with an old lady. Don’t let her turned-away face fool you. She was VERY amused by us.

From left to right, we have Melanie, me, Katie, and our ever wonderful selfie photographer, Yohanes. Oh, and here’s a shot of our airplane. I was very concerned about getting on a CRIME aircraft. But then I figured out what the rest of it said…

We ran into people we knew in the airport in Solo, then again when we landed in Bali… Because, you know, Indonesia is such a tiny place, you’re bound to run into someone you know eventually… Once we landed on Bali, we took a taxi to the hotel where Peco and Eva were staying at. Some other friends of ours happened to be in Bali at the same time, and when we got to the hotel, everyone met us hungry travelers in the hotel restaurant with pizzas for lunch. I gotta be honest, the second I saw Eva across the empty restaurant, I nearly burst into tears. Being able to finally hug this dear friend was the result of miracle after miracle, and I was just so happy and emotional to see her again! Here is our first of several “family pictures”.

See those two little girls? Yeah, so the last time I saw them, the younger one had just been born! Again, notice Yohanes’s masterful selfie taking skills. After lunch, we parted with our visiting friends, and seven of us (Peco, Eva, Ayla (who was napping during the picture above), Yohanes, Katie, Melanie, and I) headed inland towards Ubud, where we spent the rest of the week in one of our favorite homes away from home. This was the view along the coast on the way there.

Last time I got to spend time with Peco, Eva, and Ayla was Christmas 2014, when Ayla was still 6 months old! She was seriously jet-lagging when we arrived and didn’t really want anyone but mommy and daddy. By the next morning though, she was warming up to the rest of us and learning our names. She even went on a walk with me first thing in the morning! I can’t even tell you what a delight this little girl is to be around. Her brain is a little sponge, and she just loves life. I’m pretty sure she could find something to be happy about in just about any situation. And just look at that killer smile!

When we stay in Ubud (which is usually at least once a year), we stay at the T-Houses. They are open air classic style wood frame homes that can be rented pretty cheaply. I don’t want to make them sound too great though, because I really don’t want a ton of people to go stay there, because then I won’t be able to! So to deter possible customers, I just want to show you this picture of the day I was taking my sweet time on the toilet when suddenly, a lizard fell out of a tree and landed on the awning above me and started clunking around. It was startling and a little bit frightening. But it’s the price you pay for outdoor bathrooms (which PS are just about my favorite thing ever).

So now that I have deterred you from ever wanting to stay there, here are some pictures of pretty things I found around the house.

  

Oh, and our swimming pool! We can’t forget about the refreshing pool at the edge of the rice fields.

It’s very rare for us to ever meet any Americans on Bali. Most of the non-Asian tourists there are either European or Australian. This year was no exception. Our neighbors consisted of a British family on a one month holiday (their kids, Riley and Isis are playing with Ayla in the photo above), a Russian couple with their baby and their Filipino nanny, and a large extended Turkish family on vacation. Bali – and especially Ubud – has such a relaxed environment, and it’s fun to chill by the pool and get to know people from around the world. Ayla also had no shortage of friends. She is very comfortable with people – grownups and kids, friends and strangers – and she made friends pretty much everywhere we went!

On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, we spent most of our days eating and walking around town. People come from every corner of the world to start restaurants in Bali, and eating is one of my favorite things about vacation because the food is authentic. We had Mexican, Italian, Turkish, Balinese, Thai, vegan, and many other kinds of foods. Here are some shots from our walks and our dinner views.

 

The Wednesday of our trip was the Balinese Hindu holiday of Nyepi. It is a day of complete silence, rest, and reflection. Non-Hindus and tourists are not exempt from this. For the entire day, we had to keep quiet and we were not allowed to leave the T-Houses. We went shopping Tuesday night (and it was like the night before Armageddon in the grocery store) and bought ingredients to cook all our own meals at the house on Wednesday. We thought we would be bored out of our minds, but really, the day passed quickly, and we got to spend lots of quality time together. I’ve never been on Bali during Nyepi before, so it was a new cultural experience for me. I wanted to know more about it, so I asked a lot of questions.

One of the most bizarre traditions is the creation of what are called ogoh-ogoh. They are the stuff of nightmares. An ogoh-ogoh is essentially a giant, scary, lightweight statue. Each neighborhood makes one, which the men parade through the streets on the night before Nyepi. The ogoh-ogoh look terrifying, because they are supposed to attract evil spirits. The idea is that if the ogoh-ogoh looks evil, the evil spirits will see it, think it is one of their own, and enter it. Then, after they have walked it through the village, the ogoh-ogoh is ceremonially destroyed or burned. Nyepi corresponds to the Hindu new year, so it means they get to start the year off free of evil spirits around them. As we drove and walked around, we took lots of pictures of the various ogoh-ogoh waiting to be paraded and burned. Here are some of my personal favorites (and by “favorites”, I mean “WHO EVEN IMAGINED THAT BECAUSE THEY SHOULD PROBABLY BE IN SOME SORT OF FACILITY!”).

 

(Photo cred goes to Melanie for the first 2 pictures shot from the back of a moving motorbike. Impressive work, Mel.) Every neighborhood had an ogoh-ogoh, all different, and all with varying degrees of gruesome-ness.

On the morning of Nyepi, besides hanging out with our neighbors in the pool (quietly, of course – because there are actually local men patrolling to make sure everyone is being quiet), we also spent a large portion of the day monitoring the solar eclipse! Unfortunately, we were just a bit too far south to see the full eclipse, but we got to see a good partial eclipse! We couldn’t see anything from looking at the sun, which obviously you shouldn’t do anyways (but obviously I still did just because someone once told me I shouldn’t), because though it seemed like someone dimmed the lights down way low outdoors, the sun still looked like this even at the peak of the eclipse:

Thanks to Peco’s ingenuity, we were able to watch the eclipse with much less eye burning via the cover of a book he ripped off and poked a pinhole in.

The eclipse started with the picture on the left and the peak occurred at 8:27 AM, which is precisely when I took the picture on the right.

The day after Nyepi, we were restless and ready to get out. So we took our motorbikes and drove an hour to the coast. We stopped for breakfast on the way, and partway through our meal, a family came and sat at the table next to ours. They sounded suspiciously American, and like I said before, that is a rare thing to come across on Bali. So at one point, I just leaned right on over and flat out asked them, “Are you American?” The dad quickly said, “No. Canadian.” But he was good natured enough about it, and we started a conversation. They own a business in Canada, but they wanted their two young sons to have the experience of living overseas, so when they’re not in Canada running their business, they spend 7-8 months a year living on the coast of Bali. Their kids go to an alternative natural school (that I’ve actually been to!) there, and spend a lot of time surfing and making friends from other cultures. It was really fun to talk to them and hear about their life! They also took us to one of their favorite beaches after we all finished our breakfast. Also, they were coming off a 12 day juice fast, and this was their first real meal. You really meet the most interesting people on Bali…

The beach they took us to is a well known surf beach with very high waves and strong waters. We scored some lounge chairs pretty far from the water and had a good time chuckling at all the tourists who pulled their chairs close to the water and got doused by high waves crashing over them while they sunbathed. 

I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures at the beach, but one thing I did make sure to take pictures of was the waves crashing majestically against this rock. It wasn’t until I’d been standing there for quite awhile that I noticed the group of boys hiding in the crevices of the shore side of the rock! They would wait for a wave to crash over, then give the thumbs up! They were both amused and amusing.

We exchanged numbers with the Canadian family with the promise that if they ever traveled to Java, we’d hook them up! I have a feeling they may take us up on the offer sometime in the near future…

The very best part about this trip was the time we got to spend together. One day, all the girls went to town to get massages (except me, because I am super freaked out by strangers touching my body), so Peco, Yo, and I took that opportunity to make us some pictures (because according to Katie, that is how everyone says it).

 

We meant to take a family picture when the girls got back from their massages, but we forgot. Then it was dark. So we did it the next morning before we said our goodbyes. As you can see from the photos below, morning is not our best time.

We clearly have no business taking early morning photos… Even Ayla couldn’t manage to muster up a smile!

It was tough to say goodbye. Our week together was SO GOOD. But alas, we had a flight to catch, so goodbyes were inevitable. We all squeezed Ayla a lot, and many hugs were had. Then the four of us headed to the airport.

^^ That’s the very western edge of Java. Though it was hard to leave Bali, seeing Java always feels like coming home, which is a good feeling. And if that wasn’t enough, flying in over Jogjakarta definitely reminded me that I live in one of the most densely inhabited islands on earth…

We all learned a lot over the past year. We learned that life is unpredictable. We learned how hard it is to be far from those you love when they are facing hard times. But more importantly, we learned that God is in control. We learned how beautifully the Body of Christ can function. We learned a lot about peace and prayer and trust. And we learned all over again how God works for the good of those who love Him.