From the Temple to the beach to... a blackout???

Yesterday morning we went back to the Temple to join 30 or so Balinese children in their Pesraman activities. I joined the Balinese girls as they wove palm branches into egg holders and what I guessed were rice holders. Although it took me a couple minutes to catch on, eventually I became quite skilled at weaving the branches... but then Ashley and I had a palm branch weaving competition and she won. I'm attributing it to the fact that she is majoring in art. After that the children had a drawing competition: some filled in outlined pictures with colored pencils while others drew their own pictures. To me, the real competition seemed to be their drawing boards. They were drawing on boards featuring Spiderman, Dora the Explorer, and other characters from movies and television. All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend the morning.

Then, in the afternoon, we went to the beach! Sanur beach is beautiful, with warm, blue water, colorful sailboats near the shore, and delicious gelato. In fact, the only unpleasantness that I encountered was at the beach area of one resort/hotel (which shall remain nameless). We attempted to settle down there but were banned because we were not staying at the hotel; the hotel's security guard followed us down the beach all the way to the end of their property to make sure we left. We then proceeded to settle down about ten meters from the edge of their beach space, mainly because that was the only available beach space left. :)

As we were all getting ready for dinner in the evening, the lights suddenly went out. At first I thought that just our hotel had lost electricity, but we found out later that all of Bali (and maybe even Java) was affected by this blackout. We didn't have very much light as we were leaving for dinner, because the sun sets early here and not many of us had flashlights, so Stephen turned a corner without thinking and suddenly found himself in the stream that runs next to our hotel. (Ever since the first day I was here I had a feeling someone would fall in, because pedestrians really are not protected from falling in the stream by an substantial fence or ledge in some places). But then we wrapped the evening up well, singing songs from The Sound of Music on the way to dinner.

Until next time,
Sarah