Scary, Fancy & Pretty

Ubud, Bali - September 27, 2012

Today was a rice I mean nice day.  We went to the rice fields.  Each rice field is separated so when one gets full the water goes to the next and the next that how they water the rice fields.  That's so cool.

Bali does not have a machine to cut the rice because if they did the people on the rice fields would all lose their jobs.  That's so sad.  

Many people from the rice fields carry things on their head.  They have really good balance but they do it as a habit.  

Parents, kids and everyone works at the rice fields.  The women work especially hard and so do the ducks.  The ducks eat all the seeds when the rice is harvested. 

The women work the hardest because in the past the men would go to school and the girls would work. 

The people in Bali ... well, most if them don't have toothbrushes [yuck]!  The boys and girls also don't have showers so some people go to the lake naked.  They also don't have toilets so they go to the bathroom outside thats not my favorite.

On the way back from the rice fields, we passed a Balinese funeral.  When people die in Bali they put two birds on the funeral coffin.  The belief is the birds will take their soul out of there body.  At a Balinese funeral your not aloud to cry on the dead person because they believe that if you do cry on the person you won't let there soul go away.

I learned alot today about Balinese culture!

The afternoon was really amazing.  We went to a museum to paint masks.  It was so cool.  I felt like the happiest girl in the world.  First, we looked at all the masks.  I chose the one with big eyes, weird teeth and a really cool smile, but my mom told me to paint a different one.  So I did.  The one I painted had really big huge eyes.  They were like ... I call them grouper eyes.

Before painting the masks, we took a small tour of the museum.  The room was cold.  And nice too.  It had snacks, art displays and puppets.  I loved the puppets.  They are so cool!  Puppets are big in Bali.

After that, we put three paint layers of white on the mask and then we painted the mask yellow and let it dry.  

 

While it was drying, I went to play a Balinese instrument like a piano so I played songs I knew from the piano.  Finally it was dry so we started doing very detailed art.  Then we were done.

At night, we went to a private dinner.  It was really cool. First, a man brought us all to a row of four chairs and sat us down.  Then these girls came out dancing. They were all dressed in blue sarongs and pink tops.  My favorite part was when they threw flowers on me.

Next we went to the table it had candles, fancy table cloth, and a really nice view.  A man also came to our table to serve us some strange and crazy foods like banana stem soup and vegetable mix and even sweet potato rice and much much more.  

 

The dessert was good too.  We had a mango sorbet and some weird dumplings.  Then behind my back my mom ordered me a ginger tea.  Yuck.  I told her I needed honey and then I started singing "Honey Honey" from Mama Mia.  Then it was so sad because dinner was over and we had to leave, but I just started to sing "I Have a Dream" also by Mama Mia.

Now, I will try to go to sleep but I doubt  There are frogs in the pond outside our room and it's so loud.  Did you know there are 200 different frogs in Bali?

Now I just can't wait for tomorrow.  We are leaving Ubud and going to an Elephant Park.  What will the elephant do? kick me off? Well ... I said too much already.