Puppies and Plunges

Suleiman’s Experience (photos and captions by Mahnaz)

It’s been a fair old while since we last blogged, and time is flying by so fast. Let’s fill in the gaps before our next travel blog in a couple of weeks.

Paws for Thought

We have become dog owners!!! Well, dog fosterers, to be more accurate. Our next-door neighbour has a dog that we call Sophie who comes and spends time with us, and Mahnaz will feed her once in a while. Sophie was pregnant and – unbeknownst to us – gave birth to a litter of 7 puppies. 5 were male and were sold by her owner, but one day Anisa found 2 tiny female puppies in the undergrowth across from our house.  And it transpires these were the other two from Sophie’s litter.

They were tiny, and one in particular was covered in flies, maggots and dirt. Thanks to Anisa’s eagle eyes and quick-thinking, and the efforts of an amazing Green School parent from Estonia, Marina, who took them to the vets, the little one’s life was saved. The vet expressed doubt that she would live if the maggots and infections were burrowing their way to her brain. Her fur had to be shaved as it was totally matted, which made her wounds even more visible. For a while it was touch and go. The vets put her on antibiotics and gave us a gel to apply to her skin, and on Marina’s advice we also used coconut oil regularly to soften the hardened dead skin, which eventually fell away. Fortunately, she responded really well to such an extent that the vets gasped and could not believe it was the same dog when they saw her a week later.

The bigger, healthier, puppy was named Oreo by Anisa, and the smaller, sicker, puppy was named – appropriately enough – Hope, by one of Anisa’s friends. We tend to call her Hopey as two-syllable names are much easier to vocalise. We have been looking after Oreo in our garden within a fenced area so she doesn’t go near the pool. Her mum Sophie is let in occasionally to come and feed her and they have bonded beautifully. Hopey has had to be indoors as Sophie sadly did not bond with her in the slightest and was actually quite aggressive to her, simply not recognising her as her own. If a puppy is poorly, the mother can also discard them in favour of the other puppies so there may be that element of ”survival of the fittest’ here. Mahnaz and Anisa really struggled to reconcile themselves to this state of affairs, but nature can be cruel.

We are now contending with:

1. Waste – It’s everywhere! Hopey stays indoors with us overnight, and when I come down the stairs of a morning she runs over to me wagging her tail in a simply adorable fashion. But before I can play with her or sort out her food, I have to dodge a number of patches of wee and an increasingly substantial amount of poo. Of course, she’s a baby so all is forgiven, but on a couple of occasions I have stepped into a barely-visible patch of wee. I now feed her asap, feed Oreo, then let Hopey out to bond with her sister, then clean up the floors. This means kitchen roll for the wee, poo bags for the poo, surface cleaner, then mopping the entire floor. We now have a routine whereby we don’t feed her at night and we encourage her out whenever she’s eaten to ensure she does her business in the garden. We’re trying to reward her each time she poos outside too. You can probably tell we have never had a puppy before. I don’t even know what breed they are, but have been told that they are just known as Kintamani dogs (Kintamani is a mountainous region about 75 minutes drive from here).

2. Smells – The house smells of dog. All the time. We sometimes smell of dog. No matter how many windows and doors are kept open, no matter whether we use candles, incense, or sprays, etc. the house is 100% eau de canine even though Hope is a small puppy who doesn’t go upstairs and doesn’t noticeably shed fur. 

3. Safety – In the house and garden there is only one source of danger, but it’s a big one – the pool. It’s more of a plunge pool, you can swim a length of it in four strokes, but it is fairly deep at about 1.6m. I had assumed that dogs had an inherent fear of water, and this was borne out by their initial explorations where they would potter around the pool, peer into the water, and then quickly trot away. But one night, I was awoken at 2:30am by the sound of a yelping dog. In my bleary-eyed state I didn’t quite twig who it was, as we have a lot of wild dogs in the area who are very fond of a late-night or early-morning bark. I ventured over to the window but couldn’t see anything and it had all gone quiet, so I went back to bed. And then I heard more yelping again. I went back out to the window and this time noticed a little black shape struggling in the water. It was Oreo! I raced down the stairs past a yelping Hopey who could see her sister’s distress, and went out to the pool. Luckily Oreo was at the shallow end with her paws scrabbling away in the water. I knelt down and scooped her up with one hand and then tossed her onto the grass. She didn’t seem any the worse for wear given she’d probably been in the water for at least three minutes. She just coughed out some water, and then I stuck her into her fenced area to sleep it off. I think I was more traumatised than she was, and didn’t sleep at all for the rest of that night! I made sure the sides of her fence were extra secure, and put the lights on by the pool just in case she did manage to get out again and would at least be able to see the pool clearly.

As their confidence has grown, though, both dogs have begun spending more time around the pool. Oreo has clearly forgotten her traumatic experience, and Hopey just emulates her big sister. A couple of times my heart has been in my mouth as I see how playful they are right by the water’s edge, somehow avoiding disaster. Anyway, a few days after Oreo fell in, the inevitable happened and this time Hopey fell into the pool. It was mid-morning and luckily I was working downstairs and heard the splash. I went out and Oreo was legging it from the scene – I like to think she was going for help but it did rather look like she wanted to avoid the blame! Hopey was at the far side by the wall where I can’t get to easily but I called out to her and she began doggie-paddling across the pool in my direction. I scooped her up, brought her in and dried her off, and she then had a good nap to recover from the shock. While I had a stiff brandy … (joke)

The plan is for Oreo to be looked after by other families. We had rather fallen for Hopey and did consider fostering her until we return to the UK. But our landlord would prefer us not to have dogs – they have already burrowed under plant pots and chewed up his grass – so we will respect his wishes. All the activity with these dogs (and some bigger cats before the dogs came) has sadly scared off our kitten, Pandora, who we haven’t seen for weeks. Ominously, we have also been told that black dogs like Hopey and Oreo are quite prized by some Balinese who occasionally make a sacrifice at their temples, so we will need to be extra-careful in terms of who we hand their care over to.

Incidentally, Marina has been simply amazing, she is so passionate about animals and animal welfare. She arranged a mass programme of sterilisation and vaccination as so many of the local families cannot afford to pay for any of this, which results in so many wild dogs, some of whom are out-of-control. Over 50 dogs were treated at the event she set up at the school, with a number of vets in attendance working all day. Marina is even looking at launching an animal sanctuary in the village to support all the local animals who cannot be cared for, and involve the school and pupils in this.

Bamboopalooza

Being British, I have an instinctive aversion to the word ‘palooza’. It’s one of those Americanisms I have increasingly seen companies in the UK adopt in an attempt to make their dull conferences and networking events seem more exciting than they actually are.

So for the large part I ignored the reminders and promotions for the Green School’s annual palooza – Bamboopalooza. This is a festival celebrating the many nationalities and families represented at the school, and it’s a big undertaking with a huge amount of planning behind it. We were supposed to sign up via an app, choose one of roughly 25 country-specific stalls to join, and then hop into the corresponding WhatsApp groups devoted to logistics.

It was only as the event drew nearer I realised how major this event would be. Our much-missed friend Ozge and her family even flew in from Turkey specially to attend. Because of the dogs – and a short trip Mahnaz made back to the UK to mark the one-year anniversary of her mother’s passing – we didn’t even sign up until a couple of days beforehand. But I’m glad we did as it turned out to be a fantastic day.

Here’s the short video of this year’s event to give you a flavour (Mahnaz can be spotted at 0:23 and me at 0:56):

Each country hosted a stall overflowing with food, games and other cultural offerings. The kids all had little passports and would come to each stall to get them stamped with the country’s flag after answering a question, before diving into the games and sampling the food.

Mahnaz joined the UK stall which had a classic by-the-British-seaside theme, complete with sandpit and traditional seaside games. I joined the Indian stall which featured henna painting and, naturally, the best food of the day – the adults adored the samosas and the chaat, the kids unsurprisingly made a beeline straight for the crystallised ginger sweets (no jelabi or burfi sadly which disappointed a few visitors). The Korean stall included some of the games featured in the TV show, Squid Game. The Irish stall featured a confessional where a mock priest absolved the visitor’s sins. That kind of thing. It was a riot of colour and noise and children’s sugared-up laughter and energy.

Afterwards came a parade: each stall took to the stage to perform a dance, and then walked the parade route with all the other families lining up either side. Some countries combined their resources, so we had a Latin American stall, and – rather poignantly – Russia and Ukraine were situated next to each other and did their parade walk together. 

The event concluded with a mass rendition of “We Are The World”. It was surprisingly moving … but very long. It lasts seven minutes, feels double that, and is probably more likely to start a world war than prevent one.

Slow Travel

A talk was given at the Green School that had a real impact on many of the attendees, myself included. Nina Karnikowski is an Australian travel writer who has spent years criss-crossing the world, from Borneo and Mongolia via India to Antartica, Africa and the Americas. She has covered every type of holiday from luxury escapes to intriguing, off-the-beaten-track adventures and anything in-between. One day she was offered a dream assignment: a 19-day private jet tour of Africa. This meant short stops in many countries including 3 days in the vineyards of South Africa, and similar periods with the gorillas of Rwanda and seeing the ancient churches in Ethiopia. Such a trip would usually cost several hundred thousand dollars but for her, of course, would be free. The trip of a lifetime. However, the way she had been travelling and the lifestyle she had been promoting had become increasingly hard for her to reconcile with her growing concern for the environment and the sustainability of our planet. This was her tipping point. So she turned down the assignment.

She has since shifted her focus to how we can travel and explore the planet in a way that is more respectful and less impactful on the places we love. Her thinking is we should take more time to appreciate the places we visit, and not use travel as an opportunity to tick off a series of must-see experiences just so we can say we have accomplished it. It is about properly grounding ourselves in those places and supporting the communities in which we stay. The travel industry in itself is not evil: it brings people together, it broadens our horizons, and it provides support for poorer, local communities. But the way we travel can be pernicious, and if we can do so with a lighter carbon footprint we can root ourselves more deeply in the land, honour the places we visit and the people we meet, and have a more rewarding experience.

Her key tips to practically apply this ethos were (if you are able) to try to spend more time on holiday but in fewer places; don’t fly everywhere but use trains and buses; never book a chain hotel or use sites like booking.com, instead use homestays as the money will go directly to the local communities; volunteer on farms if you are able to. There was lots more I can’t recall right now, but I have downloaded her book Go Lightly and look forward to reading more soon.

And yes, not everyone can do this. And yes, there is an irony in a glamorous writer who has already travelled the world telling other families privileged enough to have journeyed to the other side of the world themselves that everyone else should just slow it all down. But it’s a message that really resonated for many of us who are keen to know how we can travel more ethically and sustainably.

I’ve become hyper-sensitive to hearing people say things like: “I’ve done Australia” or “We did Thailand last year”. Inwardly, I’m thinking: “No, you didn’t – you visited a country, you spent time in a place, you were a guest on someone’s land. It isn’t a race.” I know I’ve been guilty of talking about travel in this way in the past too. Maybe this sensitivity has also been informed by seeing wealthy foreigners spend the past ten months in Bali taking and taking without giving back.

The talk gave me some hope that visiting dream destinations now and in the immediate future will not invariably need to mean cramming in a series of brief encounters at different must-see locations. Or jostling for the right picture with lots of other people determined to get that perfect shot for Instagram. Or not having the time to process and breathe, resulting in feeling like we need another holiday as soon as this one is over! There is another way of doing things.

Whether we are able to ignore FOMO and do some slow travel will be interesting to see. Will we achieve the same satisfaction from it as we do from being able to say we have seen all the places we wanted to see in a country? I don’t know, but it does feel like the right time to try.

Ubud Writers and Readers Festival

Talking of writers, Anisa and I attended our first-ever literary festival, a 5-day event held annually in Ubud.

We went on the Saturday and there were 3 stages, each with 6 separate sessions and speakers throughout the day, so there was lots to choose from. The sessions were all mainly aimed at adults on the day we could go, and the content was sometimes quite dry so I’m not sure that Anisa got much out of it other than daddy-daughter time and good food, but sometimes that’s fine too.

The first session that we attended featured the writer Banu Mushtaq, author of Heart Lamp, a collection of short stories about the Kannada-speaking women in the Indian state of Karnataka. The book won this year’s International Booker Prize. She was an engaging speaker, expressing optimism about the real improvements in women’s lives in the region and noting that the attention brought by her success is helping drive further change.

The next session we attended featured a panel of speakers from the world of education in Indonesia and New Zealand, looking at the etymological challenges facing youngsters today. A Maori teacher was particularly inspiring, relating how he had wanted to work at his local school in one of the most deprived parts of the country, a tough area where everyone had pretty much given up. He was welcomed to the school by being stabbed in his first week by a female student. But over the next year he focused on trying to make learning meaningful to the mainly Maori students and one way was to tap into their long tradition of story-telling and folk tales, which the school had long ignored. Channelling their oral tradition and mythology really captivated the students and made them understand that their family history was of value. They looked at other ways of making this more relatable and included poetry slams and rap. The girl who had stabbed him ended up being mentored by him and she recited her poetry to the school to much acclaim at the end of the year. Stirring stuff.

There were two sessions I really wanted to see in the afternoon but they clashed, so I couldn’t watch Peter Greste, the Australian former BBC and Al Jazeera journalist who became a media story himself when he was jailed by the Egyptian authorities in 2015.

Still, it meant we could be in the audience for the Egyptian-born Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad. Every so often, you encounter someone whose intelligence and erudition and quiet depth and humanity are spell-binding, and you could listen to them for days. Think Stephen Fry. Or Maya Angelou. Or David Attenborough. Or Barack Obama. Omar El Akkad has that same mesmerising presence. You could have heard a pin drop as he articulated his anguish at the world’s inaction to prevent the war in Palestine. The conversation was both thought-provoking and heart-breaking. His book, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, sold out within seconds of the session finishing; literally everyone who didn’t already have a copy rushed to the onsite bookstall to get it. I missed out but have it on the Kindle, and it lays out with clarity how and why the language of war has been manipulated to downplay the ongoing suffering and injustice of the Palestinian people. I cannot recommend his work highly enough.

Quiz Night

Banu Mushtaq’s book was kindly brought over to Bali for Mahnaz by our friends from Highams Park, Liz and Colin. They were seeing family in Singapore and popped over and spent some days with us in Bali, making them our first-ever visitors! It was wonderful to explore the mountains in Kintamani with them, the thermal springs overlooking Mount Batur, and they were very impressed by the school and the local community, where they also kindly volunteered.

They were even able to attend a quiz night that I ran at the school for the Green School Parents’ Association (GSPA). It was organised at fairly short notice on a Tuesday night, so there were only 25 or so attendees, but we plan to have another one next year, ideally on a Friday or Saturday night when sleepovers and childcare arrangements mean more families will be able to attend.

The quiz was held at The Bridge, a student-designed facility at the school where parents are actively encouraged to meet and work from. The food was organised by one of the Green School children as part of his Quest project, and I adopted my customary quiz format: a picture round, then 6 themed rounds – Food and Drink; Geography; Books, Language and Puzzles; Film; General Knowledge; and Popular Music.

Organising quiz questions is more challenging than it might first appear. It’s not simply a matter of downloading ‘1001 best pub-quiz questions’ from the internet. I try to choose questions (and answers) that are genuinely interesting and don’t feel like an exam. They also need to be phrased very clearly with no scope for ambiguity. I spend a lot of time practising them out loud and rewording where necessary. And the questions need to be written so that everyone feels able to at least make an educated guess.

Each round starts with easier questions and gradually it becomes more difficult. Usually I include plenty of music questions as those always lift the mood, and I try to keep the pieces up-tempo – we are on a night out, after all! Excerpts of music need to be edited to be long enough for teams to recognise the song quickly but not immediately – in fact, the sweetest moment for me is seeing the correct answer dawn on someone right before the music ends.

Some quizmasters make the mistake of trying to stump teams with lots of trick questions or simply by making them too hard. There is no fun if every question is flying over your head making you feel inadequate. My goal is for teams to score between 66% and 85%. I’m disappointed if a team scores in the mid-90s as I may have made it too easy, but am more disappointed if any team drops below 50%.

The tricky part with this quiz was not knowing who would attend. Because it was a school night some people brought their very young children, which meant I had to add some appropriate questions at the last minute. I also wanted to avoid making the quiz too British-centric, so many of my standard questions about British TV, film, music and culture were off the table unless they had a global reach (e.g. Harry Potter, The Beatles). I tried, where possible, to also avoid questions that relied on English-specific wording, which meant jettisoning about 70% of my usual material. So something like “Name the 3 countries whose English language names end in the letter M” is a no-go (answer at the end of the blog)

Anyway, everyone had a fun time, including one team made up of a German GS family and their visiting grandparents, who had evidently never attended a quiz night before. And Anisa has still not quite forgiven her team-mates for some last-minute answer changes that cost them victory (there are 225 squares on a Scrabble board; and in the music round where each song contained a number in the title, the Bob Marley song was Three Little Birds and not One Love).

The winners were a team spanning the ages from 7 to 83 – and the 83 year-old even heckled me! And despite the bewildered Germans, the average team score was 73/100 which suggests the questions were pitched fairly well after all.

Here are 10 mixed questions from the night (answers at the end of the blog):

Q1. The Disney film “Encanto” is set in which country?

Q2. English and Mandarin Chinese are the two most spoken languages in the world. Which is the third most spoken language?

Q3. If Elvis Presley was alive today how old would he be? (Half a point if you’re a year either side)

Q4. Which country has the highest percentage of men in their population, with over 90% being male?

Q5. Of which drink did the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once say this: “… It has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all the doctors in the Empire?”

Q6. Which famous fictional detective had an obituary printed on the front page of the New York Times when they died?

Q7. On the first move in a game of chess – playing with the white pieces – how many different opening moves can you make?

Q8. In which decade of the 20^th century was ciabatta bread first produced in Italy?

Q9. How many calories are there in a classic Big Mac burger? (Answer to the nearest 20 calories)

Q10. In a room of 75 people what is the probability that two people will have the same birthday? (Answer to the nearest 5%)

Ice Baths

A funny and quite weird one to finish off on. 

Mahnaz and I attended a workshop held at a local gym on the subject of breathwork. It was facilitated by a Dutchman called Dirk who had tutored under Wim Hof, the legendary “Ice Man”, famed for his ability to spend inordinate amounts of time suspended in cold water, ice and snow.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend is that I am a complete wimp with cold water. Even ten seconds at the end of a shower is nine and a half seconds too long for me. I see footballers like Mohamed Salah regularly using ice baths (not that it is helping him that much at the moment – sort it out, Mo!) so the idea of a workshop equipping me with the requisite techniques to handle the ice bath really appealed.

There were eight of us, and before we went into the ice bath we spent more than two and a half hours in an intensive breathing workshop. We were taken through drill after drill, each designed to teach a different technique and guide us into progressively deeper states of relaxation. At one point I was so relaxed that I actually drifted off to asleep – but not before absorbing that the most effective approach for the ice bath would be to breathe through the nose and exhale through the mouth.

Then we were asked to take turns getting into the ice bath and staying there for two minutes, applying the breathing techniques we had just spent the morning practising. Dirk stressed that, at this stage, anything beyond two minutes was not advisable.

Of the eight of us, six managed the full two minutes and two didn’t – and I’m pleased to say that neither Mahnaz nor I bailed early. One person lasted 30 seconds, and another managed 15 seconds, then tried again later and could not get past those same 15 seconds before it became overwhelming.

Before getting in, I reminded myself that I had chosen to do this. It was entirely my decision, and all I needed to do was trust the techniques we’d learned – and if I genuinely couldn’t handle it, to just get up and get out. But watching three people go before me and succeed gave me the extra motivation to last the full two minutes. One of the trio said counting the leaves on the trees helped take her mind off the exquisite agony, and that trick helped me too.

The initial shock was staggering, though. The cold water punched the air out of my lungs, and for a moment all I could think about was that this was utter madness. It completely stole my breath. But I focused on staying outwardly calm and serene, and that helped me relax inwardly too. Dirk offered gentle encouragement, though after a while I didn’t need it – I was actually starting to enjoy the experience.

Around the ninety-second mark, my mind briefly wandered and I felt that prickly it’s-so-cold-it’s-actually-hot-and-burning sensation. But I stuck with it, and even managed a joke (with bonus f-word) when Dirk suggested I dip my head under the water:

I came out red raw but where things got really interesting was when Mahnaz – who was last up – did her two minutes. She handled it brilliantly, then she got out and high-fived the others who were providing encouragement. The session had overrun big time so a few minutes later it was just me and Mahnaz in the little sauna adjacent to the ice bath. She pointed at the bath and asked me: “Is that the ice bath?” I nodded. She then asked: “How do you get in it?” I told her: “You just climb in. Don’t you remember, you just did it?” She replied: “No! Did I really do it? The ice bath?” “Yes”, I told her. “Did you do it too?” she asked. What followed over the next couple of hours was a stream of the same questions, basically a variation of the following:

M: Did I sit in the ice bath?

S: Yes, you did.

M: Did you do it?

S: Yes, I did. You filmed it, don’t you remember?

M: No! Did I do it?

S: Yes. I filmed you too. Shall we look at the video?

M: (Watches video) Suli, I don’t recall any of this! Did you do it?

S: Yes, shall we look at the video you took of me?

M: OK. (Watches video) Did I do it?

S: Yes, shall we watch the video of it?

M: (Watches video). I don’t remember any of this. Did you do it?

Mahnaz had no memory whatsoever of sitting in the ice bath. She would ask the same questions over and over, rinse and repeat. Similarly when I explained who else was present, how long they had each lasted, how Anisa was off school that day and was looking after the dogs. Zero recollection whatsoever – a dramatic memory loss.

It was pretty scary. We spoke to the facilitator, Dirk, and he said he had never come across this behaviour personally, but he had heard that sometimes people suffer a strong reaction to being in the ice water. After promising to Google her symptoms (thanks a lot, mate!) he said this was likely to be Transient Global Amnesia (TGA). And when reading up, it all matched perfectly and quelled my rising panic: ‘a short-term memory loss linked directly to sudden immersion in very hot or cold water’. Mahnaz had no other symptoms so fortunately we could rule out a brain injury or something equally serious, and it should sort itself out within 8 hours. Clearly a rare occurrence but not unprecedented.

We went for lunch at a Turkish warung near the school where we watched the videos over and over and repeated that same dialogue over and over. We walked home and Anisa was playing with the dogs. She found the situation very funny and not at all spooky, constantly getting her mummy to repeat the same questions and answers for comedy value.

Just to be on the safe side I took the day off work to keep an eye on Mahnaz. I hoped a good long sleep would be the stimulus for a memory refresh but her nap was interrupted by a massive crack of thunder – we’re now in rainy season where it’s usually lovely in the morning but there can be torrential rain in the afternoon. It was another 4-6 hours before her memories started to piece together again, but it was only the next morning that she could remember the workshop. And she still cannot recall being in the ice bath at all, and has no recall of eating lunch or walking back home afterwards.

How totally surreal …

Another travel blog will be out in the next couple of weeks, but here are the answers to those quiz questions:

Q1. The Disney film “Encanto” is set in which country? (A: Colombia)

Q2. English and Mandarin Chinese are the two most spoken languages in the world. Which is the third most spoken language? (A: Hindi, just ahead of Spanish)

Q3. If Elvis Presley was alive today how old would he be? (A: 90, he was born on 8 January, 1935)

Q4. Which country has the highest percentage of men in their population, with over 90% being male? (A: The Vatican)

Q5. Of which drink did the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once say this: “… It has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all the doctors in the Empire?” (A: Gin and tonic)

Q6. Which famous fictional detective had an obituary printed on the front page of the New York Times when they died? (A: Hercule Poirot)

Q7. On the first move in a game of chess – playing with the white pieces – how many different opening moves can you make? (A: 20: the 8 pawns can each move one or two squares – a3/a4, b3/b4, c3/c4, etc; one knight can move from b1 to a3 or c3, the other from g1 to f3 or h3)

Q8. In which decade of the 20^th century was ciabatta bread first produced in Italy? (A: The 1980s – it was a response to the growing popularity of French baguettes, apparently)

Q9. How many calories are there in a classic Big Mac burger? (A: 580 calories)

Q10. In a room of 75 people what is the probability that two people will have the same birthday? (A: 99.9%! It’s called The Birthday Paradox – apparently a room of just 23 people will mean a greater than 50% chance of two people sharing the same birthday)

Countries that end in the letter ‘M’: 3 – Belgium, Vietnam, United Kingdom. Though one quizzer back in the UK has queried this and said: “It’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, actually” – such are the perils of being a quizmaster…

Mahnaz’s Reflections

We had visitors! So happy to see some familiar faces. Thank you, Liz and Colin, Viktor and Mui, Sadie and Ruby, for coming to see us!

Yes, the whole Ice bath challenge was incredibly surreal. I remember being woken by a thunder clap and have some flash memories of the whole thing. Weird. Am I am glad I did it? Yes, but I don’t think I’ll be doing it again.

I signed up to do the Green Educators course at the school. It was on offer and after speaking with the head of communities, decided to go ahead and do it. A group of educators from outside the school, some parents and some staff members from the Green Camp were also there. 6 days of a deep dive into the school, learning from staff who work with mostly regeneration (admittedly also learners) and some sustainability giving their own independent insights and sharing their teaching philosophies – it was very interesting. Can I tell you what it all means after a week? Not really other than it is ALL alive in this moment.

The key elements, Sensing, Seeking, Shaping and Story Telling.

It is unpredictable, requires a lot of trust, is chaotic and far from perfect. Just like the Green School. The biomimicry side of things was quite interesting too – modelling nature for solutions to our worlds problems. What an opportunity for children to learn something so outside of the box. I wish all kids had access to this. In our changing times, I feel it is essential.

The course involved time with educators, going kayaking on mangroves (this was a personal highlight learning about how local villagers plant 2 types of mangrove trees in the water to literally create more land mass – particularly with the island being eroded. We used the opportunity to collect 4kg of trash from the river too), jumping in the schools mud pit (which was previously an essential part of of the parent initiation) and presenting a project which was done in groups which showcased regeneration and biomimicry based on all the lessons we had throughout the week.

A session I loved was in a grade 4 classroom. 7 year olds were tasked to build models of some buildings around the school. They had to buy the building materials from the “shop” using “cp’s” (classroom currency). It was so much fun watching them negotiate with each other to make sure they didn’t overspend and bargained with other groups.

I have to also say that the food provided throughout the week was incredible. Mostly balinese and vegetarian.

Anisa’s Experience

Hello,

When we went to Bamboopalooza, i didn’t expect what i was going to experience. It was really nice, but i became really full because you had to get food from each stall, and there were SO many of them.

I also love the puppies. One of them, Oreo, is really big and pretty nibbly, but she’s so cute. The other one: Hope, is also really cute and small. Sometimes they can be really irritating though. And bitey. But i suppose that’s a part of the whole experience. Also………………………………………….

PANDORA HAS LEFT!!! There were a couple of big, angry cats in our garden and then one day she just looked at my mum from outside and once she walked away we never saw her again. I hope she’s okay and i really miss her.

The picture below is of some chocolate that i made in my jalan jalan, which we made locally. We learnt about cacao and tempered/made our chocolate.

Also, recently I’ve really been getting into volleyball. I’m not great at it because I’m a newbie, but it’s pretty fun. However when my teacher was helping us practise our spikes, he spiked to me and my finger got hurt, badly. I still can’t bend it down properly, but it’s getting better.

I’ve also baked ginger cookies for this sustainable farmers market in my class. I sold all of them and made around 300-350k idr (about £16). They had to be healthy and gluten free though, so i used oat flour and coconut sugar. It was really fun.

I also did an assembly and spoke about “Write for rights” so people could write letters at Spirit Friday. I was nervous but it was fine.