Bali: The Weekend!

From the journal:

Saturday, July 3, 2010

"Today was the first Cudamani filed trip and we went to two temples.  The first was Pura Tirta Empul near the village of Tampaksiring, which is a water temple with several springs (11 in total), each with its own spiritual property and power.

There is a designated bathing area where people are able to bathe in the holy water.  The whole temple was overlooked by the Sukarno palace at the top of a hill.

Sukarno palace on top of the hill

As an aside: The drive there passed through some jungle area and it definitely reminded me of Avatar.

Avatar!

The water in the temple looked so cool as it came up from the ground and disturbed the sediment at the bottom of the pool.  It was very mesmerizing to watch."

"We then drove up to Gunung Batur (Mount Batur), which is an absolutely breathtaking part of Bali!  It is a volcano in Central Bali with a huge 10x15km crater.  Inside the crater is the peak of Gunung Batur, an active volcano even today, set beside Danau (lake) Batur.  The view was absolutely unbelievable!

Gunung Batur

Danau Batur

We ate lunch at a nice buffet restaurant right on the edge of the crater, so the patio we ate on had an entirely unobstructed view of Gunung and Danau Batur.

View from our table at lunch - the dark portion of land on the left is the most recent lava flow

It was so picturesque that I was almost convinced that I was simply sitting in front of a backdrop.  UNBELIEVABLE!!  I have never seen anything so incredible."

"Before we ate lunch at this spectacular restaurant, we went to Pura (temple) Ulun Danu Batur to pray.

We were the only ones there and it felt both peaceful and deserted.

It was such a beautiful space, though, and an incredible experience.

I can't wait to see what Bali has to offer next!"

Sunday, July 4, 2010

"Today was my first real day off since my first day in Bali.  I went with six other people on a trip with Danu, our beloved driver.  He first took us to see a Barong performance.  To describe it in its simplest terms, this was a representation of an eternal fight between good and evil.  The Barong (a mythical animal, in this case a lion) represent the good spirit and is the protector of the village

while Rangda (a monster/witch) is the evil spirit.

 

There was a lot of fighting, possession, mythical animals, a royal family, shape-shifting... you know, the usual.  I am very glad I got to see one of these performances."

The Queen and Prince

 In the above picture, the Queen is being possessed by one of Rangda's minions.  This causes her to tie the prince to a tree, allowing Rangda to appear and eat him.

Conflict between Barong and Rangda

Rangda uses her magic to turn the warriors' swords against them

But in the end the Barong steps in to protect their physical bodies

"After the Barong performance, Danu took us to the main course of our trip - the beach at Sanur!!!  Oh my gosh, the beach is so so so incredible!  The sky was the bluest blue and the water was unbelievably warm.  I would equate it to a nice bath, but that would be gross.  This particular beach didn't have any waves, which I found quite pleasing.

 

It is on the East side of the island and in the distance you could just barely make out the island of Lombok.  there were a lot of bits of coral in the water and I think that's what made up most of the sand.  The sand was rather coarse (at least right on the shoreline) and the individual grains were so large that you could tell they were coral and shells, worn down into a shape I can only describe as a circular pyramid.

Closeup of sand

It was so cool!  I'm sunburnt now, but I think it was well worth it.  The ocean!  It was so amazing!  Ahhhhh!"

See, I told you there would be more pictures today.  Remember that you can always click on them to embiggen them (I think).  Thanks for reading!

Bali: Days 4-5

Day 4:

Today's summary is going to be very abbreviated as I didn't have my camera with me to take pictures.

So, in bullet-point form:

• rehearsal in the morning
• lunch
• music and dance presentation in the afternoon by Cudamani musicians and dancers (phenomenal!)
• Kecak with musicians!!!  Kecak (ket-chock, though the last "ck" is more a glottal stop than a "ck", the same goes for the "t" at the end of the first syllable), you see, is a type of stylized chanting in which the cakers (that's chock-ers) are split into three or more sections, each with its own rhythm.  When signaled to do so, all of the members begin to yell "cak!" in their own rhythm, creating a very complex pattern that, well, you have to see it to understand what I'm talking about.  It is far more complex and interesting than I have made it sound.

Day 5:

Oh, crap, it looks like today is just as pictureless.

Today the musicians and dancers switched places and I found myself standing in front of the esteemed Pak Cerita making a fool of myself while trying to learn one of the male dance forms, Baris.  To say that it's one of the more simple dance forms does not, in fact, mean that it isn't tiring.  It was like doing slow-motion squats for a continuous 20 minutes!  My legs were like jelly and they ached for days!  Of course, one also has to keep one's shoulders up, chest out, arms up, and somehow through all of this I was supposed to have the face of a warrior.  Mine was more like the face of someone who couldn't breathe and was about to collapse, but that's a minor detail.  I have so much more respect for the dancers now after learning firsthand how difficult and tiring the dances are.  They must have legs of steel!

Ok, so I know this post was a bit lacking, but trust me, the next one is going to be packed with pictures and fun adventures, so check back tomorrow, ok?  It's going to be beautiful (I hope).

Bali: Days 2-3

Day 2:

Today was our first day of rehearsals for the Summer Institute.  We rehearse from 9am-noon and then from 1-4pm.  Of course, there are breaks in there and an extended lunch time came to be the norm.  There is a concept here which is referred to as "Bali time".  This essentially means that things happen when they happen and one should neither expect something to happen when scheduled nor get upset when it doesn't.  So, in theory we rehearsed for the times stated above, but in reality we rehearsed when we rehearsed.

Before rehearsal we had to have a prayer ceremony at the Pondok, which was essentially our home base (it was the home of the program directors), as a group asking the gods (Bali, if you weren't aware, is a Hindu island) for their blessing as we began our studies.

The Pondok

From my journal: "Oh my god sitting cross-legged for that long was the most painful thing I have ever done!"  It's true, I'm not the most flexible person on the planet.  In all honestly, I don't think I could ever sit cross-legged.  Spending the next three weeks sitting on the ground for hours a day was definitely going to be a challenge for me.

When the prayer service ended, the musicians in the institute (there were others studying dance) walked to the sanggar (which literally translates as a studio - it's where the gamelan was housed) to begin rehearsals.  The "sanggar" was in the housing compound of the Cudamani director, Pak Dewa Berata.  In Bali, several related families all live together in one large compound, and share a lot of community space.  We were, quite literally, rehearsing within the private home of several families.  The space where we rehearsed had walls on three sides with a thatched roof, while the fourth wall looked out into the open air, towards the temple.

The Sanggar on a rainy day, facing the temple

Much of Balinese architecture consists of these bales - roofed platforms missing one or all of its walls.  In fact, in several of the homes that I visited, only the bedrooms could actually have been considered "indoors", while the rest of the house was very much a part of the outside world.

We played on a very beautiful gamelan semarandana, which is a new type of gamelan instrument set that combines the tuning systems of two separate gamelans, allowing the performers to play a wider range of old repertoire as well as allowing modern composers to experiment with different modes and modulations which would not have been possible without the inclusion of both tuning systems (don't worry if that didn't make sense.  It was just exciting that I got to play one).

Hand-carved

The gongs - the heart of the ensemble

Half of the gamelan - reyong along right side of picture

Once rehearsal was over for the day, I went to take a nap in my room before heading out to find dinner.  I ended up going to bed at 8pm.  From the journal: "Is every day going to be this exhausting?"

Day 3:

Much like the previous day, we spent the morning finishing the first piece we were learning.  In Bali, music isn't written down as it is in the Western Classical tradition.  It is all taught by rote and performed from memory.  We were all so lucky to be studying with the Balinese musicians and there were enough of the present that we practically got to study one on one with some of the most accomplished musicians in Bali.  I still can't get over how incredible the opportunity was.

After lunch (and I must say, our lunches were delicious!  Home cooked Balinese food every single day for lunch.  It couldn't have gotten any better than that.  I really, really miss the food there.) we had a lesson on kendang, which is the drum played in a gamelan as well as a lesson on reyong.

Lunch!

Kendang

The reyong is a bit hard to describe - it's a series of tuned pots (sometimes called knob-gongs) that are suspended upside down (so the opening faces down) in a frame.  Four people play this instrument at once, each with two pangguls (mallets).  Here's a picture if it helps:

Reyong - also see picture from Day 2 for view from above

It is, from my experience, the hardest gamelan instrument to play, yet it looks so deceptively simple.  I really struggled with that one, but the guys (our teachers) were so patient and helpful.  I can't thank them enough for their patience (and they enjoyed laughing at us, too).

More to come!

Bali: The Beginning

In two days I am driving to North Dakota to spend a week at my cabin and celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary.  As I will once again be removed from any internet connections, I have decided to regale you all with a series of posts about my time in Bali that will be able to provide blog fodder while I'm gone and allow me to document my trip in more detail.  I hope you don't mind.  Feel free to simply scroll through and look at pictures if you'd rather do that.

I have to say, I was very nervous about my flights to Bali.  I had never been out of the United States and had no idea what to expect in terms of Customs, Immigration, obtaining a Visa, or anything else related to international travel that shouldn't have made me nervous.  Of course, everything was just fine and I made it to Bali as expected, but the stress was there.  Upon arrival I was greeted by nice men who helped me through Customs and then demanded 100,000 rupiah for their efforts (that's about US $10, but it's also a LOT of money in Bali).  I'm glad I got ripped off right at the beginning of my trip so I could get it over with and move on.

Day 0:

 I didn't arrive at my hotel until 1:30am, but it was still absolutely gorgeous!

It looked even better in the morning, too.

I really considered my hotel to be a little haven off from what I began to consider the "other" Bali, which one was able to find at the end of the driveway - crumbling sidewalks, stray dogs, congested roads, etc.  This was a hidden gem, unseen from the road and unexpected when looking at its surroundings.  From the journal:  "The rain is falling harder now and I have chosen to sit and listen to the sound of the rain on the palm trees, with birds conversing in the background as a stream noisily tumbles its way past the balcony.  I am certain I could sit here forever and be at peace."

I did eventually leave the hotel and promptly got lost for two hours wandering the streets of Pengosekan and Ubud.  On that first day, I also saw a mindblowing gamelan performance and on the way stopped at the Ubud market across the street from the Water Palace.  The market was a bit overwhelming, but it was exciting to simply throw my whole self into it to see how I fared.  With my minimal Indonesian I was able to come out with some proper temple attire and a better ability to haggle.  That was, as it turns out, my one and only time at the Ubud market.

Day 1:

This was the first day of the Cudamani Summer Institute and I finally met all of the people I would be spending the next three weeks with.  I could not believe that I was meeting some of the most incredible, amazing and groundbreaking musicians, dancers, and choreographers in Bali and I was so humbled that they were willing to put in the time and dedication towards teaching foreigners their arts.

We didn't have rehearsal that day because we loaded onto a bus and drove down to Denpasar to see the Bali Arts Festival (or PKB - Pesta Kesenian Bali), as the Cudamani (pronounced soo-da-ma-ni) girls' gamelan was performing. 

This was a really important event because until only recently, women weren't allowed to play gamelan.  Several women's groups have been organized in Bali in the past couple of decades, but as far as I know this girl's ensemble is one of the few (if not the only) gamelan made up of girls and not grown women.  This was also, if I remember correctly, the first time they had been invited to perform at this island-wide event, so it was an absolutely honor for them to perform and I was so excited that I had the opportunity to be there.

Performance venue - seriously

Their performance was absolutely incredible and they all looked unbelievable in their tailor-made, hand-painted costumes.  

Pre-performance picture

I couldn't believe all the work that went into preparing for this performance and I felt so proud of all of them as I listened to them perform.  Two of the three pieces they performed were new compositions, and two of them also featured dancers.  Unbelievable!  (This word is going to pop up a lot in my posts.)  

 

I should mention that somehow we found ourselves sitting in the front two rows of a huge sea of people.  What an opportunity!

Check back tomorrow for more!

The Perfect Project

Hello everyone!

I'm back from Bali and have a lot to share with you all, but I still have thousands of pictures to sort through before I can put a blog post together, so you'll have to wait a couple more days.  I also have to figure out how to cram three weeks full of amazing experiences into one post, so there may be a series of photo-filled posts.  I hope you don't mind.

Just to give you a little taste of what Bali was like, here is a picture of my view from my hotel balcony:

I didn't mind waking up to see that every morning one bit.  I loved sitting out there in the early morning as the sun rose and shone over the rice fields.  I was in a corner room and looking out the front windows I saw what you see above, and through the other windows I saw rice fields:

I couldn't believe how verdant everything was.  I didn't tweak the color on any of these pictures and I can't get over how green everything was - and I'm colorblind!  Absolutely unbelievable.

So that's a little taste, with plenty more to come.

For now I have some knitting to show you.  After all, I had to have something to do on my 30-hour trips there and back.

I started with perhaps the most unbelievable yarn ever made.  This is Handmaiden Fine Yarn's 2-ply Cashmere, which actually looks like they don't carry it anymore, which is a shame.  It is the softest yarn I've ever felt (100% cashmere will do that), with a very pleasant spring and a halo that makes me giddy every time I see it.  It's a heavier laceweight and, if you haven't reached this conclusion yet, I love everything about it.  The color is gorgeous, too and although it appears as a solid, when you look up close you can see there there are very subtle changes in shading, which makes it that much more fascinating.  This is, hands down, the most pleasing yarn I have ever knit with.  I have to thank the wonderful Joan for sending this to me as a gift back in September.  Thanks, Joan!

(As an aside, she's having a stash sale right now and I can't even fathom the unbelievable things she's going to be selling, so check out her blog and be sure not to miss this event).

Such an unbelievable yarn had to be paired with an equally wonderful pattern and I knew just the one.

I've had my eye on the Aeolian Shawl ever since it was published in Knitty.com in the Spring of '09.  It is such a gorgeous and intriguing design, I knew instantly that I had to make it.  When I was planning what knitting to bring with me on my trip, I knew that I wanted it to be lace so that it wouldn't take up space in my luggage with the added benefit that a more complicated pattern would keep me interested and occupied during my long flights.

By the time I had reached Bali, I had finished knitting the smaller Yucca charts.  The smaller size called for four repeats of this pattern, while the larger size called for 12.  I did 6 because my yardage was in between these two sizes and I wanted to use as much of this yarn as possible.  I also chose not to include the beads because beads on an airplane didn't seem like a good idea, nor did a super pointy steel crochet hook...

While I was in Bali I didn't knit very much (which isn't surprising - there was so much else to do in Bali and I can knit at home whenever I want).  I also ran into a bit of an issue with the charts and had to wait a week until I was able to find an internet cafe in the nearby city to send a message to my sister and ask for her help.  I finally figured out what I was doing wrong a couple of days later with the help of Ravelry.  You see, there is both a k2tog and a k3tog, as well as ssk and sssk.  In the charts, the symbols used for each pair is the same aside from the fact that the triple decreases were in bold.  Silly me, I missed that very tiny difference in the symbols.

Once I got that figured out I was able to knit through the first transition chart, the Agave chart, and the final Agave chart.  (The small size only uses the transition and final Agave charts, but I threw in one repeat of the Agave chart for good measure).  I have to say, I'm not sure what the whole fuss about nupps is.  I didn't find them at all difficult or frustrating and I don't think they slowed down my pace any significant amount.  I'm sure that having to do thousands of them would be a bit tedious, but so far I've done less than 100.  No problems so far.

It's not in this picture, but I've completed the third nupp row and that means that I can now begin the edging.  This by no means signifies that I am almost done with the shawl - it is noted that the small size uses about 65% of the total yarn just for the edging.

I could have gotten a good portion of this done on my trip home, but I actually didn't do any knitting on the trip home!  I know!  I couldn't believe it either.  7 hours from Bali to Japan.  A 9 hours layover in Osaka.  11 hours from Japan to Seattle.  4 hours from Seattle to Minneapolis.  ...and no knitting.  I don't even have an excuse either, other than the fact that I spent most of the time trying to sleep.  That and the fact that the edging of this shawl requires one to juggle four different charts at any given time and that seemed a bit excessive for airplane knitting.

Once I get settled in at home again and take care of everything that has popped up while I've been gone, I hope to settle in with this shawl once again to get the rest of it finished up.  I'm sure it is going to be absolutely stunning when it's all finished and blocked.

Stay tuned for tales from Bali!  I have to get something written up in the next couple of days because on Saturday I head up to my cabin for a week and will once again be away from the internet.  Yes, more travel (and knitting time?).

(Also, I have to say, when I got back from Bali I had over 550 blog posts to read and as of right now, less than 48 hours since I returned, I have read them ALL.  No "mark as read" for me, no siree.  I didn't comment on very many though, sorry.)