Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 6

Published on the CU Independent 11/2/09: http://cuindependent.com/2009/11/02/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-6/

Learning to live with little technology


Entertainment has a completely new meaning. In Bali, I don’t have any of the old forms of amusement I used to rely on so heavily in Boulder. Instead of electronics, I’ve been relying on traditions.

There are only three movie theaters in Bali, or so I’m told. I haven’t seen any of them yet, and I hear they’re not worth checking out, anyway. You can usually find the pirated version of the new releases in a store before the movie hits the theaters.

Internet is scarce and slow. Instead of spending 20 hours a week (or more) glued to Facebook, news and photo sites like I was back in Boulder, now I only check my email every few days when I have enough energy to take the 15-minute bus ride into Ubud.

My home-stay family has a TV, but my language skills are lacking, so I find it hard to watch the romance hospital dramas (a far cry from “Grey’s Anatomy,” which I hate to admit I miss terribly). My home-stay family doesn’t watch very much TV, anyway.

Bars don’t really exist in the parts of Bali I’ve seen. There are restaurants where you can get drinks, but I have yet to find a bar to go relax and grab a beer. I went from spending two nights a week in bars in Boulder—Monday night at Conor O’Neill’s for trivia and Southern Sun on Thursdays for taco night—to having alcohol on special nights where we decide to splurge and stay out until 9:30 on Fridays. I’m almost always in bed by 10 p.m.

So instead of spending my time glued in front of electronics or spending way too much money on a social life in Boulder, I spend time at home, at a traditional performance or enjoying nature in Bali.

My home-stay ibu (mother) has started to teach me how to play cards. The cards are completely different from the deck I’m familiar with, but the concepts are usually the same; find four matching sets of three before everyone else, and so on. Dominoes are also popular. I find myself playing cards with my home-stay ibu for hours. It’s perfect for the language barrier—it gives us something to do, and we don’t have to talk if we’re too exhausted from trying to use exaggerated hand gestures.

Bali is famous for its dances and performances. For Halloween, instead of dressing up and trick-or-treating, we put on our traditional Balinese clothing and attended a performance in one of the many temples in our town. We watched the dancers in all their glamour, listened to the live music and watched the shadow-puppet play.

The performance had nothing to do with the fact that it was Halloween; we didn’t even realize it was Halloween. Dances and performances happen regularly; you can find at least one a night.

The landscape of Bali is amazing. Space that isn’t taken up by the scattered towns is filled with green rice terraces, I can walk into a tropical rainforest five minutes away from my house. And my favorite, Monkey Forest. There, I could pay the equivalent of 60 cents and watch tourists get bombarded by very intelligent macaques who won’t leave them alone until they get a treat. I could spend hours there. And I did, until I got bit by one of the little jerks (a macaque, not a tourist), and had to get five rabies shots over the course of the next three weeks. I haven’t been brave enough to go back since then.

I do miss being able to switch on a computer, being able to watch TV, Facebook stalking all of my high school classmates I don’t like anymore and wasting far too much time on YouTube, but hopefully I’ll still be able to appreciate the small things, like the value of a deck of cards, when I go back to Boulder.

Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 5

The 5th installment of my Bali adventure, found on the CUIndependent.com
http://cuindependent.com/2009/10/27/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-5/

Opinion: Transportation has never been so interesting

By Stephanie Davis on October 27, 2009

I don’t remember the last time I wore a seat belt. It may have actually been on the airplane on my way to Bali. And there have never been so many times in my life I’ve sat in a car and thought, “Oh my God, I am going to die.”

The roads here in Bali seem like some sort of contemporary artwork – confusing and busy for those that don’t know them, but make perfect sense to those who do. There are very few dotted lines or straight lines going down the middle telling drivers what side of the road to stay on, and even when there are, they’re not followed. I’ve counted more times that drivers hang out right over the lines than when they’ve been in an actual lane.

Introducing the new mini-van: Since many families cannot afford cars, the main mode of transportation here is the motor bike. I’ve actually seen five people on one motor bike at one point — Dad driving, son standing between his legs in the front, mom behind dad with one child on her lap and one in a sling on her side.

On the day of a major festival this week, I was dressed in my Pakian Adat (traditional clothing consisting of a nice top, sash around the waste and movement-constricting sarong), sitting side-saddle on a motorbike balancing offerings to take to the temple on my lap. I was behind my host-sister (her 4-year-old son between her legs, of course), none of us wearing helmets. “Oh my God, I am going to die.”

Thankfully I made it the two blocks without incident, but I was practically whimpering the whole way. But shhh, this is violation to a waiver I signed at the beginning of the semester saying I wouldn’t ride side-saddle or without a helmet, so don’t tell anyone.

As one of the major ways students get around, we catch a ride on the local bemo routes. The brightly colored orange and turquoise mini-buses have routes all over Bali. For about 30 cents, we can get over to Ubud, the town 15 minutes away with all the food and Internet spots we cling to so dearly.

In a sense, this isn’t too different from jumping on the Skip or Hop back home. The part that makes the bemo ride so fun, however, is seeing how many people we can cram into one vehicle. Since the driver relies on the fares from his occupants, he (and yes, always a he, transportation is one of the jobs women here are discouraged from having) wants to get as many people on his bus as possible.

I had no idea you could fit 16 people into a vehicle the size of a minivan. It becomes almost a game, seeing where we can fit that one extra person and the giant bag of groceries they’re carrying. By the time I get off on a lot of those rides, I’ve made one more Balinese friend that I’ll probably never see again.

Unfortunately, the busy roads here are far from safe. Within the first week of my stay in Bali, one of our teachers lost his wife in a motor bike accident. Last week, another one of my teachers was in a motor bike accident that thankfully destroyed her bike rather than her, but she has a few scrapes and bruises that might be around for a while.

I haven’t had the chance to drive in almost two months now, and I miss it quite a bit. To get my mind off things in Boulder, I would hop in my car for a ride in the mountains. When I go home and have the chance to do so again, you can bet the first thing I’m going to do is put on the good ol’ seat belt.

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.

Life in a new culture: Bali, part 4

My latest installment of my Bali adventure, found on CU Independent.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/10/12/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-4/

Life in a new culture: Bali, part 4

Opinion: Bali is where American pop music comes to die

By Stephanie Davis on October 12, 2009

The opinions represented in this article do not necessarily represent those of the staff of CUIndependent.com nor any of its sponsors.

Upon arrival three weeks ago, I was greeted in our transport by 90s trashy dance songs that crawled out here to Bali for another year of glory (or 10, since that seems to be how far behind they are in the music scene) before getting buried in a hole, hopefully to be forgotten for the rest of eternity.

And yes, I realize some of the bands I mention may or may not be American, but they have all been popular in America at one point or another.

In Bali, the large Hindu population believes in reincarnation, so moving from this life to the next is very sacred and important. Out of the numerous rituals here, cremation is the most celebrated. Our group of 13 students was very grateful when we were invited within our first week here to attend one. Many of us were nervous, and some had never been to a funeral before.

On the way to the cremation, to lighten the mood, Madonna kept us company, serenading us with “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” closely followed by “Like a Virgin,” as we rode along the rice terraces on the bumpiest roads I’ve ever been on. Our drivers were quite proud of their pirated cassette tape, asking us in broken English, “You like Madonna?” When I think funerals, I tend to play Wagner in my head as I go along with the flow, but I couldn’t seem to get “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time,” out of my head as I watched this procession.

Another ritual here in Bali is the tooth-filing ceremony, where young adults have six of their teeth filed down, which symbolizes control over greed, lust, anger, intoxication, confusion and jealousy. This ceremony makes prom look cheap. Then again, I don’t have much of a comparison, since my high school prom was held in an old gymnasium that had to be quarantined for a few weeks because of a worms problem, to give you an idea of our funding.

Of course, a few of my classmates and I weren’t disappointed by our soundtrack as we drove to the ceremony. We had the pleasure of sitting in the car with our middle-aged language instructor as he blasted rap music. He sat in front, smiling in his own world, bobbing his head to the beat of the music, as a few of us tried, and failed, to learn simple phrases like “Saya tinggal di Kerambitan,” which, in Indonesian, means, “I am staying in Kerambitan.” Our attempts to learn the Indonesian phrases were drowned out by, “My neck, my back / Lick my p—- and my crack.”

Lady Gaga, as much as I hate to admit I like you, judging by the music trends here, you’re the next to go. I think “Poker Face” is the only song from this decade I have heard since I landed.

However, to make up for the abysmal pop music that we’ve grown quite fond of again, Bali has a unique style of their own music, gamelan. Consisting of drums, bamboo xylophones, flutes and other instruments, the music sounds completely disorganized until you really stop to listen to it. Not following the 8-note musical scale on which most music is written, it took me a few days to realize that the music wasn’t just out of tune.

The gamelan orchestra accompanies many important ceremonies and dances. It can accompany the “wayang,” or shadow puppet performances. It gives the Legong dancer a beat to move to in their traditional Balinese dance.

I have grown used to the sound of the gamelan bands playing late into the night as I fall asleep (sadly no later than 10 p.m. these days—what kind of college student does that make me?). Even though I thought gamelan bands sounded like nails on a chalkboard when I first got here, since then I’ve found them to be as comforting as the bad 90s music we get treated to.

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.

Bapak and Ibu

I spent the last week in Bali in a small village called Munduk Pakel. The top is of the program director's mother as she looks on as a wayang (shadow puppet) crew sets up for a performance. The second is the program director's father, who is cutting open a young coconut for the juice.

Life in a New Culture: Bali: Part 3

From the CU Independent, published Oct. 5, 2009.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/10/05/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-3/

Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 3

Opinion: Even when everything seems to be going wrong, it's okay

By Stephanie Davis on October 5, 2009

This week, I went from trying to have simple conversations about food and family in a foreign language to trying to describe when, where and by whom I was sexually assaulted.

Now, before I say much more, I need to clarify. It was not rape, or any verbal assault that will leave me scarred for life, but I discovered how much having your breast groped in broad daylight can seriously screw with your sense of security. Especially since it happened in a house down from where I’m living, on a route I walk every day to and from school.

I have been in Bali now for four weeks, and I was finally starting to settle in and feel comfortable in an environment completely different from anything I’ve ever known when this happened.

Since I started planning my semester abroad, it seems like I have had everything go wrong. I had to re-write an application proposal before being accepted because the subject was too touchy. My financial aid hit a roadblock, and I figured it out only a week after I was supposed to have my plane ticket. The price of the ticket went up an extra $500 the day I purchased it.

Upon arriving, I immediately came down with what they call here “Bali Belly.” With the lack of water treatment here, I’m sure it’s easy enough to imagine what that entailed. Within a week I was limping with the first injury of the group, and half a toenail missing. As soon as I figured out how to tame my Bali Belly, I came down with a cold that knocked me out for about a week, and left me stranded at home while my classmates spent the weekend at the beach.

For two weeks, I thought my camera was broken. I’m focusing on photojournalism, and thought I would have to spend my semester in Bali sans camera (thankfully my fantastic photojournalism professor, Kevin Moloney, let me know it was a minor problem and something I was able to fix myself).

It’s amazing how quickly my self-confidence plummeted.

But in the last two days since the incident, I have come to realize something: If there’s a place for everything to go wrong, it’s here in Bali. While I don’t have many resources here, and have to work around a communication barrier, it’s not all that bad.

I am, after all, on a tropical island. My classes are held on a covered porch, with tropical flowers falling constantly from the trees in the landscaped yard into ponds with koi surrounding us. For class, we went to archaeological sites built in the 11th century, and walked back to our school through a tropical rainforest in a downpour. I don’t think I’d ever done something so unique in my life. Granted, this is probably how I caught my cold, but I’m trying to ignore that.

I only live 30 minutes away from the beach, and after living in Colorado my whole life, I think that’s pretty darn nifty.

So when I do start to lose my confidence, I have decided that I am going to remind myself that I just need to open my eyes and look at everything I would miss out on if I shut myself into a shell.

After I was groped, it occurred to me how strong the communities here in Bali are. When I told my home stay, Bapak, what happened, you could see the anger on his face. Not only was it an insult to his hospitality, it was an insult to the community’s honor. Within minutes, the entire banjar, or neighborhood, knew what had happened and vowed they would find the perpetrator. This is not a community you would want to mess with.

After all was said and done, and I visited with neighbors who asked about what happened and wondered if I was OK, I realized how much Indonesian I really did know, and was just too scared to use.

That, and my home stay mother was feeling so bad for me, I had access to hot water for a bath for the first time since I’ve arrived. What more could I have asked for?

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.

Bali, Part 2

My second column from Bali, published September 14, 2009.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/09/14/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-2/

Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 2

Marketplace

By Stephanie Davis on September 14, 2009

For the last week and a half, I have been isolated from the world. I had no phone and no Internet. I went from being addicted to my “Crackberry” (I still carry it in my backpack out of habit) to nothing.

Being in Bali has been a complete 180 of everything I have ever known. The streets are the size of small alleyways. I eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My showers consist of pouring buckets of cold water over my head. Instead of dogs being faithful companions, families keep dogs but do not give them names or show any affection; they’re more like lawn ornaments with heartbeats. Toilet paper is hard to come by. But what strikes me the most is how different it is to shop here.

I have not been to a single store since I have arrived here. Or at least I don’t think I have. A lot of the stores look like a concession stand you would find at a high school gymnasium. Even the cell phones are sold from the small stands.

For the first week, I stayed in the rural village of Kerambitan. There are no restaurants here and the town revolves around the market, where we would go to get an ice cream cone for 4,000 rupiah, or about 40 cents. It isn’t nearly satisfying as Glacier (probably the first place I will have to go when I get back), but for 1/100 of the price, I was willing to deal with that.

The market is lined with stands selling exotic fruit. There is one, the durian, which is about the size of a soccer ball and smells like the dead mouse that’s been ignored in the corner for too long. It’s considered a delicacy here, and has a sweet taste if you can get past the smell. So far, I haven’t been able to manage that. Next to the fruit vendors, women sell palm leaves in different shapes and colors, used in their daily Hindu rituals.

A huge part of Balinese culture is bargaining. They think it’s fun and good for a few laughs. I’m sure even more so for them to watch westerners who have no idea what they’re doing or saying.

Vendors call out, trying to grab the attention of anyone who passes. Sometimes they go as far as literally grabbing. The women rule the marketplace during the day. We are told it is because they are better at bargaining. The men are too soft. They show off their wares, and in the meantime take the time to socialize. I haven’t learned quite enough about the language to figure out what they say.

At night, the market really comes alive. Students go to get drinks and ice cream, and fathers go out for a dinner after work. Lights come on above the food stands, illuminating the streets. The dogs wander around, looking for leftovers. The sound of gamelan troops and roosters fill the air and the smell of cooked chicken is impossible to avoid.

When I come back home, I’m almost afraid malls will intimidate me. I do know, though, that I am looking forward to seeing Pearl Street Mall again and eating Glacier as I watch the people walk by.

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.

Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 1

Every week, the CU Indedpendent is going to feature a column I write from Bali. Here was the first one. Pictures will accompany future posts.

See the column online at: www.cuindependent.com



By Stephanie Davis on August 29, 2009
Last-minute fears and excitement

The opinions represented in this article do not necessarily represent those of the staff of CUIndependent.com nor any of its sponsors.

In less than a week I will learn to say “goodbye” to friends and family and learn to say “hello” in a new language. I will leave the “People’s Republic of Boulder” I have come to love dearly and after 27 hours of travel, arrive in Denpasar, Bali in Indonesia.

As most of my peers return to the routine of classes and studying during the week and parties and football games on the weekends, I’m frantically trying to figure out what else I need to pack before I leave.

I have never had to say goodbye to close friends before. I didn’t have many of those before college, so leaving my hometown was not hard. I said goodbye to my best friend earlier in the week as she left for a different four-lettered island in the Pacific and that was hard enough. Now, on Monday, I have to say goodbye to my partner, my mother, father and brothers and the closest friends I have ever had.

The only language I have studied other than English was Latin nearly two years ago. Needless to say, I don’t think that will be terribly useful where I’m going. Not that I would be able to remember any of it if the need to use it did arise. As a side note, I would highly recommend taking something useful like Spanish. Latin doesn’t get you far.

Now, I am trying to learn to say words as simple as “yes” (ya) and “no” (tidak) in Indonesian. I have no idea how much of the population in Bali understands English. So until I figure that out, I’ll have to simply ask, “Apakah anda dapat berbahasa Inggris?” which translates to “Do you speak English?”

Many incoming freshman will have fears of having to share a dorm bathroom with twenty other girls. I recently found a Facebook group formed by program alums from 11 years ago, and my favorite item on their list of memories was, “You can do your laundry by scrubbing clothes on a rock in a river while ignoring the garbage and turds floating by.” Although the list could be outdated, it sure makes that shared bathroom sound rather appealing.

My biggest fear is the weather. I have never lived outside of Colorado and the idea of being near the ocean for an extended amount of time terrifies me. My luck with weather is far from fair. I went on a mission trip to Arizona planning to work outside. It rained all week. I went to Florida and it hailed on the beach. Both times I went to Galveston, Texas for a family vacation there was a hurricane. There’s no telling what type of bad weather I might bring to this tropical island in a country that’s already prone to natural disasters.

Despite my fear of the bad weather, saying goodbye to all my friends and living in a completely unfamiliar environment, I am expecting my time in Bali to be one of the most amazing experiences I could ever hope for. I have always been interested in cultures different from my own and immersing myself in a new culture that I know little about seems like the best way to discover a new world.

I am looking forward to adjusting to a new lifestyle, where my meals of rice will be consumed in complete silence. I am looking forward for it to be common for complete strangers to ask if I have showered yet that day. I am looking forward to a semester of wearing skirts all the time since it will be immodest for me to wear shorts or anything less than dress pants.

I am looking forward to what I will learn, and the people I will meet, and I can’t wait to tell everyone back home about my experiences as a student abroad.

Contact CU Independent contributor Stephanie Davis at stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.