Portrait

I was asked to shoot a simple, timeless black and white portrait of our CU Independent adviser for a gift, so I enlisted the help of Danielle Alberti to help with lighting, and this is what we came up with. We used one speedlight off to her left, and a desk lamp behind her and to the right. Also used a dry erase board as a reflector, but it doesn't seem like that did too much. Yay for improv with cheap lighting! I think the portrait turned out to be beautiful though. Helps that the model is so gorgeous.

Life in a new culture: Bali, part 9

Published on the CU Independent Dec. 7, 2009.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/12/07/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-9/

The time has come where I’m preparing to leave Bali. I’m starting to think about where I should apply for jobs at home, looking for internships and wondering how I’m going to be able to go back to a full load after having so much down time here.

I’m also trying to avoid writing a 30 page paper due this week, so it seemed like a perfect time to wrap up the semester with my last column from abroad. It seemed appropriate, as it usually does to the point of being cliché, to finish up with the 10 things I’m going to miss most about my semester abroad.

So here goes:

1. Having all the time in the world to read. I think I’ve been able to read more this semester than I have in my three-and-a-half years of college. There’s just nothing else to do in the evenings. I’ve read at least 13 books this semester for well over 4,200 pages. Too bad I never do that much reading for any of my classes. My GPA would be amazing if I did.

2. Trying to figure out how to flush some of the toilets. It really is an art form. Some you have to manually flush by pouring buckets of water into the bowl, others just don’t have enough water pressure to do the job and you have to improvise.

3. Not caring about what I look like, or how dirty my clothes are. It’s going to be strange going back and thinking about primping for a night out, or heck, even looking in a mirror before I go to school. A lot of clothing I have here is now stained or ripped, and it’s nice not having to care. Although admittedly, getting out of the hot and humid weather that leaves me feeling—and smelling—like cheese will be nice.

4. The sunsets. I’ve never seen the sky turn so many colors. There are evenings where the sky is a brilliant shade of purple, others it’s bright orange. The ones over the beach are particularly breathtaking.

5. Waking up to the sound of roosters. I’ve grown strangely attached to waking up to the sound of their crowing. I’ve also started to give the roosters in my yard personality types. I was very upset when I walked into my yard and found my favorite rooster dead on the ground.

6. Martabak. I don’t know what martabak is, or how it’s made, but it’s some sort of flat, crispy egg and spinach thing. It’s perhaps one of the most delicious fried foods I’ve ever had, and that’s saying a lot. We would eagerly wait for 5 p.m. every evening, when a man with an adorable grin would come up the street, pushing his stall to his spot on the corner. We would watch him set up and pounce as soon as we could tell he was ready to start taking orders. I think he’s become the unofficial mascot of the semester.

7. Bemo rides. I never thought I would miss being crammed into a 1970s-looking van with 15 other people who had been working all day—all of us having some sort of funky odor. I didn’t realize I would miss it either until I was riding home about a week ago. There was no more space on the seats, so I sat on the steps of the open door. The woman sitting on the bench next to me just put her arm around me for safety without saying a word.

8. All the kids saying “Hello!” really loudly, with giant grins on their faces, and ducking shyly when we say “hello” back. They’re incredibly friendly, and as much as I hate children, I think I’ll even go so far as to say it’s kind of cute. The fun thing is it doesn’t stop with the kids. It seems like everyone here is rather friendly and wants to say “hello” and ask where you’re going.

9. My ibu, or home-stay mother, serving my lunch as soon as I’ve finished my breakfast. “For later,” she would say. On a few days I knew I would be out during lunch, I would throw the rice and noodles she gave me in a sandwich bag and take it to go. If I could pack her in my suitcase and bring her home, I would. And not just for the food, but for the company in general.

10. The people I have met here. It’s going to be strange not living with a family again, or be able to joke about the silly antics of my language teacher. Most of all, though, I will miss the friends here who I wasn’t expecting to become so close to in such a short time. Especially since I wasn’t sure I liked any of them when the semester started.

It’s going to be hard to say good-bye, but it’s definitely time to come home.

Life in a new culture: Bali, part 8

Published on the CU Independent NOv 17, 2009.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/11/17/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-8/


There’s nothing like watching a couple roosters kill each other before eating a nice, healthy meal of grilled chicken. Especially while knowing that only a few yards away, there is still a cockfight going on.

While living in Bali, roosters have become the bane of my existence. It’s impossible to sleep in, with about eight of them crowing in my home-stay family’s yard at the crack of dawn. Five of them are kept in separate bamboo cages, and on several occasions, I’ve thought about liberating them, in hopes they would fly off, far, far away and give me the chance of sleeping in at least once.

Sadly, I know if I were to do this, my home-stay father would probably never speak to me again. This is because for the men in Bali, raising their roosters are their passions, and they’ve paid good money for a strong rooster and their food, usually a mix of rice, corn and beans. Men will sit on street corners and at local warungs (small shops that sell food and act as local hang-outs) with roosters in hand, cradling them and showing off their strength to other rooster lovers.

Eventually, these roosters will end up in the middle of a fighting arena, with thousands of men surrounding them, cheering them on to destroy their opponents.

Traditionally, cockfights in Bali had a religious purpose. The blood spilled was used to pacify spirits and no temple ceremony was complete without the cockfight.

Now, cockfights also used for entertaining up to 6,000 men as they wave around money, calling out their bets and trying to earn a few extra dollars. Three-inch-long knives are tied to the roosters’ talons, and two at a time, the roosters fly at each other as soon as they’re released. Within a matter of seconds, one or both of the roosters are staggering before dropping dead. This goes on all day.

It’s enough to make all the environmentally friendly, vegetarian, pet-loving Boulderites want to buy a ticket to Bali and hold up signs in protest.

However, as gory as the events can be, they’re very good for the local economy. Local food and drink vendors take the opportunity to sell their wares for twice as much as they usually are able to. On the outside of the arena, men (and again, I say men, because the only women there are selling food and drinks, never watching) take time during breaks to buy clothing and other household necessities.

Most importantly, the local banjars, or communities, charge an entry fee to the cockfights. Each man is charged 10.000 rupiah to enter, and the millions of rupiah raised goes back into the community. The money goes into building projects or toward temple ceremonies.

One part of me wants to be horrified at the idea of strapping knives to a fowl’s legs before setting them loose on each other, but the other part of me realizes how important these gatherings are for the community.

One thing I am sure of though is that it’s going to be strange to get a full night’s sleep when I’m back in Boulder. Maybe I’ll find an alarm clock that sounds like a rooster so I can feel like I’ve brought part of Bali with me.

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

Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 7

Published on the CU Independent: http://cuindependent.com/2009/11/09/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-7/

(Thanks, Rebecca, for letting me use the picture)

Opinion: It's the things you wouldn't think about that annoy the most

By Stephanie Davis on November 9, 2009

We are one bowel movement away from being banned from the bathrooms in Bali. In the last week, our group of 13 students has managed to break the toilet in our favorite restaurant, twice.

The Balinese greet each other and ask to be polite, “Sudah mandi?” or in English, “Have you showered yet?” This is because it’s so hot, a shower is a good way to cool off and feel healthy. Our group of students has changed that a bit, and instead asks each other, “How’s your poop?”

We congratulate each other if someone finally passes a poop after five days of going without. After one of these said victories, when one girl couldn’t get the toilet to flush, the girl waiting behind her was so desperate, she begged her to leave her poop in the toilet and said, “It’s okay—I have to go so bad, I’ll just go on top.” Needless to say, this is one of the incidents that broke the toilet.

There is no room to be poop-shy.

These conversations might seem strange to the outsider, but it’s amazing how important the dialogue about our bowel movements has become. The topic comes up more often than sex. This is not because we have way too much time to think of toilet humor, but because this is how we gauge our health in Bali.

In many of the bathrooms, it can be hard to find soap to wash our hands, so we’ve all become addicted to hand sanitizer. Even with the hand sanitizer, we still don’t feel clean.

Our diet here is completely different than what we’re used to in America. The food our home-stay families serve us tends to be very spicy, and three times a day we are served a large mound of rice. The spicy food tends to make things move through our bodies rather quickly, while the rice slows things down. You would think the combination would balance the consistency out, but no. It seems like we are constantly clogged, or far too runny.

Adding to the food problems, we have to be careful about what we eat. There is no water treatment, and one slip-up can leave us feeling runny for a week. Even brushing our teeth takes some thought. One careless morning of sticking the toothbrush under the faucet instead of using bottled water, or eating an apple our home-stay mothers wash with local water can do the trick.

To avoid dehydration when we’re going through these tough times, we’ve taken to drinking a beverage called “Pocari Sweat,” the equivalent of Gatorade and Powerade. Sadly, it doesn’t help as much as we would like.

Most of us arrived with a few doses of antibiotics in hand for traveler’s diarrhea, but we’re told we should only take these pills when we have “three loose bowel movements a day for three days.” That’s a lot of time to wait before we start on these pills that could bring relief, but even the relief doesn’t come for a few days after starting the medicine.

I would have thought that after two months, my body would be adjusted to the new diet and be a little bit more immune to the water after accidental ingestions, but I’m continually disappointed. I’m hoping my body doesn’t need this much adjustment time when I go home.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make an emergency appointment with the toilet.

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.