Picking the girls up from school

Jan 12, 2011 – Riah's entry

I'm driving from the village of Sayan on the western outskirts of Ubud, Bali, to the village of Sibang Kaja to pick Chloe and Ava up from school. I am not writing and driving, though, because I have drifted in to the Lifestyle of The Rich and Famous and our family has hired Wayan, a personal driver with a car.It was pretty clear after our first drive in Bali that, in spite of having international driver's licenses, Alex and I have no desire to use them. The whole situation on the roads seems like something that would take a lifetime to to understand. First, they use a right hand drive which is confusing in itself, although not a deal breaker. Ultimately it's the rules of the road that are baffling. Cars, motor bikes, bicycles, street vendors wheeling their trolleys, pedestrians and an assortment of farell dogs, chickens and children playing share a road that in Canada would be considered one single lane.

The road to the school takes us down bumpy gravel roads, onto a more flat road (my typing just improved immensely) past rice paddies, through deep jungle ravines, past several markets, and often past a ceremonial procession. It's the courtesy that is so striking. Wayan waits patiently for a truck to make a three point turn, almost anticipating that the driver will need extra space. He slows on a single lane which is hardly wide enough for his car (a Toyota Avanza – seven seat car reserved by Toyota for the Asian markets and only slightly larger than a Pontiac Vibe) and the two men on a motor bike coming from the opposite direction direct him to pass safely. The motor bikes swarm past and he slows to make sure they don't come to harm in the maneuver. And people politely tap oin the horn of the cars as if to say gently “I'm here”

The roads seem to be analogous with the scale of everything here which is smaller than we're used to. The people are short stature (the men are about my height) and the physique tends to be trim and strong. I have seen only a few overweight Balinese and, sadly, mostly these have been young girls. The smallness seems to extend beyond the people to low buildings, narrow roads, small dogs and cast, the smallest full-grown chickens I've seen and small cars. I suppose that it also extends to Bali itself which is 60 by 90 miles and has approximately three million people. So maybe that explains why we in North America tend to be much bigger. Bigger people, bigger cars, bigger houses, even bigger dogs and cats all fit into that massive, relatively uninhabited land mass, particularly in northern Canada where you drive for hours without seeing anyone .

I can imagine when our 6' 4" friend and his 6' 2" teenage son visit they may feel like Gulliver visiting the Lilliputians. The entire scale is just so different. 

Now I'm arriving at Green School to pick up Chloe and Ava and will post these entries when I arrive. We'll let them play for a while and then head home to our house on the side of the river valley and listen to the cacophonous sounds of the wilderness punctuated with motor bikes and even, if we're lucky, a gamelan practice.  Definitely a different world...

"What colour is Bali?

Maia asked this question frequently in the lead up to arriving in Bali. The poignancy particularly struck me  when she asked me this during the drive out of the Northwest Territories. There we were surrounded by whites and grays of winter in the sub arctic thinking about what colour Bali would be. 

A few days after our arrival in Bali  I posed her question back to her a couple of days ago and her answer was a very certain “GREEN!” She's so right. This inland area that we're living in is most certainly green. There are trees everywhere, the rocks are covered in lichen and moss, there are green vines hanging off the houses and from the trees, ferns thrust out of the rockery, long lush ivy coil along the sides of the road, and there are the ubiquitous palms and rice paddies to intensify the green.

Maia has started school half days at Green School. Today we dropped her off and left the campus for the morning. She had packed her own lunch last night and proudly placed her lunch containers in the correct basket when she got to her class, which is an open air building constructed out of bamboo poles and thatch. It's near the mud wrestling pit (!) and close to the pig pen and the chicken coop that Chloe's class pulled down in preparation for rebuilding a new one. There is a distinct barn yard smell in her classroom.  

Maia was happy to see a Spiderman costume in the costume box first thing today so I helped her change into her favourite outfit. When we picked her up at lunch the teachers were delighted with how articulate and engaged she was. And she seemed completely happy too. With the exception of her little face being red as a rose from the heat that we're all still adjusting to, she was very happy and seems quite at home with her role as a school girl. I'm preparing myself for her to ask to stay all day like the other kids, but will wait for her on that one.

Drivers in Bali

We arrived at the airport and were met by a man holding a sign reading "A HOECHSMANN."  He was very polite and gave us bottled water the second we arrived at the car.  Within a few minutes we were on the road and he was handing us his card "Do you need a driver?"

The next day we took a shuttle bus to some near by shops.  The driver of the shuttle also offered to be our driver.  The next day we hired him to take us through the busy streets of South Bali to Sanur for a pre-1st day of school grade 3 beach party.  While at the beach it poured rain.  Nice and cool for a change.

The next day we wanted to get up to to the Green School but our driver from the previous day wasn't available.  He sent his brother instead.  His brother's story was remarkable.

As a young child Jerry had an aptitude for Karate.  By the time he was in high school he was winning tournaments.  At one point near the end of high school he won the Balinese championship and went to Java to compete in the nationals.  Talk was that if he won he would have a fulltime permanent governemnt job (something hard to come by in Bali).  He won.

Regretably, all he got was $25 and a six month wait before he was told there would be no job.

A chinese businessman offered to take Jerry to Tokyo where he could compete professionally.  Needing the money he accepted and ended up working in nightclubs in the equivalent to ultimate fighting (no holds barred, anything goes).  He made lots of money, double pay if he was asked to lose (!).  The only rule was that if someone wanted to stop, all they did was tap the mat twice.

One night his opponent tapped the mat to accept defeat and \jerry didn't notice.  He struck the man again and he died.  The local Japanese mafia was outraged and there was an immediate call for retaliation.    Very soon after a group of men beat him up and threw him in a dumpster.  He knew he didn't have long to live if he stayed in Japan.    He moved back to Bali and has been trying to lose his muscle mass (women here don't like muscular men).  He's trying to settle down and go legit.  Even offers to be a bouncer at a night club are too much for him - he doesn't want to go back to fighting.

Jerry dropped us off at our new house up on the Sayan ridge.  We are now in the land of rice paddies and jungles.  Hot and sticky.  I have a video of the kids playing at the house I will try and post on youtube.  Also here is a picture of one of the rice paddies.
 

Alex's Blog: Hong Kong to Nusa Dua, Bali

Asia was both familiar and completely foreign.  In Hong kong I felt like I had taken a strange turn in Richmond and found the new even more asian area.  The airport was huge!  The food was very Chinese.  One of the few perks of travelling with kids was that the airport staff kept finding us courtesy lines to pass the enormous cues of people.

Cathay Pacific did a great job getting us to Bali.  What an amazing airline.  The kids were given travel bags with games and toys in them.  The food was incredible.  I watched the movie “Inception” and since then dreaming has been very weird.  As we touched down in Bali, we watched the under the plane camera view as the wheels struck the runway.

After getting past customs and the big “DRUG SMUGGLING LEADS TO THE DEATH PENALTY” sign we were in Bali.   Yee haw!!  The 30 degrees plus humidity hit us like a warm hug from a large long lost relative.  Before we could say “Bob's your long lost 300 pound uncle” we were in the resort la la land of Nusa Dua.  The lush and manicured brilliant green gardens, the giant carp in the ponds, the sounds of the beach and the simple life of pool side lounging.  All with a giant heap of jet lag.  Our life in Bali had begun.

Alex's Blog: Sombake to Hong Kong (via Lotus Land)

We woke up New Years Day with a flat car battery (was that an omen?).  In the end it seemed that the flat battery was Murphy's law run backwards: if something already went wrong nothing else will. 

We had a bit of snow on the road between Enterprise, NWT and High Level, Alberta.  It was bad enough in the right hand lane that I probably drove 200 km in the left hand lane which had been cleared by cars coming north.  By the time we got to the Zima turn off the road conditions improved in a big way.  That night we made it all the way to Peace River.

The next day the Gods were smiling on us.  After an hour or two of fog on the road to Valleyview all the roads cleared up completely.  By 2:00 we were leaving Jasper and by 2:00 pacific time we were heading past Valemont BC.   It was at that time that we called our friends on Saltspring and found out that there was a remote chance that we could make the 9:30 ferry. In fact we made that ferry with 360 seconds to spare!  We have a picture of the car on the ferry that I'll try to upload.

Saltspring was a great little rest between our big travel legs.  Chloe and Maia got to play with their Grampa and Gramma.  Riah and I had a beautiful walk in the sunshine after going past Beaver Point Hall where we were married over 15 years ago.  My friend Gary and I took a hike in the snow the next day up on Mt Erskine.  It was like a car wash for the soul.  I did wash the car on the island as well.

Somehow Riah managed to get our Indonesian visas and passports from the Indonesian consulate and return to Saltspring with a rental car.  That car got us to Vancouver the next day and to the airport.  The only hitch the morning of the big flight was going to get Riah's glasses in downtown Vancouver.  For that I sprinted up to the Canada line station and trained up to the TD building in Vancouver.  Up to the 14^th floor; grabbed the glasses; sprinted back to the train and zoomed out to the airport.

We were about to check in when we couldn't find the passports...

Where could they be?  We're they left at the hotel? 

Somehow, they got lost in one of the bags we were going to check.  Relieved, we got through check in and made the 13 hour flight to Hong Kong.

Travelling 2 RICE

So how did we get out of Sombe 'ke? Departure day was 1/1/11. It seemed an apt day to start an adventure. Alex, Chloe, Maia and I left by car Saturday morning. Ava flew out with her Granny and spent several days in Lund, BC making a pottery rendition of the Beatles (was there ever a question?). Thank fully the drive was uneventful (only one minor ding to the windshield), the ice road was in great shape and we stayed in Peace River, 1004 km from home that night.

Sunday dismissed all of my worst fears about the drive. I mean really, it's winter, it's Canada and it's mountains. Anything was possible. But amazingly the roads were bare from Peace River, Alberta to the Tsawassen Ferry Terminal outside of Vancouver. We slept on Saltspring Island on day 2 of the drive! Around Jasper we called a friend on Saltspring Island who told us that there was a 9:35 pm direct ferry. When we gained an hour coming into BC we calculated that we might, just might have exactly enough time. We made it to the ferry 6 minutes before the cut off for ticket sales! The first thing I did when we rolled into the line up was to call and thank two very dear ladies who, during our tearful goodbye Saturday morning, offered prayers to keep us safe on our journey! No easy feat as we'd covered some 1500 km that day.

But really, there's no pleasing everyone; Maia kept asking “are we in Bali yet” and was very put out that we went to the ferry instead of the airport. In fact, every airport we passed through Alberta she asked if that's where the plane to Bali is. When she eventually understood that it would be several days to get to Bali, she demanded to go home.

The concentrated drive meant we could avoid holiday traffic and enjoy a few days on Saltspring Island. It's a special place for all of us because Alex spent a significant portion of his childhood living there, we met and married there and we have great friends and family that still live there. The girls were adored by grandparents for three days, we visited friends, and had some beautiful hikes.

So now we're buzzing toward Hong Kong high over China. Ava pointed out a while ago that we crossed the international Date Line. Chloe asked the flight attendant how long until we land and looked like a deer in headlights when she was told 6 more hours.

The past few days all of us have had moments of being quite edgy (ok, downright cranky, if I'm to be frank). There have been some wrap up stresses and a duanting “to do” list. The list included getting our Indonesian Visas, dealing with Revenue Canada matters, banking, getting International Driver's licenses, getting new glasses (I can finally see!). But it's all behind us now. Maia is sleeping peacefully next to me, Chloe is watching her upteenth movie, Ava is talking to Nana and Alex is in the zone courtesy of Bose noise-cancelling technology. So while we already feel like we're missing out on the fun back home (hanging out with a member of the royal family and such), I'm also pinching myself that this is a moment in my life where a dream is truly coming true; I'm travelling with my family to an exotic place for a specific and purposeful reason. Thanks be!

Leaving ICE:

Leaving is monumental. So many practicalities and subtleties at play going into an 8 month journey. Where to go and how to get there are the relatively easy aspects. Dealing with the house, mail, bills, jobs, school and other practicalities have been more time consuming. But those are just logistical. The more subtle aspects are, in some ways, more significant. Many people ask about our future plans – sometimes subtly and other times bluntly people want to know if they're saying goodbye forever . A few times I heard “are you selling your house” as a euphemism for moving.

In a town where many come and go quickly it's a sensitive matter. People don't want to get their hearts hurt by fly-by-nighters nor do they want to miss out on great friendships . When we first came to town I remember people commonly asking how long we were staying. When I said three years (now 7 years ago) it lead to invitations that wouldn't necessarily have been made had I said we to leave in a year. One funny story; a family new to town was invited to dinner with neighbours. Upon hearing that the family was only planning to stay a year one of the hosts demanded of their spouse to know why they had been invited over. Some people guard their hearts carefully in this way. So I know that our trip has some wondering if we're gone for good.

So we have put our lives in Yellowknife on hold. We found great tenants to sublet our house. Alex is on a leave of absence. The kids are out of school. The pets are in foster care. And I resigned from my job.

Saying goodbye at work was sad. I feel like I've made some great connections with people and, if even only by virtue of proximity, they have been a major part of my life the past 27 months. That departure gave me many treasured moments as it closed a chapter in my personal life as well as, in some ways, that chapter of the organization's development. What a great experience that was.

And saying good bye to friends, really pulls at the heart. To say goodbye to the type of people who give a surprise airport pickup late at night that includes a bag of groceries for the morning. And people who've made gourmet homemade food (homemade paneer, homemade pasta, etc) and invite you over or drop it off for us to enjoy. And the friends who are patient even when you spend insignificant time with them. And people who will rescue one of my children from some sort of jam just as they would their own child. And the people who take your children out to see the wonders of Northern nature that their parents are too chicken to expose them to. And neighbours who drop off little gifts of tomato plants or chocolates “just because.” On and on the list could go. Never feels like it's possible to properly acknowledge these many kindnesses from the people who we live around but we do feel blessed. It makes me wonder if we're completely crazy to leave!