Topeng (Mask Making)

For our thematic seminar last week we all went to a topeng (or mask maker). Balinese Topeng is unique in that the carvers hold the mask with their feet while they work on it.

If the mask is being made for spiritual/religious reasons there is a whole process of purifying the mask. However, after all of the purifying the mask is still dirty because the artist used his feet to create it. 

The head is the most sacred (that is why they put things on their heads)

head to the waist is mid ground 

and

From the waist down is considered to be impure 

therefore, extra purification must be performed to clean the mask to make it sacred.

The thought is that the mask is already inside of the wood and the artist is to coax it out.

Mask making is very physically strenuous, it involves lots of axe hacking and chisel chipping.

Once the artist have finished shaping the mask 10 coats of white paint are applied, then each color is applied multiple times. when the mask is finished there will be a total of 40 coats of paint.

Each mask is very expressive and the actor who is wearing it becomes very animated.

Whether it be serious, funny, scary, scared, king, queen, leaf, monster, snake, fool, anything. 

The artist above is being bashful and embarrassed. Very cute and funny.

The Program Center

The program center is located in Bedulu about 20 mins from Ubud. 

Ubud is a pretty touristy town, so when any of us are feeling overwhelmed we can catch a bemo and go into Ubud for something Ameican to keep us sane.

It i actually Pak Gede's house that he lets us use. Needless to say it is huge and beautiful. 

Above is the view from our classroom

There are endless rooms and gardens in the PC. everyday the Ibus (women) sweep up all of the leaves and flowers that have fallen in the night and make offerings out of them.

Pak Gede is a saint and will do anything for us! he has gone on multiple Bintang runs for us as well as feed us, and provide endless supplies of tea and coffee to keep us going. 

 Here are some of my fellow classmates enjoying some free wifi time to skype and facebook some friends and maybe do some homework

SNAIL!!

Aries Wedding

One of our language teachers, Aries, got married on friday, and was nice enough to invite all of us white Americans!

She and her, now husband, are of Chinese decent so they had a traditional Chinese wedding (not balinese).

Not sure what this means, but there were many different ceremonies which included kneeling, holding incense, standing up, lifing incense in the air, taking off shoes, putting shoes back on, eating, drinking, wearing sweltering kabayas and sarongs again, eating some more, walking to different temples.

Aries looked beautiful and we all felt very much like we were in the indonesian version of wedding crashers....

Shout out to Jennifer Farina if she is following! the bride wore loubies...

Pretty Sarongs!

Safe to say it was a long day...

Dede enjoying some yummy reception food! What a cutie. 

The Monkey Forest

On Saturday, our first free day, we were free to roam! I few of us went to the monkey forest.

The monkey forest is a place where you pay $2 and walk around and play with dozens of monkeys. You can feed them bananas, or just sit down and let them crawl onto your lap.

There are tons of baby monkeys clinging to their mothers and monkeys just laying in the middle of the path.

My skirt looked tasty to a monkey and we played a little game of tug a war after he tried to eat the sequins sewn on it.

Before you enter you are encouraged to keep a close eye on your belongings because the monkeys will try to steal your things in search of food.

apparently I was not being careful enough because I got ambushed! A monkey jumped on my back and stole a shirt out of my bag and proceeded to climb a tree and try to eat it.

I bought some bananas to bribe the monkey to get my shirt back. Once all the monkeys saw that I had bananas they decided to attack! Monkeys were jumping on my back, tugging on my skirt, and pulling on the bag that held the bananas.

Finally I got my shirt back after being robbed of all my bananas and leapt on multiple times. 

Lesson of the day....monkeys are cute until they know you have food or edible shirts.

The Climb

 Climbing to the top of a mountain to see the temple on the hill, Lempuyang, In full traditional grab.

This is not as easy as it sounds. We climbed over 2,000 stairs in three layers of the least breathable fabric in the entire world.

There are four parts Pakaian adar (I think I spelled that right)
1. Sarong, around the waist
2. Streples, a corset that holds the sarong in place and suffocates you
3. Kabaya, a fancy shirt with long sleeves made from cotton, silk, or any other unbreathable fabric
4. A sash, (I forget what its called) that goes around your waist over the kabaya.

 We where sweating profusely after just 20 minutes of walking. Hopefully we didn't offend anyone with our short sarongs. 

 

After what felt like a million steps we made it half way to this amazing view!

As we got closer to the top we started seeing lots of monkeys! They were slightly malicious, we had to beat some of them back with sticks so they wouldn't steal our cameras or water bottles.

 WE MADE IT!!!

Once we made it to the top we partook in a hindu prayer with offerings and incense.

BuAri prepared the offerings while we kneeled and prayed

afterwards we were free to walk around and enjoy the view

 Fleeing monkey!

 After a long hike down and many shaking legs later we made it down

Needless to say it was a rough decent.

BEMO

 Public transportation in Bali is crazy! There are taxis (car and motorbikes) and the Bemo

The Bemo is the cheapest way to travel. A 20 minute trip will only cost about 5 cents.

The Bemo is just a bus with length way benches and a door that is always open

Since the only thing that matters in Bali is money the Bemo drivers do not care how many people are in their bemo. to the there is always room for more. 

Also you can bargain for the price of the Bemo. Being white Americans the drivers think they can rip us off, however, we have been taught in the ways of Bemo bargaining. They are all always surprised when we bargain in bahasa indonesian. 

We have had many interesting excursions in the Bemos. We had to get from our orientation (puri Kargangasem) to the program center (Bedulu, near ubud) using the Bemo system. It was about a two hour trip. One man jumped into our moving bemo to offer us a ride to Ubud...sometimes looking lost and being very american has its perks.

A day at the beach

After a long week of intensive studying we went on a well deserved trip to the beach. It was a bit cloudy, but still HOT and the water felt great!

This beach was one of the imported beaches with white sand. We were very touristy and got coconut water out of real live coconuts!!

We did, however, have to practice our speeches we were going to perform in front of our families the next day. Completely in Bahasa Indonesian!

After practicing I went for a little beach stroll. The boats above are ocean fishing boats 

Below are the remnants of an offering. Balinese are very spiritual people and are constantly preparing offerings for their ancestors or to keep demons away.

Left over fish from a beach cookout!

Cool breaking waves.