Saturday, 19 November

Today we visited a family in a village up near Tampaksiring. Out of respect for the family's privacy, I'll call our host Mr. P. It was a wonderful visit. Jake was asleep in the car, and Made told us he would wait with Jake. It became apparent very quickly that we needed Made to facilitate communication. I'm working on my Indonesian, and I know quite a few words, but I definitely cannot hold a conversation with anyone. First I can't construct a sentence, and second I can't separate the words very well when I'm spoken to. I'll get there one day!

We were offered beverages, and introduced to the whole family. I think several children from other families nearby came to visit and see the strangers. Mr. P invited us to see his rice fields, which we gladly accepted. We set out through the village and down the road, across a stream, through a gully and up to emerge right in the middle of the fields. The view was incredible. We asked if this was the rice we had come to see, and were told no. We hiked past two or three fields until we came to one that had corn. There was another with beans and other vegetables, and some kind of flower. It almost looked like impatiens. Here we stopped and he told us that these fields were his, along with several rice fields from there to the palm trees (quite a distance). Mr. P pointed out that the rice and the corn was "not so good" due to lack of rain.

Well, the sky had been looking threatening since we started out, and evening was coming on, so we decided to turn back before things got ugly weather-wise. I'm glad we did, because I had not come prepared for rice field trekking. Instead of wearing my trusty Land's End sport sandals, which strap on securely and have gotten me through several Bali trips, I was wearing slip-ons. And slip I did, several times. We got back to the edge of the fields to head down into the gully, I looked down this tremendously steep path. I had been watching my feet the entire way up, so I hadn't noticed exactly where I was going. What a surprise. I guess another reason I was unaware was because somewhere near the bottom when we were coming in, I got ants on my feet. I didn't know what it was stinging my feet, and I tried to ignore it but my mind started imagining all sorts of unknown jungle bugs that could at that very moment be attaching themselves to my unsuspecting tootsies. I sort of yelped, and I started swatting at my feet, so Mr. P turned around and took me by the wrist and led me the rest of the way. He probably thought I'd slipped.

We returned to the family compound, and took loads of pictures. We were invited to go to the family temple, and during the discussion about appropriate clothing (which we did not have with us), the bottom dropped out of the sky and Mr. P's fields got their rain. I sat down with the kids to show them previews of the pics I had taken, and they were thrilled to see themselves looking back out of that screen. We socialized a while longer; Macaela had an audience in all those kids, and she took full advantage of it. She had them all sitting at her feet while she told stories, sang songs, and acted goofy. She even got an umbrella and did a dance in the rain.