One week down, ?? to go

Here's a shot of the VSO office staff at the welcome party hosted by Anne Wuijts (towards the back left wearing a purple top) at her house last week.

It’s now Tuesday night, and I’ve just got my back to my homestay on the bicycle that I’ve borrowed from VSO and which I suspect Ujang, the office driver and general Mr. Fix It, spent a portion of his own time at the weekend getting ready for me to use. It’s slightly too small, the saddle is a little too low and it has no mudguards or lights but the most important thing is, the brakes work well !

Yesterday morning we started our language classes and Pak Agung kindly delivered me to IALF (the language school) on the back of his motorbike. The bike gave an ominous “crack” as I sat on the back and I immediately had to get off while the suspension and spokes were checked and I was interrogated about my weight – not a good start ! Anyway, we got going again, and in between hanging on to him as we trundled along (for a brief period going the wrong way against the flow of traffic on the inside lane of the busy dual carriageway Denpasar bypass) and trying to remember the left and right turns, I was delivered to the school with an hour to spare before we started class. On our first day we had a different teacher to our regular one and spent the class dealing with introductions - I am from Ireland, I am living in Sanur, etc. Along the way we are picking up lots of cultural tips – for example, as with most Asian cultures, age brings respect here and it is quite in order to ask people their age without knowing them particularly well, even older women. Marital status is also usually discussed at the first encounter and when asked “are you married”, the answer is either “I’m married already” or “not yet” – you never say “no” !

On Monday afternoon, I tried to make my way back to the office by bemo (requiring two separate trips) but gave up after getting the first bemo in the wrong place and ended up getting a taksi for the last part of the trip – the taksi driver had no idea of where my destination was and had to be gently reminded to turn off the meter after twenty minutes of wandering around. Even still the fare was Rp25,000 (about €1.40) and it was worth it for the air conditioning alone. I picked up my bike and got some directions back to my homestay from Juli, who lives in an enormous house just across the street from me and made my way home from the office withou getting lost (about 20 minutes). Last night (after doing my homework, with plenty of assistance from Pak Agung), I set off to do a practice run for the first part of my trip to school today. It was a good thing I did, as I would have been very late this morning otherwise !

This morning, I left for day two of school after breakfast at about 6.50 am, and arrived at about 7.25 am, having missed one turn and added some extra time to my journey. Tomorrow should be quicker but it’s a bit of a trade off between leaving later, travelling faster and arriving in a lather of sweat, or going earlier and travelling at the same speed as the locals - even at that time of the morning, the heat is approaching 30 degrees and the roads are teeming with traffic, mostly motorbikes. Hardly anyone seems to use pedal cycles here.

Cycling here is an interesting experience, strangely the time when you need to be most careful is when approaching a junction at which you have the right of way. Joining motorbikes just sweep around the corner in a gently merging tide and the continuing traffic slows down and parts to let them in which can be very frustrating on a pedal cycle when you have to sacrifice some hard fought momentum to let a load of motorbikes join in !

Just as I arrived back home this evening (having been at the VSO office after school for more of our induction and some free internet) the heavens opened again and there is now a fabulous thunder and lightning show taking place. Hopefully, this will clear before the morning as I have no way of getting to school other than on my trusty steed ! In fact, I hope it stops even sooner than that so I can head up the road to a local warung for some makan malam (dinner) and maybe a visit to the internet shop to post this update.

Tomorrow, we have a political briefing in the afternoon after language class, which should be interesting. The place is festooned with posters and flags from candidates in the local elections which don’t take place until sometime in April so I’m looking forward to learning more about that.

Finally, this is my host, Bapak Agung, on the left,and his wife Ibu Agung on the right.