March Update

Selamat tahun baru Bali tahun çaka 1937! 

Last weekend was ogoh-ogoh and nyepi the balinese new year, Friday was ogoh-ogoh: Ogoh-ogoh is always a day before nyepi and it is a big celebration. People create huge statues (kind of like parade floats) which depict religious stories or just show different gods and monsters (caluluk) and carry them around the city in a big parade. This is supposed to draw out all of the ghosts from peoples homes and the will follow the statues to the graveyards where people burn or destroy the statues. 

The biggest ogoh-ogoh statue in my area

some people like to work popular culture into their statues, this demon is using a selfie stick

 The actual parade and events start at night time, and Bali turns into possibly the most crowded place I've ever been since about 80 percent of the island is trying to get to the city center at the same time. 

In the city center there was music, traditional dance and food stalls and at the end of the night the parade turned around and all the statues went to different graveyards where they were burned or destroyed. The next day was Nyepi, the balinese new year. On Nyepi you are supposed to meditate and start the year a new person. To help with this no one in Bali is allowed to leave their homes or use any lights and businesses are shut down only emergency services are left open even the airport is shut down. There are even groups of people who walk around in groups called pecalang who make sure everyone else is inside and keeping their lights off so Bali is essentially shut down for a day. I couldn't see what the city looked like first hand because I wasn't allowed to leave the house but my brothers told be at night time since all lights are turned off the start are amazing so after dark we climbed to the top of their roof

Overall Nyepi and Ogoh-Ogoh were really interesting and I'm glad I got to experience them.

Christmas/New Years update

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everyone, I've been on a break from school so I've been enjoying the festivals and the ceremonies. I also switched families so now I live closer to the center of Denpasar. In Bali since the majority of people are Hindu, Christmas isn't really a big event here. Instead they celebrate Galungan and Kuningan, those are two days where everyone goes and visits their family back in their villages and prays, and when I say everyone I mean everyone. During Galungan when my family left the house to go to their village the streets were almost completely empty. Meanwhile at some temples there are 2 hour lines to get in to the prayer area.

Local temple in my fathers village

Holy Man

One box of offerings that my mother prepared (there were 3 more in the house)

The first of two waiting lines to get into the temple we went to for kuningan 

One of three parking  areas around the temple 

My brothers and I at the very scenic Uluwatu temple for Guningan 

The prayer area in Uluwatu

That's about everything important, I've been mostly getting to know my new family and hanging out with them. I also went to another monkey sanctuary with some of my friends from school and of course more beaches. 

My new monkey friend and I (It wouldn't be a proper blog post without monkey pictures) 

We saw this monkey who had apparently found and was nurturing a kitten instead of a baby monkey

More standard beach pictures 

Balangan Beach

That it for this post I will have another one up as soon as I can.