Inspirations from a world away

Early mornings and sunrises are by far my favourite moments of being here. I rise to the calm of waking birds and bugs all chiming in on this sunrise orchestra, as the source of all our energy breaks the horizon and fills the landscape with light and humid warmth.

The Yogi's here (Russ and Sven) are often already engulfed in deep long stretches, and surely zenned right out on the sweet, moist morning breeze. These brilliantly lit, sparkling mornings are also my preferred captures of time in photographic moments.

Dewey, shining rainbow like flowers abound all around us; Literally everywhere. Not to mention the hues of green as the shadows recede.

But enough about mornings, teeeheee, Let's talk about what we've been up to. Yesterday was a nice relaxed morning, as are most mornings at our Paradise Palace. We recently decided as a whole to start creating our own meals in the mornings, as our cook Kadek often took a rather "Island time" like attitude in making food. We decided we no longer felt compelled to wait until 2 pm to eat. So Isaac and Kaery (the lovely elven kin that they are) took nourishment duties that morning with unbounded zeal. We were gratefully presented with an abundant pile of pancakes filled with bananas, currents, and fresh young coconut. Topped with a delectable fruit salad, of papaya, coconut, papaya, and lavished with coconut cream.


mmmmmMMMmmmMMmmmmmmm..... So glad we smuggled Canadian Maple Syrup here with us =-)

Russ and I headed out to the Green School for their 3 pm tour, and were left with our mouths a gape at the beauty and ingenuity of such a marvelous and innovative place of learning. Unfortunately, due to a massive Christmas storm, their iconic bamboo bridge was washed out. However the positive side to this was that we were forced to take the breath-taking back route to the school, which led us up and down a tiny winding road (only fit for motorbikes), through Balinese Jungle and over a amazing ravine.

The school is self was unbelievable. Truly the funnest, most creative, innovative, dazzling, "green" school on the planet! Our tour started off on a bit of a scare, as our tour guide Tom began proudly stately how strong bamboo was, the rail of the structure we were standing on gave way and a few people toppled over the edge about four feet to the ground.
Yikes! Luckily no one was badly injured, asides from a scrape or two, and probably bruising later. With sincerest apologies and a thorough examination of all the survivors we began the tour.

Due to the incident that began our tour, Tom first brought us to Green School's Healing Circle. When they began construction, three years ago, they brought in a douser from Australia to find waterways and an appropriate place to dig for a well. Naturally, he found an ideal spot for a well, but the locals were not as easily convinced and protested the well being put in there. So they found another spot, as well as an energy channel convergence. Which the douser stated was an excellent source of energy for healing, and where a gargantuan Record Keeper Smoky Quartz was placed!

AHHHHHHH!!!!! It took quite the restraint not to leap out and hug it in front of everyone on the tour! We walked by the school's aviary, where they were breeding Balinese Starlings (Highly endangered). Its thought that less than twenty of these beautiful white birds are left in the wild. Due mostly to farmers killing them because they eat rice crops, and now that they're endangered, their capture and sale on the black market to bird collectors. The pairs mate for life, and it is estimated that a breeding pair sells for $3000 USD on the black market in Jakarta, and that price doubles every time it you go slightly further East.

As we journeyed on through the jungle maze that is Green School, we witnessed that every classroom was open to the humid tangle of forest air all around us and had its own garden! Literally everything was made of bamboo, from the classroom structure, to the kids' desks! There is garden bounty everywhere! From naturally occurring cocoa, banana, and papaya trees, to intentional corn, tomato, and eggplants.

The school is a fantastical maze of education facilities and tropical Jungle. There is so much more to tell....but Sven has brought out a divine looking breakfast of organic fruit granola, made at Bali Buddha, tropical fruit salad, and a spirulina shake. YUMMMMM!!! I'll upload the Green School tour videos we took a little later on.

So much love folks! And thank you so much for taking the time to read!

A Land of Magick and Beauty

Our voyage to Bali was blessed and speedier than we had anticipated. Instead of a 12 hour layover in Taipei we traded up for a two hour wait (though unfortunately forfeiting our vegetarian meals; a small price to pay for a sooner landing in Paradise). Damn I love China Airlines with their cheap flights and awesome veggie meals :)

Our welcome to Paradise was superb! We were met by Sven's friend Budi (Boo-dee), his wife and his brother who whisked us off from Denpasar Airport to the breathtaking mountain, country side of Ubud. Staring out the window with a wicked grin on my face, my eyes were met with every possible art-form. From the beauty Gaia herself created, to wood carvings, spectacular ornately carved doors, sculptures, paintings, jewellery, and everything in between! The scenery of the city melted away into houses and family compounds on what I, at the time, had thought were small back roads. And later found out were just regular roads (they're all really tiny roads).
As we crept closer to Ubud, the scenery finally converged into massive of amounts of green, beautiful ornate entrances to houses, temples, and what seems like infinite rice paddies in every direction, trimmed with jungle.

Our first week here has been amazing! Ripping around on a motorcycle! Which was only $120 bucks for the month! So stoked on that =) Meeting so many amazing people, and seeing this unreal beauty everywhere, that is so integrated into the culture itself. So far we've seen the Bali Bird Park (where I totally ran around picking up feathers of the ground everywhere! And sneaking my hand into habitats grabbing some good ones that caught my eye!) and reptile Park, coming face to face with the dreaded Komodo Dragon (o-my-good-goddesss we saw a DRAGON!!!!! =D!!!)
Met Alex Grey at an amazing party a couple houses down from ours, taken a silver smithing course and made a wicked lotus star ruby ring! Yesterday we went to Lake Batur, a crater lake under neath Mt. batur (a Volcano!!! =) However it was like 2 bucks just to ride around in the area and the pollution and smog was so thick we could barely see the mountain itself. So we opted out waiting for a day of heavy rain to go up again in hopes of a clearer sky and epic photos.
However on the way down back to Ubud we stumbled upon on a agricultural property set up for tourist to see how Cocoa, Coffee, Vanilla, cardamom, pepper, cinnamon and many other spices are grown! We had an amazing time there and sat under a little roof on the terraced hillside trying all there different coffees and teas. Including the incredibly rare Luwuk Coffee; which are coffee berries that are eaten by a civet (super amazing mongoose or weasel like creature that picks and eat the best coffee berries) and passes them through its system. So people wander through the forest picking up civet poop and then roast the coffee beans. It had an interesting earthy flavour ( i wonder why..... =-S) and tasted a lot less acidic than regular coffee.

Isaac and Kaery flew in last night and have joined the crew at our brilliant Palace! And i think today we'll head of to the beach and a long awaited swim in the ocean!

Hope everyone is doing brilliantly where ever you are! So much love friends! And Thanks for reading! <3