My two favorite things!

I'm sitting outside (at the kitchen counter) on this beautiful Sunday morning feeling well rested. We have had an amazing weekend. Friday night we had drinks with friends, Saturday morning we went for brunch at the cafe right beside our house, then I went to a 90 minute vinyasa flow. We spent the afternoon at the beach and while Michael was surfing, I went for a pedicure at the spa right beside our house. This morning we worked out, ate breakfast at a beach restaurant and stopped by the local farmer's market. Now I'm sitting down to lesson plan...but first I want to blog about my two favorite things: the beach and good food!

First, I want to show you where Canggu (changgu) is, so here is a mini geography lesson! : )

Indonesia is in red. 

Map of Bali highlighting Canggu

And this shows the west side beaches. We live on Jl Pantai Batu Bolong. 

The beach we go to is called Canggu Beach, Batu Bolong, or Old Man's-because of the restaurant. On this map it says Canggu Surfing. Echo Beach and Berawa are right next to us.

One of our favorite places to go for food and drinks is Old Man's. They have great seafood, breakfast and happy hour.

photo from google haha 

View from our picnic table this morning. 

The beach is about a minute scooter ride away or a 10 minute walk. Right now the water is chilly, but it's clean and there's plenty of beach to lay on at low and high tide. Apparently the wet season brings trash up on the west side, so we'll see what happens.

Now let's talk about food! We're living in a tropical climate, so the fruits and veggies are amazing! Eating out is really cheap; entrees are $3-5 US dollars. There are always organic, vegan, raw and gluten free options. Most places have a list of fresh juices: watermelon, pineapple, orange, mango, papaya and banana. And at the markets those fruits are easy to find and inexpensive.

Here are some pictures of this weekend's breakfasts: 

Crate: our favorite breakfast place!

sorry Starbucks and Caribou-Crate might have you beat!

part of the menu

  

breakfast at Old Man's

fresh watermelon juice

papaya, watermelon, pineapple, mango, museli and yogurt!

farmer's market at a local yoga studio

Lucky for me, the lunches at Green School are amazing too! There's also a raw vegan cafe on campus. I've tried their frittata, key lime pie and blueberry cheesecake-all really good! 

Next blogpost: What is our school dress code?? Tropical Professional! : )

And if you suffer from OCD....I apologize for the pictures. There's no way to straighten them!! eek!

A little bit of everything!

We are now in our fourth week in Bali and loving it! We're really enjoying the small beach community where we live called Canggu (pronounced Changgu). It's really laid back and a lot of young expats live in the area.

The weather has been beautiful. It's the dry season, so the high is 80 degrees and the humidity is fairly low. This means less mosquitoes (great) but more snake sightings because their thirsty (eek!). Of course all of this will change in the wet season-we'll see how that goes!

I was going to write about the food tonight, but it deserves it's own post and lots of photos!!

My commute to school is about 11 miles and takes 30-40 minutes on the scooter or "motorbike." I don't have to be at school until 7:45AM (later than I'm used to!) and the kids are at school from 8:15AM-3:15pm. Teachers leave at 4pm. The kids have been great. I have an incredibly diverse group-children from Italy, Norway, Japan, Australia, America, Hungary and Switzerland! It's going to be a fun year!

Michael has been surfing everyday and looking for a job. He's been amazing getting us settled. And I was able to find a really nice yoga studio in Canggu.

The yoga shala at Desa Seni 

That's all for now! I'll update again soon : )

Our New Home!

We found the perfect house!!! 

As you know, when we first got to Bali, we stayed in a place we found on airbnb for 10 days while we looked for a place to rent for the year. Michael did a great job of getting contacts by driving around and looking on airbnb and various facebook groups. Finally we decided to check Craigslist (which is rarely useful in Bali) and we found this gem! It's two bedroom, two bath, and is the perfect location-walking distance to great shops and restaurants, 8 minute walk to the beach, 1 minute motorbike ride. We're also spoiled with an oven, a closed living room and a beautiful yard. We really can't thank God enough for providing a place to live just in the nick of time. 

 Okay, who's coming to visit?? : )

Getting Settled

Hi friends and family! Just wanted to take some time to update y'all on our first week in Bali, Indonesia! Sorry it's wordy tonight!

As you know, I had my first day of orientation on August 1st. The next day, we had informational meeting in the morning, and another fun activity in the afternoon-a Balinese mixed martial arts and yoga practiced in a mud pit! It was a crazy team building activity where we found ourselves wrestling and throwing instructors in the mud, dancing in a circle and doing yoga with a duck on our heads! It was a blast!

a few of the teachers after the mud fun!

The next day we had a morning meeting with our head of school. He is inspirational to any educator who hears him speak and he is so passionate about Green School. While all of these ideas and philosophies are exciting, it can also feel overwhelming in that I will really be pushing myself as a teacher. When we were done, we went for another excursion-this time we rode in the back of a truck to a place where we could climb through Subak tunnels, which is a traditional Balinese irrigation system. At some points it was really scary-you had to completely trust the person in front of you. Afterward, we went to a Hindu temple for a blessing with Ibu Kadek (she takes care of all of the food at school and is like a mom, so it was really special to attend the temple with her.)

After dinner, we hopped back in the truck to head to school. It was pretty dark and I grabbed the railing where a nasty spider was sitting. It bit me! (If you know me, you know I'm terrified of spiders!!) Thank goodness there are rarely deadly poisonous spiders in Bali. It just hurt and my hand went numb for a bit. Don't worry mom and dad, my arm didn't fall off!

Orientation since then has just been lots of programming and curriculum work. Sorry, this paragraph is for my teacher friends : ) I received 3 pieces of good news today.
1. As of right now, I only have 16 students!
2. The library is nice and is fully stocked for guided reading!
3. The other Grade 1 teacher sent me really amazing resources for our thematic units!!
I'm still learning exactly what resources are available. For example, we have math manipulatives even though they are made of plastic, because it was not realistic to make each material. I've learned there are 3 frameworks, proficiency (math and language arts) thematics (taught by me and my Indonesian co-teacher) and experiential (art, music, yoga, PE, etc. taught by specialists).

Okay enough teacher talk. This week, while I have been at work, Michael has been working really hard trying to find us a place to rent for the year and taking care of other errands. I'm really not sure how a new teacher at an international school does everything on top of a busy orientation schedule!

Michael and I keep having to remind each other that we have only been here 6 days! We are so looking forward to this new lifestyle, but we are not there yet! We need to find a place to live first and then we can unpack our things, Michael can find a job, get a surfboard, we can join a church, I can find a yoga studio, and we can spend our weekends on the beach : )

First Day of Orientation!

I had my first day of orientation yesterday, and the experience was so unique and wonderful!

It started with a bike ride that the founder of our school John Hardy mapped out. He called it a "princess ride" but it was a long 30 km ride down the Kintumani volcano that my beach cruiser skills were not quite ready for!! It was a great way to get to know each other, and I can already tell I will be working with a great group of teachers! 

view from the top

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We rode all the way to Green School and when we arrived, we jumped in the spring fed natural swimming pool, followed up by lunch and a campus tour given by the co-founder. As we were walking through, she pointed out the pineapple, papaya, cocoa and bananas. We stopped at the lemongrass to pick it and rub it in our hands-a natural mosquito repellent and of course it smells amazing! She told us the history of the school, the struggles they've had in the past 7 years, and places in the school that are not "green." She showed us the river turbine and solar panels-this will be the first year they are completely off the grid! It was a lot to take in, but I'm so excited to be working here! I can't stop comparing it to a first day at a public school in NC-how would the activities be different, the meetings, the food, the campus tour. It's night and day!

path from Grade 1 to the Heart of School

a meeting area

one of the seating areas in the Heart of School

bamboo and glass table!

quartz 

where they picked the organic lettuce for part of our lunch

the pool beside the river

eating lunch on the bridge-the very first bamboo structure built at Green School