On my walk back, the teacher offered me a ride on his motorbike and then invited me to a Christmas party in the New Kuning section of Ubud. Forty-five minutes later, bearing crackers and the smoked gouda I bought the day before, I again jumped on the back of his bike and cruised to the residential neighborhood that I never would have seen on my own. Robin Lim, who has run the Healthy Mother Earth Foundation/Yayasan Bumi Sahat birthing clinic in Ubud for over a decade, hosted the party at her traditionally constructed home. The crowd was great: tons of beautiful little kids, pregnant women and young couples, mostly with one western and one Balinese partner. It was a great hippie crowd and conversations in a mix of Indonesian and English segued from the topic of wild encounters at South Indian ashrams to Renaissance fairs in the US to organic farming in Timor Leste and Aceh.
People played music; I chatted in bahasa with a middle-aged Indonesian woman who, clasping my hand, said I reminded her of Princess Diana; a thirteen-year-old searched for unopened presents; it rained a little; and everyone waited for the turkey to finish cooking.
It was a great Christmas day, and I owe a debt of thanks to those there for their generosity and for drawing a stranger into the warmth of their community to celebrate the turning of another year.Below: View from my room in Ubud.
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