School week's over, heading for the weekend. Nothing spectacular happened this week, so I'm not gonna tell much about it. Most of the days were quite sunny and it was hard to sit in the class wearing jeans... sweat everywhere, even in places you didn't realize you had those places at all. But after school I headed surfing, Nusa Dua, Balangan and Uluwatu beaches were conquered this week. Best swell was on Tuesday at Uluwatu and there I got to practice my lefties. Also Balangan is left beach and more consistent wave. Unfortunately Uluwatu is now the only beach with waves, so that's where we are going to surf most of the time. Getting better all the time and enjoying every moment...

Yesterday we went to Kuta for the buffet of Sky Garden. It is a night club at nights, but they have this all you can eat -buffet before that. It cost like 50k (4€) and they had all kinds of stuff beginning from salads all the way to the great grill of different BBQ's. One thing about buffets are that it's not a sprint, it is a marathon. Before I started to eat my oversized plate, somehow a good old mate from Finland Tyrä Tynkkynen pop into my mind. Sorry for the finnish now, but I really need to say this correctly: Hiljalleen (jopa ärsyttävän hitaasti) erilaisia päräyttäviä hässäköitä maistellen, nauttien ja fiilistellen jokaista suupalaa. Tyyli toimi ja poika veti pari lautasta mahaan helposti ilman övereitä, teki maistukkaa.

Today was the first workshop day at school. Every thursday we have workshop or excursion related to some course we are taking here. Today we learned how to do different kinds of palm leaf "things". Those things are related to the strong culture of Hinduism, which is the main religion here. At first it was little hard, especially when you are as clumsy as I, you are in trouble. But for my defense, my "things" got the soul and spirit of hard trying without results. It was still a lot of fun to do those and get little more deeper to this Indonesian culture.

For me it is interesting to see how religion affects so strongly here. It plays part like in every social encountering and habit here, so different from Europe and Finland. After the school, I stayed in Denpasar (workshops are in Denpasar campus) with a few class mates and two local students. The local students told us a lot of local stuff and after lunch we tried a local dessert called Pisang Bakri. It is fried banana with cheese, chokolate and ice cream... yes the cheese it's not a mistake. It tasted very weird, but still delicious. Then we went to traditional market to buy local Hindu clothes. It is one part of the workshop to buy these clothes, but we did it couple weeks earlier to get cheaper price. You can imagine when 50 western students go to the market, the prices are gonna get higher. The outfit includes Udeng (hat), Safari (Shirt) and Sarong ("dress"). Well the main picture tells more, so enjoy! We also bought some local snacks from the market. Firstly we tried Durian fruit, which smells and tastes really bad but the locals love it. You should have seen my face when eating it, not coolio but weird enough!

After that we tried chewing areca nut in a betel leaf (Sirih Pinang), just like Madventures told us. It didn't taste so bad and was quite funny feeling in your mouth. Chewing this is traditional thing in Asia especially for the older people, and of course a new experience for me!

This day was a real dive into this culture, big thanks to our local students for teaching us and hope more is coming. Now heading towards this weekend, nothing planned but surfing. Let's hope good swell, Peace out!

Main picture: Johannes and I in a traditional costume
Picture 2: Doing those palm leaf "things"
Picture 3: Smelly durian fruit (it really smells bad!!)
Picture 4: Vivianne chewing Sirih Pinang

Also thanks Johannes for the great pictures!