Gardening is a lot easier with an army of children, and Balinese Cake Lady

Yesterday was not very exciting.  We hired a driver to take us to the Jewlery town.  Most of the places he took us to were HUGE stores, with air conditioning, and prices in american dollars.  These were not the stores we were interested in.  Our favorite one was an artists co-operative  with 49 jewelers.  It wasn't crowded at all.  In fact, when we arrived, they opened up the store for us, and turned on the lights.  Nothing about these other stores was picture worthy, except for how ridiculous they were.

There was no class scheduled for Thursday, so we went to the garden in the afternoon.  To our surprise there were 15-20 kids waiting there.  We thought they might be there for an english lesson, but when we got there they all went over to the garden!  They were so excited about working in the garden!  There were so many of them, that Ilana and I barely had to do any work.

To make things even better, Balinese Cake Lady showed up!  Ilana and I both got one, as did our little helper (pictured on the far right).










After the garden, we went out to dinner with the other volunteers in honor of our "last day" (which it isn't.  We are still in Ubud till Saturday).

I am going to take this time to talk about the Bumi Sehat Youth Center for which we are volunteering.  It is part of the Bumi Sehat organization, which was founded as a health clinic.  The founder of Bumi Sehat is Robin Lim, who was recently awarded Here of The Year by CNN.  The youth center provides free English and computer courses to the youth of the Ubud area.

Volunteering for the youth center has been an incredible experience.  We have been teaching English, and working in the garden with the kids.  Teaching English in this setting is not like a classroom setting at all.  Kids are there voluntarily, and are generally enthusiastic about learning.  Only one time did we have a problem with trouble makers, and it was easily solved, as the trouble maker got up and left.  We don't teach in a class room as most would think of it.  We teach in a small hut that can fit about 12 people comfortably, and there are no walls, so anyone can see in.  This results in other children in the neighborhood seeing us teaching English, and standing next to the hut during class, and some have even joined the class.  Sometimes it feels like we are the entertainment ("Look at the funny westerners!").

Working in the garden with the children has been a joy.  They are super enthusiastic about doing the work, and as soon as you show them how to do something, they will continue to do it, until you tell them to stop.  I have never seen kids so ecstatic about working in a garden!

Bumi Sehat is an amazing organization, and if anyone is looking for a volunteer opportunity, we highly recommend this one!