I stayed out too late last night.  The alarm was hard to take this morning.  But, I managed to get up and get breakfast.  I had signed up for a silver smithing class.  I’ve done a couple of college level courses in metal smithing and the guide book talked about Bali jewelry as if it is unique to this part of the world.  I thought it would be fun to learn some new skills and who doesn’t want some new jewelry?  The class wasn’t that great.  They barely let me do any of the work and the “teacher” kept trying to redesign my work.  The examples of types of things we could make didn’t look unique.  I’ve seen similar jewelry everywhere.  I decided to do a wire work piece since I never did wire work in other classes.  The class cost around $30 which is not a bad deal for a new ring and necklace even if I didn’t learn a life changing new skill.

I went to lunch after the class.  One of the things I like about Ubud is you can get a salad!  There are a lot of healthy restaurants here.  Ubud is like a bunch of people from Boulder created a town in Bali.  There are yoga places, vegetarian restaurants and art shops.  There are more guesthouses than tourists even though it’s a town of tourists and expats.  Most of the restaurants have communal tables that are low to the ground and you sit on cushions around them.  I love these.  I sat at one of those and met a couple expats that are just hanging out in Ubud.  How do people afford to just move to another country for a year or two without having to work?  Obviously, I’m doing it wrong.  Then it started to rain.  I didn’t have my computer or book so I didn’t want to hang out and wait for the rain to stop.  I debated how long to wait and gave up and just started walking in the downpour.  At some point, a nice man gave me his extra umbrella.  I saw a spa and gave him his umbrella back and ducked in for a foot massage.  Massages here are almost as cheap as in Thailand, but not quite as good.  This was a pretty good massage and a great way to wait out the rain.

My hotel here is awesome.  It has two pools, beautiful gardens and the people are nice.  After a little pool time, my friend picked me up and we went to an ashram a little outside of town for a yoga class that a friend of hers recommended.  I haven’t done yoga in years.  One cool thing that happened is when we were sitting the instructor had us lean forward and hold our toes.  My initial thought was, I can’t reach my toes.  My hamstrings are always to tight and after not working out for over 7 months, there’s no way.  I could reach my toes.  I have this feeling that losing so much muscle weight lately is actually like a reset.  I’m thinking that a lot of the stuff I’ve been holding in my muscles just left with the weight loss.  Now I can touch my toes.  I have no idea what I was holding in my hamstrings before, but it doesn’t matter, it’s gone.

The yoga class was in an open air pavilion.  At some point it got so hot that I thought I might die.  Then a minute later it rained and I felt a huge relief.  I hadn’t realized I was feeling the humidity build to the breaking point.  Once it started raining, the humidity in the pavilion went down to something more tolerable.  I’ve been thinking I might want to live in Bali next, but I’m not sure I like humidity enough to be able to live here.  It’s so hot and humid.  We had to ride motorbikes in the rain to dinner and back to Ubud.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore