Hi there,

well, this past week was superbusy - three new school assignments, one visit of the dean's house, two museum visits, one rafting friday, one party saturday and a lot of surfing of course:)

So more into that - school is actually even more interesting than I originally thought. Each lecturer has naturally different method of teaching, but they are all definitely trying to do their best. We get a lot of useful handouts, that sum up each lecture. I really like history, culture & ethnology class, cause of my humanities background at my home uni, but I also found economy of Southeast Asia informative. Actually more than 90% of students (there is approx 50 foreign students attending this study program) has background in economy. There is only few of us with a different field of study. But this program is really for every uni student, who can communicate in English. I guess it is adjusted to this universal level, that I'm sure there is no one who wouldn't be able to understand the subject. New thing for me are those group assignments (it's not typical at my home uni) and I found them really enjoyable because you can interact more with others and have more fun doing serious stuff:). Also we have presentations to make and classic home works. So things are getting pretty busy at school.

Unique experience was definitely the visit of the dean's house. I've actually never been invited to check the house of dean of my home faculty:) Anyway in here the dean of the Faculty of literature himself showed us the compound and introduced us to the exceptional Balinese architecture, the way they build according to hindu tradition. The most sacred place in the compound is the little temple where they pray (every Hindu family has one - the richer the bigger) and it is always oriented to the east, where the Gunung Agung - most sacred volcano in Bali - is.

We also had a one time lecture from the vet specialist, who is an expert in rabies and even if in the beginning most of us was a bit sceptical thinking "what is actually so interesting about this horrible illness?" but in the end it turned out to be really intriguing. This guy established a new system for preventing the dogs to catch rabies (which came back to Bali in 2008) and at the Faculty of vet medicine his group of students go to field every week to vaccinate stray dogs. They are indeed a HUGE problem in Bali and from my point of view the only thing I hate about Bali. Local people are not interested at all in those thousands of dogs without home which are mostly severely underfed and suffer from many diseases. They get also very often killed in local totally insane traffic. I actually witnessed a taxi driver the other day who hit the dog without even trying to pull over or at least to put on the break. It was totally shocking!! In Indonesia there are unfortunately still no laws against cruel treatment of animals.

Once I mentioned the traffic in Bali- I could get into it a bit more, because I think it's a real phenomenon. When I first came to Bali and saw it from taxi going from the airport it was total sci-fi for me! "Billions" of motorbikes and cars coming from every possible direction constantly honking at each other. I wasn't optimistic at all about the idea me being involved in this chaos! But I rented a scooter and found out later, it is really not so bad at all. You just have to be extra careful and expect and be prepared for anything, because the fundamental rules are : there are no rules:) Really, basically the drivers only respect the traffic lights, everything else is allowed. In Bali you drive on your left side, but you can overtake from both sides. On the roundabout (quite common in here) there is no right of way like I'm used to from back home. Drivers are just coming and going chaotically whenever is their way free. Motorbike is the most spread way of transport in Bali (over 80%) and it's also one of the cheapest options. You can rent a scooter at many places, especially in the south Bali, where the famous Kuta beach is located. And if you can haggle, the price is also more than ok, I guess. You can get it for as less as 20.000 Rupiahs per day (1€ is approx 13-14.000Rp depending on the exchange rate). Although it probably doesn't seem so in the beginning, most of Indonesians really know how to drive in this kind of traffic and it's maybe because in here there is more traffic jams than actual traffic:) I was trying really hard to define when the rush hour is in Bali and I was unable to come up with any scheme. So to me it seems that on the most frequent hubs traffic jams are inevitable almost at any time. But here comes the biggest advantage of scooter-you can get anywhere sooooo much faster than a car! Plus also the fuel is so unbelievably cheap - only 4500Rp per liter. There is also public transport availible-so called Bemo, which is incredibly cheap and connect the bigger cities in Bali, but its schedule is irregular and not very frequent.

And talking about vehicles- rafting is definitely a fun way of transport:) Guys from Asia Exchange organized this whole trip - so all we had to do was show up. And it was such a terrific experience - we paddled for over 2 hours through this astonishing deep green river valley full of huge palm trees ad other gorgeous green stuff:) Well I'm no expert in flora. Theres was a few stops for drinks and swimming and in the end there was this huge lunch bufé. I also had an extra adrenalin experience added, when the guide from other raft pulled me out to the water while we were competing-which was actually the funniest part. The water was ok, but the stream was not:) anyway I made it in one piece and had fun, so good enough for me.

Well this week is also turning out to be full of special events, so about all that next time & until then take care***