I woke up that first morning in Carmel to a kitchen full of grocery bags. All the counters had disappeared and it was overwhelming. I found myself quickly moving towards the doorway leading to the living room where I stopped and turned. There, out in the open, on the counter was the yellow and purple package with the words “Fig Newtons” printed expectantly on the top. Still, I moved into the living room, trying my best to resist the urge to grab it and go.

Sometime later, Mom walked in wielding the same yellow and purple package. I felt the corners of my mouth tugging up and I couldn’t stop the smile that had already taken center stage. I all but inhaled half of its contents. But it was inevitable that my high would come to its climax and I would be left with only the feeling of dissatisfaction, however intuitive. Almost as if I was searching for some lost item. But why; what? The same feeling was felt at the towns local candy shop. I stood, unsure of what to get. There was so many different kinds of candies. It seemed like a hard decision, yet was it also something else, something—

Ah! I know.

Alchemy’s raw peanut butter cups in Ubud, Bali. They completely, thoroughly, wrecked me  And now, no matter what, they will always be better—a bit above the rest—superior to any pre-packaged food.

I  guess it’s just the way things are now and I’ll always be itching to go back.

Doesn’t get better than this!

We did this a number of times while she and her family were here in Carmel. Some days the waves were so big, it was hard to keep up. I’d like to say we became somewhat professional body surfers in those two weeks. Though… not really. Accompanying us in the water was a plentiful bunch of kelp that I kept trying to gift to Indi, but she rudely refused each of my offers. Anyway, we’d always end our body surfing expeditions by riding one last good wave and then we’d make our way back up to the house to take hot showers and to reheat ourselves. And no matter how hard I tried, I still found sand hiding away somewhere on my body the next day.

My cousin, Indi catching a wave!

Cute picture of us sightseeing on 17 mile drive!

Politically not correct picture of us drinking coffee and smoking bubble gum cigarettes

Finding a stick strewn in the sand, I speared a marshmallow; it’s fluffy white body bubbling into a golden brown. Very deftly my dad and I transferred the hot goods onto a bed of chocolate and with one swooping motion, he clamped the two pieces of graham crackers closed. The marshmallow gradually spread, multiplying surface area and forcing its gooey insides to spill out. This was happiness. Each bite said, welcome home. Welcome back to the United States. My mouth was sticky with marshmallow body parts and I stepped away from the fire’s emanating heat. The night air gave a refreshing embrace. Cool and crisp. We had made the full circuit.

Wescott and Otto heading down to Carmel, CA beach with all the fixings

I had gotten to the edge of the coral and from there it cut off, plummeting straight down into the sandy bottom that I could barely make out. I dared not go over the edge, I understood Nemo’s friends. Then, looking ahead, coming towards me, was a school of shiny green fish. The vast number of small bodies all swimming together was enough to make me hold my breath in wonder, though I noticed a few of them abruptly change their course of direction… and then their color. Soon, one after the other, each guy slowly began to go from green to blue following the newly set path. I didn’t understand. One of the Marine Biologists aboard the boat had said you could see these color-changing fish and it had sounded cool even then, but to actually witness it was beyond anything. The Great Barrier Reef just kept getting better and better. I wonder what next I’ll find….

It was cool to be this close to the fish!

Somehow we were able to have the privilege of surfing with the Green School’s surf program and be a part of their extracurricular program. That meant going to a specific beach every Saturday and meeting with the school’s surf instructors who would lead us into the water and surf with us. Then after the month was up, there would be a three night surf camp where all the kids who did surfing throughout the year would attend. We would also get to go. It would also be the chance where we could actually get to know and hangout with the students. Wescott would be going with the high school group on separate days and Otto and I would be going with the middle school group a week later. Since Saturday was the weekend, nobody was technically required to go to the weekend surf sessions, so for the first month in Bali, we didn’t see a lot of other students in the Green School Surfing Academy, but we would soon be immersed.

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7:30 am. The mornings of the surf week were always quiet, peaceful even. After breakfast everyone would go down to the beach and surf nonstop till noon. In total, there were 25 kids as well as multiple surf instructors, a few chaperoning dads, and Colin, who was in charge of the whole surf academy, in the water at once. We spent the week at a beach called Medewi in the western part of Bali where fishing boats lined half of the shore and dead fish was as common as sand. Once our arms started resembling that of a noodle, and only then, we’d all head in for lunch. A couple hours later, there would be an afternoon surf.

“Here’s the competition: there are two boards and two teams. One at a time, each person from both teams will go out and catch a wave. You’ll be scored individually by how well you surf that wave, but if you decide to catch and ride a whitewater wave you automatically get a 2. If you fall off, that counts. You don’t get to keep trying for another shot at a wave. So pick good. Then at the end we’ll add up all the scores and the team with the most points wins. And the first team to finish, where all their people have gone out and come back, gets an additional 10 points added and the second team only 5. So, you’ll have to think about performance as well as speed.”

We were sitting on the beach in a half circle around Colin while he was explaining the afternoon’s game. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at all nervous. It was just for fun, but still, I couldn’t help the butterflies surfacing inside me. I’m confident enough in my surfing ability yet when you add the pressure of catching a good wave, riding well, and doing it somewhat fast, then I had no idea how I would hold up in that situation. Not to mention that the board was as tall as me, give or take a few inches, and I’m like five-foot-nothing! I’ve never ridden a short board before so this would be very interesting. We were soon divided into groups and the first two people began to paddle out. When it came to my turn, I decided to just go out the back like I normally would and catch a wave. Unfortunately, none of the waves were looking that good, and when a good one did show up,  I was too late because the person from the other team was already riding it back. I was alone… For now.  I needed to catch a wave, but time wasn’t on my side.  Heading back in, I managed to snag some whitewater, barely getting up. Definitely not one of my best rides. Though thankfully, unlike some kids back on Mercer Island where to them gym equals the equivalent of the Olympics, nobody seemed too upset by my lackluster performance.

7:00 pm. Dinner was finished and by now night was fully upon us. I was rooming with two other girls―really five if you take into account the fact that it was an adjoining room and we had opened the door to allow easy passage. Sprawled across three of the beds in one of the rooms, I watched passively as all the girls took out their iPhones and I was reintroduced to the digital world. I had forgotten what this was like―what I myself was like―to be in the same room hanging out with someone while simultaneously not being there at all.

“Do you have Facebook?” One girl had put on music and was blasting a rap song.

“No,” I casually answered.

Another girl was texting with a boy, saying something about liking him and stressing about how to reply back to each incoming message.

“Mmm,” and the girl talking to me went back to her Snapchat.

A different girl then asked, “you have a phone?”

“Yeah, but I left it at home. I didn’t bring it on my trip.”

“Oh okay,” and next to her the ‘mmm’ girl looked up; laughed saying, “I could never do that,” which got the other girl laughing too.

7:30 am. The next day led primarily the same path as the last, but later there would be no afternoon surf. We would then be leaving the following morning.  So with the rest of the day  free, we decided to go for a swim in the pool, accompanying those already in who had the same idea. About an hour later, I had to get out because one of my ears became so clogged with water that I couldn’t hear anything. I spent the next thirty minutes trying unsuccessfully to get the water out when everybody started coming back in. While they showered and changed, I filled the time by sitting on my bed with a water bottle in hand, voraciously gulping down the awkwardness of not knowing what to do with people you just met with each single drop. I probably drank the most water in that couple of days than I had in the whole year. But, soon we all settled down and played a few games of BS and listened to music until we noticed it was time for dinner.

11:00 am. We arrived late morning at the Green School, where Mom was waiting eagerly for us with kombucha and raw peanut butter cups. I waved goodbye to a few of the girls and then we simply drove back to Ubud, passing the now familiar rice paddies.

“Did you have fun?”

“Yeah,” Otto and I replied, almost in unison.

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While my surfing wasn’t stellar, and the waves weren’t perfect, I realized that what I will remember most is that you can be halfway around the world and find a group of friends that make you feel like you are right at home.

This is a huge mural painted in the lobby of the hotel!

We visited an uberhip gallery in the W Hotel that represents many Bali artists. Mom and I liked the work of Dodit Artaman who does massive paintings of Barbies with bottles of gin.

The road to the entrance of the W Hotel is enveloped in bamboo.  Mom and I made our way to the sidewalk and began to stroll towards the center of town. Along the way we went into shops and browsed the shelves because we could. Because it was only Mom and me. Tuck and Jones only a distant memory. We found that most of the stores were air-conditioned, so along we went going from one store to the next, trying to escape the heat.

Bamboo arches over the long entrance drive into the hotel.

We stumbled upon a cool art exhibit in a coffee shop displaying dozens of pieces by Yaari Rom.

Seminyak is on the coast of Bali, so it is a super surf hangout with the cool, hip, relaxing vibe of an upscale beachy town. As we were nearing the middle of town,  we noticed this small outdoor marketplace. Unlike the souks of Marrakech, everyone there barely batted an eyelash as we walked through the stalls. With a friendly, non-accosting exchange, we bought a few gifts for cousins and then headed to this trendy restaurant for a light snack.

Cool street art on every corner!

Afterwards we met our driver, who took us back along the narrow roads and past the rice fields to our place in Canggu.  As we turned into the driveway, we noticed that even the contraptions made to keep the birds away from the rice had an artistic flair.

She wasn’t always Stephanie Craig.  Throughout most of her high titled career as our prospering nanny, she was incidentally Stephanie Jones.  Yes, another Jones in our family.  Having been with us since our first years on Mercer Island and then all the years after that, the goodbyes when we left for the trip were fairly wet. Mostly it was her eyes doling out the steady stream of salt while us kids insisted that we would be gone only a year and how little time it actually is if looked at in that perspective.  But, we would soon be the ones convincing her and her husband, Aric, to come and meet us on our global adventure. Though it was more of an obligation than anything. I mean, all of the other Joneses in our lives were making an appearance on ProjectEquator so she couldn’t just not come. So, with much back and forth, we soon were all reunited in Bali.

Steff and I hanging at Karsa Spa in front of the lotus pond!

The time quickly went by, seeming to slip right through our fingers, but not before we made sure “everyday was the best day ever” which was set out by Steff and Aric and wasn’t a very hard goal to accomplish.

Hanging outside of Intuitive Flow, our favorite yoga studio in Ubud!

Aric and Steff both loved sliver smithing class as much as I did.

Of course there were obstacles, even still in heavenly Bali.  Obstacles which put everyone (except Otto, Jones, and I fortunately enough) in a 24-hour state of toilet dependency. It didn’t matter what end of the pipe it came out of―nobody was feeling up to par and the victims were left helpless to the bug. Yet, we all managed to come out alive, for there were still plenty more things to do and see…. which leads me to one last thing. Steff and Aric, while we loved shepherding you around Ubud and spending time together, we’re not done with you yet on Project Equator. Come to Mattapoisett!!

CHEERS to the first day Steff and Aric were with us in Ubud!

After I had labeled bamboo as cool, to the lesser extent, I didn’t believe that it could climb its way out and stand among the higher ranking (if I even dare try ranking) of sights. Yet, when I stepped foot on the Green School campus located in central Bali, I definitely remember that sensation prominently known as AWE wrapping itself around me, tugging open my already wide eyelids nearly to the breaking point, stuffing my mouth with a sharp piercing breath that suddenly left me breathless, and covering my ears so the rest of the world was muffled and unimportant. Awe has countlessly taken hold of me before and although we already may be acquainted, I never get a notice to when we might meet again. Nothing. Just a silent presence until I’m mentally attacked. And afterwards it was only me… and bamboo.

You can search Green School Bali and see the images yourself. I was looking at them earlier and could almost feel the slight cold warmth of wonderment creeping up to lock hands with me. I had seen bamboo used in plenty of ways, but this surpassed anything I might’ve imagined. Shaping the center of the school is three-stories of thick bamboo crisscrossing in a dizzying pattern. The building is famously named The Heart of School. It is so outrageous and despite the sheer massiveness, it fit perfectly with ease into the background and coalesced with the nature surrounding the area. This stripped away all of my preconceived notions I had about bamboo and while I had never actually made an attempt to deepen my knowledge about it, now I was bursting with all sorts of questions (for starters, bamboo isn’t even a tree ­– it’s a grass?). To see giant buildings made entirely out of that single material was unbelievable and I became quietly infatuated with this whole other world of construction.

Three-story, Heart of School Building in the background.

Closer up, you can see the spiral roof of the Heart of School!

We would then go to three other buildings in Bali, all of which were completely bamboo from head to toe and all of which were unprecedentedly unique, beyond the limitations of our own, my own, perceivings of what’s possible. A chocolate factory, a shared workspace, a restaurant, a school, all reinventing what exactly the standard building should be like. And feel like for that matter.  I’m now looking with new eyes, seeing all it can be and knowing it to be more than what I can see, because bamboo architecture is simply awesome.

Mom inside Five Elements, an uber-hip raw restaurant outside Ubud.

We were lucky enough to get to do a tour of Big Tree Farms, a cocoa factory in Bali made entirely of Bamboo!

This is a gigantic bamboo bridge on the Green School campus.

At Hubud, all the kitchen cabinets are made of bamboo in addition to the entire workspace!

I start to head down again, back to my life of solitary, but the land fish seem incessant on keeping me by their side. One of them, I notice, holds out a small rectangular box to me. I’m not used to all this attention. My instincts warn me that these land fish are no good and so I duck down again. No reason to start going against all my intuition now. They trail behind for a couple seconds, then gradually the water stills and I’m alone once more. Fading into the constant beating pulse of the ocean, I can’t help but wonder, what do the land fish think of me?

[Authors Note: turtle’s can get itches on their shells]

*****

I’m not sure what time it is when I step outside. The day has suddenly surrendered its light in exchange for a darkness that blankets the world around me in a snug embrace. On my shoulders rests a light scarf, which I readjust and pull closer as I walk over to the outside dining table. Mom and Wescott are already there. I take a sweeping gaze and look them each over. Deep in concentration they sit with shoulders hunched over opened laptops. There doesn’t seem to be a need for acknowledgments, so without lingering I unceremoniously take a chair and have a seat. Not five minutes have gone by when a faint plopping noise disrupts the relative silence. And along with it is an even fainter feeling of something touching my shoulder. Something, wet? Glancing across to Mom, I see no reaction or any subtle shift of emotion on her face.  No cognizance of any plopping noise.  So I decide to shrug off the whole thing, but a part of me dares to investigate.  That’s when I look up to the beamed roof sheltering the table and notice a pair of eyes staring down at me.

“Mom. Look up. That gecko just pooped on me.” I don’t know why I should be surprised though. We are in Bali.

“Oh yeah!?” Yeah mom, yeah. Laughter is heard from the other end of the table and I don’t need to turn to know that it’s Wescott.

The moment is then over and we go back to working like nothing ever happened. My fraction of annoyance vanishes as soon as it appeared and I hand Mom my now poopy scarf.

*****

Sand molds to the shape of her feet. An equatorial sun blazes down and from under the thatched roof where she sat, everything looked as though it was coated in a thick sheen of blinding white. It’s peaceful. Time seemed to move slowly. Everything was where it should be. Yet paradise came with a cost. She believed in that even more when occasional stabs of stinging would ring through to her nerves. Almost like a pinch or a pinprick. And as she focused in on that sudden sensation a tiny black dot appeared at the edges of her vision. Chasing the dot with her eyes, she found that when it moved it left behind in its wake a small itching bump. Ever so gracefully, with a flick of the wrist and a slight frown of disdain, she sent the black bug flying. After some time had gone by and more black dots appeared, a realization came that started at the ceiling. The bugs were falling; coming from above!

*****

It’s sticky. The air is heavy and thick. I can feel that beads of sweat are running down in rivulets on my body somewhere. Everywhere. The ghost of a draping mosquito net hangs overhead, encircling me in a white haze. I roll over on my left side. Long seconds pass before my eyes finally adjust to the gold morning light. A lone ant haphazardly makes its way across the mattress and stops just inches in front my face as if it could sense the impending doom that’ll send him crashing off the bed.  I’m about to try and get a few extra minutes of sleep when I remember the glass of water I had the night before. This, if nothing else, gets me up and rushing straight to the bathroom.  Once there, I foolishly spend no time to take in my surroundings. And so I’m left relieving myself when a light weight sends shivers racing up and down my spine.  Bending over I see an ant is crawling along my upper thigh, yet I’m still drowsy from the remnants of a lost sleep to make sense of it all.  I just brush him off without any dramatic displays and head to the sink.  My ant causalities haven’t passed, I find, in fact it looks like I might be in the very thick of it: on the walls, stretching over half the bathroom, into my bedroom, and across the floor to the balcony is one long giant ant trail.

*****

Her eyes flew open and immediately she wished she could crawl back into the safety of her dreams.  Outside the room was a cacophony threatening to distill inside her the calmness that comes with the beginning of a new day. Yet, this new day was one she knew she would rather skip.  The sounds were of obnoxious voices, heavy with misconceived pride, drowned by a layer of premeditated whines, and on top, struggling to own dominance, was another voice (or was it two?) straining with agitation and exasperation.  She wouldn’t let her morning start off like this.  So she waited until the noise had momentarily subsided and then forced herself out of bed.  When she entered the main living room, her eyes took on a foggy look and somehow she felt herself floating away—creating distance from the scene laid out before her.  There were four boys sprawled throughout the spacious room, but that didn’t make a difference. The walls were lopsided, seemingly about to cave in, and all of a sudden it became very crowded and she swore she could hear the noise again despite the lack of moving mouths.  Then, she understood.  Snapping back into reality she couldn’t help but laugh.  Those were all her brothers.