Bali-Part 1

Over Thanksgiving, our friend Neil came to visit us and we took an awesome vacation to Bali, Indonesia. We were able to spend 8 days exploring the island and laying on the beach.  It was a wonderful and much needed time away.

The girls were so excited to get on the plane. (They might have also been excited about missing a few days of school and going to the beach, but I'm not sure about that. :) )

Ok, we were probably a little bit excited too.

 Good bye cold Seoul...

We got some cool cloud pictures on the way there.

Hello warm Bali...

We rented an awesome villa that had a private pool.  Our first day in Bali was a little bit overcast so we spent the day on the beach near our villa and swimming in the pool.

These beautiful flowers were right outside the entrance to our villa.

Lucy had to keep a journal of our daily activities for school.

 The second day we went to a town in the middle of the island called Ubud and did a lot of sightseeing.

We visited 2 very old temples.  One of our comments was how green everything was.  Nothing in Seoul is green right now, but Bali was full of color.

Gunung Kawi Temple is a Hindu temple from the 11th century. We had to hike down over 250 steps to get to the bottom of the river valley to see one of Bali's oldest and largest ancient monuments.  Gunung Kawi consists of 10 rock-cut candi (shrines).  Each candi is believed to be a memorial to a member of the 11th century Balinese royalty, but not much is known for certain about them.  Legend has it that the whole group of memorials was carved out of the rock face in one night.

Because we were entering a temple we had to wear "temple clothing" which was a Sarong wrapped around our waists that covered our legs.  Here Russ is getting help putting on his Sarong.

We also had to sprinkle some holy water on our heads before we could enter the temple.

With the stone carvings.  There were 4 stone carving on one side of the river and 4 on the other side.

The girls did some exploring and found a waterfall behind the temple.

Taylor sitting at the entrance to the temple.

It was awesome for us to think about the places we were walking were over 1000 years old.  So much history.

 As we were leaving the temple Russ saw these ladies making mortar for laying bricks by hand and stopped to help them for a while.  They really enjoyed the free labor and he had a hard time getting away.

On the way to the second temple we saw these ladies walking towards the temple to make their daily offerings and prayers.  They all carried the offerings on their heads.

The second temple was very full and we didn't stay there for long.  This temple was discovered in AD 962 and is famous for the holy water pools where Hindu Balinese people go for purification.

I was able to get this picture in an area that didn't have anyone in the pool, but the other side of this pool was filled with people, fully clothed, bathing.

On the way out of the temple we stopped to get a snack.  Here we are in a foreign country and Lucy picks American cookies and Korean sports drink for a snack. 

Feeding the fish before we left.

I took a ton of pictures on this trip.  I am trying to pick out only the best ones to share with you.  Sorry if my posts get a little long.