Friday and Saturday, Aug. 6th and 7th

JENNA Yesterday, we forgot about blogs, so I'm writing it today. Yesterday, we woke up, had breakfast, and then, we were off to our driver, Putu Arnawa, who will be driving us for the rest of the time we're in Ubud. We drove over to the elephant park. We had lunch and then Will, Allison, and I fed an elephant. Even though the elephants there were the smallest breed of elephants in the world, they were still huge. When we finished feeding the elephant, we went on an elephant trek. Will and I rode on one elephant, Mom and Allison got another, and Dad got his own. Our elephant was a female named Hola, and the driver of the elephant's name was Putu (yes, it is a common name). For most of the time, Will and I were talking to Putu and ignoring Hola. I was amazed at how Putu got Hola to pose for pictures. The path was filled with elephant pies, and the elephant was slow, and when you went up and down hills, it kind of hurt, but we still all had a great time. We knew that Putu (the driver) would like it, but he has never been on one, even though he drives people there all the time. We think it's because there were no locals riding the elephants, it was all tourists accept for the workers. When we finished the elephant ride, Putu (just so you know, we won't talk about the elephant man Putu anymore) drove us to a Hindu water temple. Putu told us that the good things were represented by beautiful goddesses, as the goddess of knowledge and the goddess of rice. I thought that was very interesting. The temple was amazing. After the temple, we saw a beautiful rice paddy. Mom wanted to get out at a place filled with children (and a woman) trying to sell pencils. It had a great view, but Putu warned us that the children selling pencils were aggressive sellers. Mom and Dad thought about it, but eventually they just said, "Let's get out of the car". We got out, and Putu couldn't have been more right. The salespeople surrounded me in particular like hawks saying, "Buy one! Buy one with me!" I kept on saying,"I'll think about it." The kids just kept on following me until I just said, "No thank you." I walked away, and the swarm of salespeople just kept on following me. The only English that they knew was "Buy one with me!" Eventually, I just walked in the car and waved good-bye. I think the woman thought that I was saying 5, and she held out her pencils with five fingers up. We all just drove away. I'm still haunted with "Buy one!". For dinner, we just picked up a bunch of snacks at a market. I had a great day.

JennaBargains Originally uploaded by DonnaM123.