We have arrived in our new home!

We have arrived in our new home!  The traveling was smooth and as easy as long distance travel can be.  Our dear friends Dewa and Ayu, with their precious 2 year old, Rama, picked us up at the airport, took us to our Bambu Village, then returned with one of their motorbikes so we have immediate transportation.  Right away friends and new neighbors started dropping by to welcome us, invite us to dinner or ask us to come see their new kittens.  This village has a lovely sense of community, all centered around the school, with kids running freely between the houses, a great contrast with our extreme privacy in the Little Applegate Valley.  We were surprised to find we had received an upgrade and are living in a 3 bedroom house instead of a 2 bedroom.  We only need 2... so the Yaron family Balinese bed and breakfast is officially open for visits!  Our house is somewhat reminiscent of the Swiss Family Robinson, made almost entirely of renewable bambu (Indonesian spelling), employing a wide range of sizes and finding all manner of ingenious ways to slice, strip, slat, bend and nail the grass (yes, it's a grass) together.  Our house is 2 story, but the ceiling is at least 3 stories high, covered with ylang ylang grass (another amazing, renewable resource) that swoops in curves Frank Gehry would admire.  It feels like a tree house, though it is not, because we see trees all around us and have giant bambu pillars holding everything together.  We have walls in places, and areas that are completely, protected by the overhanging roof.  It's as if we are living indoors and outdoors at the same time.  Pictures to come soon.  We arrived at our home around dusk and went to sleep early.  I woke up at 3 am and started unpacking and nesting.  By 4 am Asher and Sofia joined me, so we hopped on the motorbike in the dark and went to the traditional market in Mambal, a large busy place, even at that hour.  The first vendor we started to buy from tried to charge us very high tourist prices so we walked deeper into the market to fill our bags with freshly picked Balinese fruits and vegetables at very good local prices.  We came home with 2 kinds of mangoes, 2 kinds of bananas, 2 kinds of chilies, 2 kinds of ginger, fresh turmeric, pineapples, tangerines, napa cabbage, some greens unknown to me by name...  A little later we visited the first grade class at The Green School.  Sofia's teacher is fantastic and the environment is delicious to us all.  There are 20 children in her class, bigger than we knew as a few additional children have come in recently.  The kids are from all over the globe, relaxed and very friendly... Sofia got into the groove immediately.  Tomorrow, Friday, will be her first full day:  I will walk Sofia to school across the bambu bridge and hang out with her until she is comfortable while Asher is going on a volcano climbing bike ride with John Hardy and some others.  I choose to pass when it comes to climbing volcanos on bicycles.  We have a dinner invitation for Friday night.  In some ways much is different, yet in some sense our lives haven't skipped a beat.  More to come... love to all..