Extreame Make Over - Bali Edition

I started to join our little girls Balinese dancing classes every Saturday evening, and after several failed attempts, with little girls constantly correcting us, I nearly gave up. To be honest.
It was great fun, don’t get me wrong, but I thought I would rather enjoy this magnificent dance from the side from now on.

Yet, when Saturday finally came again, and the girls arrived punctually (!!) at three o’clock with enthusiastic smiles on their faces, I got so inspired to really give it one more go. Simply value all of the “Once in a lifetime experiences” to the absolute max.  

This really paid off, because liters of sweat and several cramped fingers later, the amazing teacher Made invited me and two other girls to her house to do a total make over from head to toe with traditional Balinese dancing clothes and make up. We would have a dress up and then dance together with her daughter, she explained with help of the English speaking girls.

What to answer to this sort of invitation? Well, thank you but I will think about it…
 No way, we literally jumped into her arms of happiness and used all of the Indonesian and Balinese ways of saying “yes yes yes” and “thank you soooo much. “

This day was unreal, quite impossible to grasp. I had a professional educated Balinese art and dance teacher doing a famous Balinese makeup on me, transforming my short weirdly colored damaged hair into the black but-long smooth Bali hair ( hair I’ve always been dreaming of having as a child)

She had her oldest daughter together with a bunch of her friends dressing us up, wrapping us into pieces of beautiful garment, making extraordinary dresses using only safety pins, while the youngest daughter and all of the neighbor’s kids was running around and searching for both bobby pins and flower decorations.

This transformations was incredible and after uncountable amount of pictures (thank you Leony) we got up on her “stage” and together with her talented 7 year old daughter, Diah, and preformed the well-known “Tan pendet” with basically the whole village watching behind the trees. We really copied her the best we could.

The dancing went on, and in our Balinese characters we even managed to dance like crazy to both some Bruno Mars and Avici classics, they simply made everything to make us feel like home….

This day will be one of many Bali days I always will remember, and not only because of the whole material make up transformation, but also because this day I truly got a new Balinese family as well. As Made herself said,
Me Ibu (Mother) You
Don’t forget me.

No Made, we will never forget you or your family, and don’t worry, we will come back.

Now, enjoy …