Adventure 3 - Volunteering and coming ''home''

Dear friends, random readers, and mostly loving people!

I'll write this blog in English, cause I've been asked to do that a couple of times by the amazing people I met in Bali and cause I do want to find out which effects writing a blog in English will have on me, and on you :)

My Bali adventure had come to an end, for now. It was a really hard thing to say ''goodbye'' to Bali and all the new friends I made, but it didn't really feel like a goodbye. I'm sure I will come back here and I will see most of my new beautiful friends again one day, and hopefully more. I left Bali with mostly grateful feelings for the wonderful six weeks I had on this beautifull island - Bali will always be in my heart together with all her beauty's. It's amazing that I live in a country, and city, where the life environment is so great and where it's possible to make wonderful journeys like this one, learn from it, love it, and bring everything back home to share. Thanks for that!! All of you :)


I ended my Inner Beauty Retreat 3 weeks ago and I felt full of loving and warm feelings - towards myself and everything and everyone around me. I decided to enjoy these beautiful positive feelings and share these with others from that moment on, and so I did! I started the week with the Green Lion Kindergarten project - I was supposed to teach 4-6 year olds some English and mostly make sure they had a great time where they learned something - How cool is that?
My days started at 7:30 am where I had breakfast with all the other volunteers who did the Kindergarten project. After that I was brought to the local school where I was going to teach a Balinese class for 2 hours.

The kids were lovely, 31 one of them, and I wished to eat some of them now and then, cause the cuteness factor overruled me sometimes. The only English they spoke was one, two, until ten and so it was quite hard to communicate with them by language since my Bahasa isn't a-level too, but my Balinese Coordinator helped me out too and lots can be said without words. My main goal for this week was to give them a week where they felt a lot of positive energy and joyful feelings and since I did experience those I hope they did the same.

We sang a lot - head, shoulders, knees and toes...., If you're happy and you know it, clap your heads (they mostly liked to sing if you're funny and you know it, touch your nose and if you're sexy and you know it, strike a pose), we sang the alphabet and we played games during the break. The breaks were awesome, but really exhausting, cause they wanted to be carried in the air all the time and played this tough game - Da Da Guz - where you sat in a circle and there was one 'guz' who was walking around the circle selected at one point a victim who had to catch the 'Guz' as fast as possible before it could get back in the circle. They liked to pick me.
The best part of these days was saying goodbye. One by one they got up after class and walked towards me and grabbed my hand to touch their head or cheek with it and some gave it a kiss. It was the cutest thing I've ever experienced!

I had a great week and also had a beautiful insight. Children at a young age get so easily infected by someones energy and this should be a beautiful thing! During the week there were a couple of kids that were really shy or had a hard time saying goodbye to their parents (although most of the parents stayed during class, maybe cause of that). But during break, when lots of kids were playing and laughing these shy kids truly lived up. They enjoyed the smiles of others and that made them smile, and so did I :)
Some girls who didn't laugh that much received more attention from me when I was conscious of this and I experienced the effects of their parents on them (I've seen one father force his daughter to finish her drawing until it was perfect without giving any smile or compliment). Giving them the love that I felt and see the smallest changes in their behavior felt as my biggest accomplishment this week. It truly felt good to mean something for them, and it maybe felt even better that they meant something to me too. #didIalreadysaythatI'mgrateful?

There was also the Turtle week on Nusa Penida, an island near Bali, which really did attract me. Although I really loved the Kindergarten week I chose to spend one week at Nusa Penida to hopefully meant something for the turtles too. Living on Nusa Penida was way different than living on Bali - mostly cause there is so little to do. I had a hard time letting things go again, for example that the beds were shitty and my hernia wasn't that happy about it and that I didn't have that much alone time cause all the volunteers lived together in a small residence and we weren't allowed to rend a motorbike. After some days, when I did let it go, live felt great again!

We started every day at 8 am, with an all together breakfast and at 9 we fed the turtles. After that we cleaned the beach and collected tasty seaweed so the turtles had a proper lunch, as we did too. The Green Lion food on Nusa penida was better than Ubuds, luckily, cause there wasn't that much need for a second breakfast, lunch of diner, like was in Ubud. But when we found out there was a dive shop with a great Czech Republic kitchen we did have a Schnitzel second meal every day.

The part I loved most about this week is that we spent a lot of quality time together with each other as the group of volunteers. We were so bored all the time and couldn't use our phones cause of the lack of Wifi and that forces us to had some proper conversations with each other (and start drinking straight after lunch, love you Cody).Thanks for that I feel like a richer person with some beautiful addable friends after this turtle week, and I've seen some beautiful spots with them! It was also a really amazing feeling to release two turtles in the sea who had been cared for a couple of years. Gave me goosebumps to see them running in the water and see them disappear, and be free again. Wow!

The turtle week was the last Green Lion thing I planned to do in Indonesia. I've spent my weekends traveling to the coolest places in Bali and my last weekend I had a great time in Canggu, a small surf village in the south west of Bali where we had 2 beautiful apartments and our own pool for just 10 euro pp a night. We did drink and party a lot though, which was the biggest fun, but my back felt that and gave me a small rehab. I decided to spend my last day in Ubud, with all the other volunteers and the local friends I made. I'm really happy I made this decisions and had an awesome last week where I focused on my body and my self-love to feel in control of everything again and go on with do what makes me feel beautiful - give and receive love, happiness and kindness.

It took only 3 days to build a new friendship with someone that will probably for ever in my heart, and she felt the same. It feels so amazing and confirms that there's so much beauty in me that is felt by others. Reading her ''goodbye'' message (then again, it didn't feel like a goodbye) touched the golden part of my heart and spread it through my body, and it feels great when that's happening!

She's already the fifth person that have said something so pure, honest and beautiful to me since my Inner Beauty Retreat, defining that I did really find my Inner Beauty. Feeling this, and being able to cry for all the time I've been so hard for myself, for the people that haven't experience their Inner Beauty or maybe never will do, and for Paris or every bad thing that's happening in our world gives me convenient feeling that I want to share what I feel with others and hopefully infect others to see and feel that beauty filled with love that's in everyone of us. I won't stop War, and I can't prevent terrorist from planning their next attack, but I can attend to make a small change by just give the people I meet the love that I'm feeling and hopefully they'll do the same with others. And I willl enjoy doing that!

As I've said, I left Bali with warm and grateful feelings. I'm so lucky and I'm aware of that! I figured out that home isn't a place, house or city, it's a feeling you have when you're feeling comfortable as the person you are. Home is all in yourself, and now I'm aware of that I can feel home where ever I want. I'm in Kuala Lumpur at the moment for the second time, after 8 years, and will stay here a week and I already have success with that 'home' feeling. I've already been through some really beautiful and crazy things on my new adventure, but I do want to finish my blog here. I'll go to Chiang Mai (Thailand) next Thursday and I'll spend my days traveling, being a volunteer as a sport coach and spend a week intern with the monks - Really looking forward to everything!

I want to thank you again for reading, and hopefully you feel a little touched by the things I wrote down cause I felt touched by writing everything down. I'm doing great and I hope you'll do the same! Tomorrow I'll get company from Daniel, a friend from Holland who's already traveling around now for a little longer than I am and we'll spent my last days in KL together.

Lots of love to every single one of you and the biggest heart-to-heart hug you had for a long time.

Life is great, and you're beautiful - Remember that!!

Xx Maarten

'You can be in a relationship for two years and feel nothing; you can be in a relationship for 2 months and feel everything. Time is not a measure of quality; of infatuation, or of love'' - Let's make that change - as an individual we're just a drop, together we're an ocean