A Musical Interlude

										You might think a rafting trip would be enough for one day, but there is so much to do in Bali that that was just the beginning, especially since our time there was drawing to an end and there were still a lot of things we wanted to experience. For the three weeks that we'd been there we'd been playing gamelan a few times each week at Linda's house in Ubud, under the direction of our friend Nyoman Sedana. Linda had borrowed a "half-gamelan" from the group in Taman - an old set of instruments - that we had been playing on. Now, almost at the end of our stay, we had our final practice with Sedana.
										Here we are sitting on Linda's terrace for one last time. Linda is at left in blue. In front of her is Justine, and behind them is Steve. Pierre-Olivier, our French-Canadian friend we'd met at Singapadu is at right on jegogan. Astrid is on gong at the back. Sedana is in front of the gong in the blue shirt, and that's the mayor of Ubud sitting listening on the other side of Linda.
										It had been a wonderful experience learning gamelan in Bali - such an idyllic location looking out over the palm-lined valley opposite Linda's house. Sedana had been a wonderful and patient teacher, and had taught us several beautiful new parts to a piece called Telaga Ngembeng (Placid Lake) that we had been playing for years back in California. Much of this material has now become part of our core repertoire, and every time we play it, it brings back happy memories of those afternoons on Linda's terrace in Bali.
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