11/29/98: A very strange Sunday… Awakened at 4am to the noise of a drunk guy stumbling around outside in the hall and couldn’t get back to sleep… Found a church in Kuta comprised of international travelers, and all anyone wanted to ask when they met us was what denomination we were part of back in the US… We stopped in a local shop and while Ruth was purchasing a sun dress the woman who ran the shop kept making inappropriate remarks about Ruth’s body… I did my best to write an apology to Mark A in Nepal, but it seemed to only enrage him further, misinterpreting my apology as some sort of vindication of his anger… A hard lesson in how to communicate: the tongue is a brush, kind words the pigment, and peoples’ souls a canvas…
NOTE: The photo above shows a manta ray jumping out of the ocean just off Kuta Beach on the island of Bali.