Lets do the Time Warp again.

The smell of sawdust always reminds me of my dad and his wood shop. The smell of roses reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom would bring these buckets of roses home from her shop that she couldn't sell anymore so we could take rose petal baths. When I smell these things, moments come back to me as if it were yesterday afternoon - trying desperately to get the sawdust off my socks, or feeling like a tiny regal bath tubber. I love triggers like this, like a time warp..like you could open your eyes to see those damn socks nearly falling off your feet before you run up every other stair to the kitchen.

Not only is flying 13 hours into the future its own time warp, but year after year we return to Bali and just getting into the airport has its own smell of familiarity. That initial walk outside …the air is so thick its like a blanket. So, wrapped by the heat of the tropics, hopping on our brand new scooter, we jump the back streets and gangways like we never left. Inside jokes from the last time we were here are a year old but here we are, laughing again. I have to take a moment to think how incredibly thankful I am to feel that Bali, Indonesia is a home away from home.

Only a few things have changes that i've noticed so far: a new Circle K, a few new stores, and some are gone. Mostly it all seems the same. Our favorite Balinese friends still work in the same restaurants and hang outside the same stores. They all remember our names and are thrilled that we are back again. When we tell them that we have gotten married, the excitement is nearly overwhelming. And of course..the wedding, too, feels like it was just yesterday.

At this point, the only thing left from our time warp is our skin acclimating to the sun. It will only take a few days for the sun to seep back into our bones and allow our skin to glow along with it. In just a few hours, I have a pretty impressive sunburn but Louie's farmer's tan trumps mine by far. Ha. Yep. We are definitely back in Bali. Its our first day back and I am signing off - we have a sunset on the beach to catch.