Exactly one year ago, my daughter and I packed our suitcases and armed with visas and expensive vaccinations, we boarded a flight for Denpasar, Bali. Founded over ten years ago by John Hardy, the Canadian entrepreneur, The Green School in Bali attracts people from all over the world. The Green School, offering a learning by doing curriculum, a thematic education where maths, science and art are all linked up with real-life experiences, promises to create the next generation of Green Leaders on a campus with bamboo classrooms without walls set deep in the jungle, with a resident snake-man, a mud wrestling pit, and a swimming pool carved out of the riverside rock. Without being particularly clear on how exactly this was going to work, I knew that experiential learning was one way that dyslexic children actually do learn. Dyslexia, then and all its manifest delights and struggles, was the impetus that made us brave enough to take the leap.

Once the introductory sessions were over and the school routine was established, my day was quickly filled up with courses and experiences that were available to parents at the school. Once signed up to the twice-weekly introduction to Bahasa course, the rest of my week was free to spend at the The Bridge a co-working space and community for GS parents, on the fringe of the school campus, that offered a high-speed internet, a daily menu of talks and therapeutic visits by friendly felines. One memorable talks was given by Will Travis, founder of The Elevation Barn, a retreat for high flying CEOs who wish to change course.
The adjacent Kul Kul Farm, founded and managed by Maria and Orin Hardy, offered a string of workshops and experiences of which I only tasted a few. The Home Apothecary course I took was serious moment of experiential learning for grown-ups. The medicine we seek comes from the plants and herbs around us, but shopping at Boots makes it easy to forget this. That day, we made teas, salves and tinctures, picking the ingredients from the garden while learning about their qualities. It led to an idea about how prisoners could be growing remedies for addiction recovery programmes and soaps to sell on the side. I have yet to put that one into action!
Aside from the frequency of the earthquakes, occasional tsunami warnings and the volcano evacuation protocol that I found myself studying with unusual concentration, read more here