The day before Nyepi day I went to see each of my metal smiths because I was in a rush to get invoices for the export certificate of origins forms. The first metal smith was a real shocker he told us he would only be able to get 17% of the items he took done… had had not really gotten anything else done since I visited the week before. He has already begun all of the pieces, and bought all of the metal so this means I’ll have a lot of money tied up in jewelry that won’t be done until after I leave. Then I will have to decide if I want to ship it in batches home. This will add a lot of expense and I’ll be short on bracelets and copper pendants if I don’t ship them home. Now I have just enough to have to hire the cusoms broker and I have to ship some home… oh well, it’s O.K. Normally I would have been getting batches all along throughout the month, photographing the pieces, cropping and adjusting the photos and building the website. I like to have the complete website up before I leave Bali because once I get home I will be distributing the jewelry and it is hard to do all of the photography, website, etc. Fortunately the other three silversmiths had a good handle on the work and said they will be able to get 100% done.
I also learned that bringing the sea-shell items I bought would seriously slow down and tie up my other jewelry. I thought if I did the proper forms at this end it was not going to be an issue but I was wrong. It is complicated. So now I have a bunch of handicraft jewelry that is also going to stay in Bali until I get a fish and wildlife license. I will spend a lot of Nyepi day removing sea-shells and sorting items into piles: keep in Bali until I have a license, trade back at the vendors for non-shell, or remove the shells from. I already paid for a special export form identifying all of the Latin or scientific names for each shell, harvest or farm locations, etc. I guess I can use the knowledge for future but the money was a waste.
The evening before Nyepi had a feeling a little like the fourth of July people were hanging out in front of their houses. Setting off constant firecrackers, little noise makers… not big showy skyrockets, putting out offerings of course, and lighting little coconut shell husk mini bonfires. The air was full of smoke and I was a little leery of being hit by a firecracker as I quickly rode through the streets looking for some last stamples to hold me through Nyepi day. It definitely had a different feel to the evening than all of the others, sort of celebratory and sort of eerie. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed up after mid-day.
|  | 
|
