In October, over 20 English students from Class 11 & 12 went to Ubud to be volunteers for the 2019 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
The volunteers were made up of many different kinds of people: old and young, locals and westerners, and many of them had come to Bali with the sole objective of attending the festival.
When the first day of volunteering began, I was helping in the Children and Youth section of the festival. The speakers were always quite interesting and so were the children. It was amusing to see how the children were reacting to the speakers and what they came up with in their activities. There were some that really stood out when it came to confidence and creativity.
I did go as a guest to one workshop at Casa Luna on Saturday. It was held by 4 Dutch-Indonesians who were a product of colonial times and had struggled with their identities as they are seen as traitors in the Netherlands and not seen as Indonesians in Indonesia. This was quite interesting for me to hear as a mixed Dutch-Indonesian person myself, as this was different to how I feel being mixed.
The festival was an enlightening experience and next year I would definitely consider going as a guest, so I could freely roam around and listen to more interesting panels and discussions. This did put me out of my comfort zone and exposed me to different types of people, and taught me that these different types of people will always exist.