Al Gore is visiting later this month. Richard Branson popped by for tea a few weeks ago. The dude from Ben & Jerry’s ran an ice cream-making workshop a month or so ago. So you know, they’re used to visiting dignitaries. We fit in well.

The Green School in Bali – it kind of defies description. Imagine a giant bamboo cathedral/Swiss Family Robinson style edifice.  In the midst of jungle. Now picture a giant Marimba ensemble in the middle of the building. Now add in 130 children dancing to the sound. With parents joining in. Imagine if you will girls dancing in the tropical storm, three year olds holding hands with fourteen year olds. Imagine the vibration of feet thundering in time with the rain and wooping normally only heard when Twihards catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson.

Yeah, there was a moment where I thought maybe the teachers had slipped some LSD into the milk round.  Where it felt like a giant evangelical church experience crossed with that bit in Avatar where all the Na’vi are swaying and chanting. And then I was just swept away by it all, kicked off my flip flops and joined in. You can’t fight joy like that.

After the music stopped I walked straight over to the admissions guy and asked him who we made the registration cheque out to. We hadn’t even seen the classrooms, had barely scanned the curriculum, but if I had got to go to a school made entirely of bamboo where I could  dance in the rain and learn to grow rice, where Al Gore dropped by to say hello and Mr. Jerry made  me ice cream I wouldn’t have spent so much time faking sick notes and forging my mum’s signature on them.