Dena Mandala

Suksma pang banget Saya senang sekali bisa belajar basa Bali dengan Dena Sampai jumpa:))

Dena is a committed teacher and is very knowledgeable about Basa Bali and Balinese culture. If you would like to learn Basa Bali I recommend him as a teacher.

Again, our session went by in a flash because it was so much fun. Dena prepared and reviewed more everyday verbs so that I can say useful things. He's making it easy for me to pick up the language by filling in my gaps. Today's cultural story was about how the tropical environment deteriorates everything from family photos to furniture. Things don't have the longevity because of all swings in the moisture in the air and the high heat. This is something I would never have thought about and I wonder how prevalent it is in other countries.

Dena created a class to work with my other learning materials. I sent him what I was learning and all my questions and he prepared materials that answered all my questions and built on my knowledge. He was genuinely excited to see how far I’ve come in these few weeks. He pulled the other material together so that I could use it more easily and provided everyday verbs so that I can start using Bahasa beyond memorization. He taught me pronouns that people use so that I don’t sound like I learned it from an uninformed source and “city language” that’s used in Jakarta so that I know what’s going on. We talked about Balinese Hindu castes and the history that they came from Java. The time went by so quickly that we were both surprised when it was over so soon.

Dena's explanation about Balinese and Indonesian marriages between religions was so interesting. He also described the wedding and celebration. I had no idea that weddings took place so early in the morning! Dena is so encouraging with my progress. He makes me feel like all the little steps of being a beginner are on the path to greatness. He's been adjusting his teaching style to match my learning style so that our lessons really work well.

I was so excited by our morning lesson that I booked one for the same night so that my son could also start learning with Dena. Dena was great with him and really drew him in to the language. After the lesson, I could hear my son practicing the lesson by himself. He was so enthusiastic that he’s trying out different sentences on his own by translating things that he wants to surprise Dena with in our next lesson.