Friday was our final day of orientation, which involved some immigration procedures. Most of the morning was spent waiting in line to be fingerprinted by the Ciudad Colón police. Sounds boring, but it was a good opportunity to get to know some other students. I talked a lot with Jess, who is from Massachusetts and is in my program, and Rachel, who has spent a lot of time in Cuba. It was so interesting to hear about Cuba. It is a place that I know so little about, and is perhaps unlike anywhere else in the world. She had me captivated as we made our way through the line.
In the afternoon we met with our departments. It was so exciting! My program only has 10 students, and we are in the same department as the students in the Gender and Peacebuilding MA program, which has 17 students. We each talked about our path to UPEACE and named a talent. There are lots of dancers in the group!
This came in really handy for the dance party which followed. After the departmental meeting, we had a welcome party, complete with a DJ. Incredibly cheesy music, but it was fun. The grand surprise was that towards the end, this drumming and dance troupe, dressed in sequined feathered costumes, appeared. The drummers were great and the dancers were fun to watch. Then they put us on buses to go home. It was a great end to a great week.
Saturday there was a UPEACE picnic on campus for the students and landlords, but our block didn't go. Arlan had to work and Suzy was taking care of Dusty, but they had arranged for us to have a neighborhood pot luck in the evening, which was so much fun. We met in our yard, and everyone brought something to eat. Suzy's family came too. A very funny thing: at the end, it was just me, Alistair, Victor from Peru, and our neighbor Raul from Guatemala. We discovered that we all had spent time in Japan and knew a little Japanese! We reminisced about our experiences and talked about Japanese food, which gave us the idea to make a group outing to a sushi restaurant in San José.
Today was the final day of the Ciudad Colón town fair. The fair was for the patron saint of the village, who is Saint something of Ascention (maybe Mary?). The finale of the fair was a horse parade, which involved over 200 horses and cowboys. Apparently later in the evening there was some crazy drunken dancing going on (when we went out at noon, lots of people were working on their buzz), but I'm too sleepy to go find out.
Tomorrow is our first day of school, so we already had some reading tonight. It was about different theories of conflict and conflict resolution, some more interesting than others. It is incredibly exciting to be starting school tomorrow. I don't know if I've ever been this excited about school - feeling pretty nerdy!
Meanwhile, we will be starting yoga classes too. There is another yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, and a pranayama teacher, and we're each going to teach about twice a week. My first class that I'm teaching is on Wednesday. I'm excited about that, too.
I'm also busy organizing a student delegation to attend the Global Summit for Ministries and Departments of Peace, which is happening in September. Costa Rica, just last week, passed a bill to transform their department of justice into the Ministry of Justice and Peace, which is a really important achievement. The conference should be really interesting, as it will be bringing people from all over the world. We will be attending a youth summit, which involves students at other Costa Rican universities. It will be a great opportunity for us, as students of peace.
I know you probably want some more pictures - I keep forgetting my camera when I go out, and I haven't been able to find my camera cord yet. I'll try to get some posted soon!
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