Hello World!

That I haven't written in nearly 3 weeks is indication of the crazy times that have been happening. Crazy good, mostly, but crazy nonetheless.

Not all was good. My friend Jacob, who also teaches yoga, ended up in the hospital for a week. He had a terrible bacterial infection called leptospyrosis. I highly recommend avoiding that one. He has completely recovered now, though, and is back to teaching and being himself, which is very nice!

Meanwhile, Alistair went to Panama. He took a week-long Spanish course in a town called Boquete, in the north. He really enjoyed it. Now he is back, (just returned two days ago) which is very very nice!

After my last post, we finished the Foundation Course, then had a long weekend. The long weekends are totally necessary between these intense 3-week courses. For the foundation one, we had a paper due during the weekend, which I still needed to finish. So I stuck around, working on the paper, and hung out with some other friends who didn't travel (many students went to the beach). We had pot lucks and did yoga, and...finished our papers!

I wrote mine on the US health care debate, specifically about the values involved. It was pretty interesting to research. I didn't get my grade yet though.

Then we got into our "real" programs! I am now taking the foundation Peace Education course, called Peace Education: Theory and Practice. I must say, I love it so much and am so happy to be studying what I'm studying!

And what am I studying? My initial goal with this blog was to write about what we studied every day. There really hasn't been time for that so far, but I'll try to do better. Here's a recap, though.

The first few days we talked about different "strands" of peace education, including (but not limited to) disarmament education, global education, development education, environmental education and futures education. The following day we looked at different perspectives from different countries, ethnicities and religions: the indigenous Canadian, British, Japanese, and Islamic perspectives. This was a grand overview of what peace education is, what the values are, the methods of teaching it, and the challenges. I just finished writing a paper on this overview.

Then we started getting into the "petals" of peace education. There is a flower diagram that is used to talk about the different aspects of what we need to do to dismantle a culture of war (which, of course, we currently live in). They include eduction for...

....dismantling a culture of war (disarmament education)

....living with justice and compassion (this includes education about globalization)

....promoting human rights and responsibilities (our next course is entirely about human rights education)

....living in harmony with the earth (environmental/ecological education, education for sustainability)

....building cultural respect, reconciliation, and solidarity

...cultivating inner peace.

We've discussed disarmament education, which is not just nuclear disarmament, but also small weapons, which contribute the most to violent conflict in the world. It's pretty exciting that as we were studying this, Obama led the security council to the decision to disarm. It will take time, but it is really exciting to have a leader who can take that step. My hat goes off.

(He is moving forward to put US military bases in Colombia, a plan I am not a fan of, nor are any Latin Americans. I hope he changes his mind.)

The day we talked about living with justice and compassion, we spoke a lot about globalization, which was interesting. We also had a songwriting day! That was most fun. We split into groups and had to write a song about the situations, root causes, and solutions for a marginalized group (our group was street children). When I get time, i am planning to organize some songwriting workshops on campus.

We are learning a lot of interesting educational techniques as well. Peace education is based on principles of participatory dialogue and creativity, on helping learners to develop critical thinking skills and critical consciousness. Our professor rarely lectures, and classes involve a lot more discussion. Then we do fun projects like the songwriting, role plays (on disarmament day we had an "arms fair"), and art, which are great teaching tools. We're just beginning but it's so exciting, and I'm so happy everyday in class to be studying this!

Meanwhile, there was also a yoga festival and the Global Alliance Summit!

The yoga festival was in San Jose, and my friend Janine was teaching a class. Jacob and I went to her house on a Friday night, took a class at her studio, then went to the festival with her and assisted her with a class. It was really fun. Taking the class was great - it was so nice to take a Kripalu class, to have someone do that for me! And the festival was fun. Assisting is really rewarding - you just walk around and be present with people and try to help them get deeper into the class. I loved it.

The Global Alliance summit was interesting. The global alliance is a group who is doing peace work, specifically lobbying governments worldwide to form ministries and departments of peace. Opening night, there was a cocktail party with delicious food and live music, followed by a ceremony, which involved a speech by noneother than Senor Oscar Arias, Nobel-laureate and former and current Costa Rican president. Unfortunately by the time he spoke I was only understanding about 60% of his Spanish (it was late). I know that he did say he was happy that Costa Rica now has a Ministry for Justice and Peace, but that it is only a beginning, and much work needs to be done yet. Here here.

I was able to meet some interesting people, including the woman who is the director of the newly-formed National Academy for Peace in the US. Will be sending her my resume shortly....

Then on the Sunday, the summit had a learning day. It was interesting, but somewhat long, a lot of lectures and not so much dialogue. After weeks of participatory learning, it feels wrong to have someone lecture at you all day! There were really interesting topics though - including a woman from Pennsylvania who talked about green economics. I really enjoyed her talk.

There was also International Peace Day (Sept. 21). Our class was responsible for organizing the activities on campus to celebrate, one of which was an open mic, which I hosted. It was AWESOME!!! It was amazing what people came out with - songs and poetry about social justice, compassion, consciousness...I have very talented classmates, and I really enjoyed playing the role of organizer and host. We will definitely have more of those throughout the year!

Well, it's Saturday, and I'm going to cook breakfast. No papers due this week, so I can leisurely work my way through my (massive) reader and soak things in.

Much love to all of you who are reading this!!!

Yoga, yoga, reading and research - and La Carpio

Taking a moment from reading about domestic violence in the military to write a little about the week. Studying peace of course involves studying war and conflict, and it can be a lot for the brain to handle sometimes - all the violence, injustice that is happening in the world as I write this. Sometimes, I just need to take a deep breath and remember that the reason we are studying this is to make peaceful solutions to these problems. Breathe in the pain of others, send it back as love...

It was an incredibly full week. I ended up teaching yoga 5 days, which was really a gift. Jacob, the other teacher, had a meeting one day, and was sick the next and ended up in the hospital with a fever. Thankfully, he is recovering. Meanwhile, I taught two vigorous classes, which got me out of my teaching shell, as I usually teach gentle to moderate. I had a lot of fun teaching the vigorous classes and would like to do more of it.

It is so wonderful to be teaching people who I spend a lot of time with, who come to class over and over, who I share lunch and classes with. It is such a unique situation, and one that I might not find myself again in life after UPEACE, so I am really treasuring it right now. It also really helps me to "walk the talk." I am with my students all day, so I have even more incentives and reminders to practice what I teach. It is really helping me to grow as a teacher, and I am finding that the more I teach, the more it nourishes me.

Meanwhile, classes are good. This week we talked more about positive peace (as opposed to negative peace, which is the absence of war), with issues such as sustainability, gender, and (drum roll)....peace education! Friday was a lecture by Professor Cawagas, who will be teaching my first peace ed course. Her lecture made me very excited to start the program.

Lots and lots of extracirricular activities this week, too. We had a meeting about campus tour guides, which I had helped organized, and had career workshops all week. Boy, are they helpful! There is this amazing woman, Christine, who is the career advisor here. How wonderful to have workshops now, to start thinking about jobs and opportunities for post-grad life at the beginning of the year, rather than waiting until the end when everyone is scrambling to find something before graduation. They've been fun, and are helping us to develop skills that will really serve us in the long run.

What else...the weekend was quiet. I have mostly been reading and starting the last two assignments for the foundation course. One is a group presentation on social learning theory. The other is a paper on "the key challenges to peace in your national/regional/social/cultural context," in 2,000 words or less.

Two thousand words! Not many, when I think I could write a list of two thousand challenges to peace in America. I had an idea to talk about the issues of peace and security near military bases. While visiting my parents in Oceanside, it seemed evident to me that the community experienced high levels of violent crime and gang activity, which I imagine is related to the military culture. Unfortunately, I haven't found many studies to confirm this, so I may have to change topics. One thing that is very well documented, however, is domestic violence in military families, so I might focus on that. I'm also really interested in the psychological and cultural factors that lead to violence and war, particularly relating to our "culture of fear." So many interesting topics, but only 2,000 words, and I need to get focused and start writing!

(Any feedback or ideas are greatly appreciated!)

Well, on that note, I'd better get back to work. I'm still finding my way as a student again, as I haven't researched in a long time, and technology has changed a lot since I last wrote a research paper back in 2000. I have a feeling this will get easier as the year goes on. Right now, it's a little daunting and overwhelming - but giving the old noggin good exercise!

Oh! And I forgot to mention La Carpio. I went on a little field trip on Saturday to a slum area in San Jose called La Carpio, where UPEACE volunteers have doing projects for a number of years. One of the programs they've been doing is an English class, so on Saturday afternoon a group of us went down to teach. Unfortunately, perhaps due to a torrential rain storm, no one showed up. However, we did get to see the community and figured out how to get there. We felt safe, and the community was vibrant, with people hanging out in the streets (when it wasn't raining), and lots of street vendors selling food. It would be nice to do some practical community development projects there.

OK, on that note, I'm really signing off. Thanks for reading! :-)