Peace is...

Peace is...a cup of green tea, time to write and reflect, sing and play guitar, mediate, and cook vegetarian chili! It is my first day of "freedom" in a while, as we just finished our first course in our programs, and that is pretty much all I intend to do for the next few days.

I had such a good experience in my program course, Peace Education: Theory and Practice. I feel like I learned a lot and am growing. The material is perfect: when I decided I wanted to go to grad school, what I really wanted to do was study the issues that I care about and read more about the issues that my favorite authors, from Naomi Klein to Thich Nhat Hanh, write about. Much to my excitement, Naomi and Thay were both in my required reading list! I feel that I am perfectly suited to these studies, and am honestly enjoying every moment of them.

As a class, we became closer and really got to know each other over these weeks. This didn't come without "growing pains": we had our moments of misunderstandings and tensions. However, I think we really grew together and bonded as a group, and learned a lot from one another. We had a session after class one day, to discuss our motivations, expectations, and formulated a list of "commitments" to one another, which basically involved communication, respect, understanding, and the like.

We also bonded, over a group project and the joys and sadnesses in our lives. It is a supportive group, and I feel very lucky to have been here such a short time and to know that if I need them, my classmates are there for me and will do anything for me. It's a blessing.

On the second to last day of class, we got the sad news that our professor's daughter is ill with breast cancer. We are trying our best to support our professor through this difficult time. If you can include her and her family in your thoughts/prayers/meditations, that would be wonderful.

The opportunity to teach yoga is a gift, as nearly everyday I get to share yoga with others. I really treasure this opportunity. More and more, music has been part of life, and I'm even toying with the idea of writing my thesis on music as a tool for peace education. We'll see! A friend of mine started a "peace choir" and we meet once a week. I haven't sung in a choir since my days at McGill, and it is so fun to harmonize as a group.

So, in our last few weeks, we were covering a peace education framework flower model. There are six "petals": educating for... (=> and what this means...)

...dismantling a culture of war => disarmament, military expenditures

....justice and compassion => structural injustices, largely caused by political and economic institutions, globalization

...promoting human rights and responsibilities => fairly self-explanatory; universal declaration of human rights; particularly, rights of women, children, and marginalized groups (like indigenous communities)

...cultural respect, solidarity and reconciliation => multiculturalism, beyond the "4 D's (dance, diet, dialect, dress); examining power structures between cultures, ethnic groups, institutional discrimination

...living in harmony with the earth => expanding our conciousness to include nonhumans; sustainability; ecological footprints

...cultivating inner peace => peace is every step; "affluenza"

It was a really interesting course. The article we read on affluenza was really interesting, and if you get a chance to check it out (it's an entire book), I highly recommend it. It's basically about the collective psychological crisis that is occurring in wealthy countries, in regards to feeling a perpetual state of dissatisfaction in spite of having satisfied "basic needs."

So, 5 days off...a lot of my friends are traveling, but we are not. Alistair and I are going to spend the weekend...near the university! We're going to stay with my friend Hannah, who lives in a beautiful house on top of the mountain, from which you can watch the sunrise over the whole valley. If we're lucky, we'll see monkeys!

Hannah and I are also going to La Carpio, a marginalized community outside San Jose, to teach English on Saturday. We've visited once, but haven't taught yet (other students have taught the past two weeks), so I'm looking forward to that, and trying to "pepper" some peace education material into the lesson! And definitely some songs....

Well, it's lunchtime! Hope this finds you well, wherever you are!