The next adventure

That I haven't written anything since November 25 gives you the kind of year this has been! One I should have written about, but sadly did not have a spare millisecond to write about. December took us to Nicaragua, in January we got married and met our new best friend Rocky, a street dog who adopted us and who will be accompanying us to America. I wrote a business plan for a Peace Cafe, wrote a thesis on the Culture of Peace at UPEACE, and as of Friday, I graduated!

That is a ridiculously brief summary of the past 7 or 8 months.

Graduation was Friday, July 9, and the ceremony was beautiful. We were graced by the presence of her excellency President Laura Chinchilla, the first female president in Costa Rica. Our classmates delivered inspiring, beautiful speeches, which made me realize how truly luck I was to have spent a year in the presence of such amazing, incredible people. A Calypso band played during interludes, giving the peace education class, front and center, the chance to get everyone up and dancing - including her Excellency and the Vice-Rector. We walked onto the stage to receive fake diplomas, much to my surprise - as not everyone has completed their graduation requirements, they hand everyone a blank rolled-up piece of paper. Those of us who were expecting our degrees had to get them out back after the ceremony!

Yesterday I woke up, no longer a UPEACE student, but now a graduate. I now have the difficult task in front of me of putting my knowledge and ideals into action, and ultimately finding the right livelihood that can allow me to live and pursue my dreams.

For the next few weeks we will prepare to leave, and on August 3 we will board a plane for Denver. I'm searching for jobs, and still have this dream of a Peace Cafe at the forefront of my mind. I will end this blog here, as I am still in Costa Rica, but no longer studying peace education at UPEACE. I will forever be a student though, and will open a new blog soon to write about the next adventure...

...how amazing it is to be alive!