I love that when it rains in Costa Rica, it smells like cilantro!

Today I am at my friend Janine's house in Escazu. Janine is in Panama, and I am catsitting. Her cat, Shanti (which means peace in Sanskrit) is very sweet and we are pretty much best friends now.

Since I last wrote, I had a little vacation, and started my Human Rights Education course. The vacation was good. I didn't travel, just stayed here and then Alistair and I had a retreat at my friend Hannah's, in Rodeo near the university. It was very peaceful. We cooked good food and played music and games and it was really nice.

Hannah and I also went to La Carpio to teach an English lesson. It was...interesting. We had it under control for a while, but eventually the kids were running around the room. Literally. It is much different from teaching in Japan, where a stern "No" went a long way. I need to work on compassionate discipline - I did not want to yell at the kids. Also, I am not sure that English lessons are really what they need. The group of us who are teaching there are going to meet next week so hopefully we can come up with some ideas.

Then it was back to school time, and I started my next course in Human Rights Education. The material is so interesting, and our professor seems great - but she was still in America this week so we did the course via distance learning. Two teleconferences failed miserably due to technical problems, which was very frustrating for our class. Basically it amounted to a waste of time, and also ended up with everyone venting about some pent-up frustrations with the university in general, purely over administrative issues (namely, transportation and electives). Otherwise, the online forum went well, the readings were good, and I think it will be a really great course when our professor arrives!

Meanwhile, other exciting things going on. As part of an effort to make our learning experience more transformative, me and some other peace ed students are organizing some World Cafe events. Please check out the web site www.theworldcafe.com. Its a method of conversation for talking about "issues that matter" and build community. It can be adapted for many different settings. We are going to use it as a way to build the UPEACE community, and to provide a socializing event where alcohol is not the focus. That has pretty much been the case with the social events thus far. We have set the date for October 30 for our first world cafe, so hopefully it will go well! I am really excited to be planning something (I think it has been at least a week, maybe two, since I have organized something!) that has the potential to be really great.

I am also going to post my two papers from my last course on this blog. Don't feel like you need to read them! However, so often in academia, papers just get graded and never read by anyone, so I figured I at least have this venue for sharing them. Plus, they might give you a better idea of what peace education is (hopefully you already have a pretty good idea from reading this so far!).

I'm going to close with a line from a Rumi poem, The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival

a joy, a depression, a meanness

some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

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!

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! :-)