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!

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!!!

What is Peace Education?

This morning I met with a former UPEACE student who is planning an international peace conference that will be taking place in San José in September (link: http://www.mfp-dop.org/4th-global-alliance-summit.html). I am going to be her liason at UPEACE to organize some students to attend. I am really interested in the Rasur Foundation's work, so it should be a good introduction for me.

Meanwhile, I was thinking that maybe I should write a little about what peace education means. When I was preparing to come, when I told people what I was setting out to study, I often got blank looks and the ever-pervasive question, "What are you going to do with that?"

As I'm writing this blog, part of my goal is to try to let people know what this process is, exactly.

I am going to start by borrowing the definition from Betty A. Reardon, from her paper, Peace Education: A Review and Projection:

"Peace education is the transmission of knowledge about requirements of, the obstacles to, and possibilities for achieving and maintaining peace, training in skills for interpreting the knowledge, and the development of reflective and participatory capacities for applying the knowledge to overcoming problems and achieving possibilities." Now, what exactly does this involve?

The field can be broken down into two main areas: education for peace and education about peace.

Education for peace is education that aims to create the preconditions for achieving peace. This includes international education, multicultural education, and environmental education. As a lot of conflict can arise from diversity, mulitcultural and international education aim to appreciate the differences and the positive aspects of living in a diverse world, and use conflict as a source of transformation, rather than violence. With environmental education, having a stable, healthy environment is essential for everything we do, thus having an appreciation for and understanding of our environment is important for peace.

Education about peace aims to develop the institutions and processes that maintain a peaceful social order. This includes conflict resolution training, human rights education, and the broad field of peace studies.

Right now it is hard for me to say what I am most interested in. Over the summer I've done a lot of reading on conflict resolution and nonviolent communication, which is also very much in line with studying yogic philosophy. I also am passionate about environmental education, having done my undergraduate degree in environmental studies, and having volunteered at an eco-camp for kids over the summer while in San Diego. Multicultural and international education are really interesting to me as well, having lived in many different places and loving the beauty of each experience in another culture. At this point I don't know what I will specialize in, or what I will do when I finish. But right now, it is all extremely interesting to me, I feel passionate about it, and I definitely feel like I'm in the right place, doing the right thing. I can't wait to dive into the courses!

The countdown to orientation has begun: T minus 20 hours. This week we have 3 days of orientation. Class begins on Monday. The UPEACE system is such that instead of taking 5 classes at once, you take only one class at a time for a three-week period. The first class is the foundation course, which all students at the school will be taking. It is a general peace and conflict studies course. Then I will be taking Peace Education: Theory and Practice, followed by Human Rights Education, Cultures and Learning, and Research Methods. That sums up the first semester.

The reason that the classes are 3 weeks is because there are a lot of visiting professors from around the world who cannot commit to being at UPEACE for an entire semester, so they have designed the program in order to accommodate visiting professors. It also seems like it will be nice to just focus on one class at a time, rather than be juggling 5 classes at once. We'll see how it goes!

As excited as I am, I'm also feeling a little nervous and anxious, which I suppose is normal when embarking on something new. In some ways I feel like I'm going to kindergarten: What should I wear? Will I catch the bus on time? Who will my classmates be? What is the schedule going to be? So many questions. I'd like to think I'm "above" putting too much thought into what I'm going to wear, but I'm going to be honest here - it is on my mind!

On that note, off to do some yoga to transform the nervous energy into something useful!