Exciting times!

It has been an insanely busy, incredibly wonderful past few days. As I sit down to write, I am quite exhausted, so please bear with me! I think my ambition to write daily will be hard to maintain, but perhaps I will have more time once classes start (which is tomorrow!).

Friday was our final day of orientation, which involved some immigration procedures. Most of the morning was spent waiting in line to be fingerprinted by the Ciudad Colón police. Sounds boring, but it was a good opportunity to get to know some other students. I talked a lot with Jess, who is from Massachusetts and is in my program, and Rachel, who has spent a lot of time in Cuba. It was so interesting to hear about Cuba. It is a place that I know so little about, and is perhaps unlike anywhere else in the world. She had me captivated as we made our way through the line.

In the afternoon we met with our departments. It was so exciting! My program only has 10 students, and we are in the same department as the students in the Gender and Peacebuilding MA program, which has 17 students. We each talked about our path to UPEACE and named a talent. There are lots of dancers in the group!

This came in really handy for the dance party which followed. After the departmental meeting, we had a welcome party, complete with a DJ. Incredibly cheesy music, but it was fun. The grand surprise was that towards the end, this drumming and dance troupe, dressed in sequined feathered costumes, appeared. The drummers were great and the dancers were fun to watch. Then they put us on buses to go home. It was a great end to a great week.

Saturday there was a UPEACE picnic on campus for the students and landlords, but our block didn't go. Arlan had to work and Suzy was taking care of Dusty, but they had arranged for us to have a neighborhood pot luck in the evening, which was so much fun. We met in our yard, and everyone brought something to eat. Suzy's family came too. A very funny thing: at the end, it was just me, Alistair, Victor from Peru, and our neighbor Raul from Guatemala. We discovered that we all had spent time in Japan and knew a little Japanese! We reminisced about our experiences and talked about Japanese food, which gave us the idea to make a group outing to a sushi restaurant in San José.

Today was the final day of the Ciudad Colón town fair. The fair was for the patron saint of the village, who is Saint something of Ascention (maybe Mary?). The finale of the fair was a horse parade, which involved over 200 horses and cowboys. Apparently later in the evening there was some crazy drunken dancing going on (when we went out at noon, lots of people were working on their buzz), but I'm too sleepy to go find out.

Tomorrow is our first day of school, so we already had some reading tonight. It was about different theories of conflict and conflict resolution, some more interesting than others. It is incredibly exciting to be starting school tomorrow. I don't know if I've ever been this excited about school - feeling pretty nerdy!

Meanwhile, we will be starting yoga classes too. There is another yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, and a pranayama teacher, and we're each going to teach about twice a week. My first class that I'm teaching is on Wednesday. I'm excited about that, too.

I'm also busy organizing a student delegation to attend the Global Summit for Ministries and Departments of Peace, which is happening in September. Costa Rica, just last week, passed a bill to transform their department of justice into the Ministry of Justice and Peace, which is a really important achievement. The conference should be really interesting, as it will be bringing people from all over the world. We will be attending a youth summit, which involves students at other Costa Rican universities. It will be a great opportunity for us, as students of peace.

I know you probably want some more pictures - I keep forgetting my camera when I go out, and I haven't been able to find my camera cord yet. I'll try to get some posted soon!

Fair, Part II, and Ants

Last night involved another trip to the village fair. We went and ended up meeting a bunch of other new students from Korea, the US and Colombia. It was nice to see some other classmates - the girl from Korea, Jean, is in my class. As far as I know, I only have about ten classmates, which I think is pretty exciting! It will be nice to be in a small class.

The event of the fair last night were the fireworks. We'd heard that they would start around 8:00 but they started at least an hour later, and surprised us greatly when they started. We just happened to be in a great location to watch them. They were going off directly overhead - almost a little too close, and boy were they loud. There were more dancing folklore figures too, and the marching band, so all around, a festive evening.

Today involved a trip to the farmers market and trying to keep the ants out of our apartment. It is probably something I will just have to reconcile, much akin to living with termites in Niger (we had a symbiotic relationship- I left them alone and they left me alone too, and we cohabited peacefully in my hut). I am trying to practice nonviolence towards the ants, but it is hard! I swept and mopped the floor, and will hope that will keep them out for at least a little while.

I also finished my Spanish verb tenses workbook today! I had been working on it for about a year. Now I just need to apply it practically....

Meanwhile, in Central America, the two big news items, other than President Arias' case of swine flu, are the unresolved situation in Honduras and the issue of US military bases in Colombia. With Honduras, it seems that most heads of state are supporting ousted President Zelaya. There are also calls for the US to do more, which is ironic because usually people are angry over the US's over-involvement (and, often rightfully so). It definitely seems like a case where Obama can do no right. I'm sure if he had acted more strongly, people would be criticizing him.

On the Colombia front, there are tense relations in South America over Colombia's agreement to start allowing the US to use Colombian military bases for the "war on drugs." A lot of countries, particularly Venezuela and Ecuador, are upset over this, saying the US could end up starting wars in the region.

Meanwhile, I wonder how much attention either of these situations are getting in the US media. The coup happened before I left, and at the time it was heavily covered in the US. I hadn't heard about the military bases issue, though.

I promise to put some more pictures up soon!

Thanks for reading!

Village fair and personal practice

Alistair and I came home yesterday to an empty refrigerator (our own doing) and then it started to rain. By 7:30 we were pretty hungry and decided to venture out during a break in the showers, taking our neighbor Rochelle with us. Half-way into town it started pouring, and we managed to duck under an awning to wait for the hard rain to pass. After about 15 minutes it let up enough for us to venture over to the food court and the town fair.

Last night was the start of the fair, which will go on for 10 days. It's for a Catholic holiday on August 15, but I'm not sure which one. We walked around looking at the food stalls, which were either meaty or very sugary - Rochelle and I ended up splitting some churros, which kept us alive for a while, although perhaps not the healthiest option (but what do you expect at a fair?). We stepped into the corner store to grab a few things to make at home, when we heard trumpets playing on the street. We looked out to see an 8-piece marching band and people dressed in these giant folklore costumes - they were dressed as different characters, and the costumes were a full 4 feet taller than the person (they rested on the shoulders, and had parts to cover the person who was wearing them). One character, a woman, was chasing the other characters, and even some onlookers. Rochelle, who is from Trinidad, said that there is a similar spirit in Trinidadian folklore. We watched for a few minutes and then wandered home.

It was also funny to see the village teenagers out and about. Arlen had told us it's where the local boys and girls go to be seen, and to find a boyfriend or girlfriend. They were out in full force last night, girls dressed in short skirts and lots of make up, boys showing off in the various ways that boys do.

Today is a household maintenance day, just catching up on some tidying and laundry, so I thought I'd write a little about my personal practices of peace that I am trying to focus on this year.

I've been practicing yoga for ten years now, and it's been an important part of my life since I started. Over the past 8 months I've been trying to incorporate more meditation into my practice. This year, I am making it a commitment to really practice both yoga asana and meditation every day, because it makes me feel good, and helps me to be more peaceful inside so that I act more peacefully in the world.

I am also trying to practice mindful eating, which is something I started working on when I went to the Kripalu yoga teacher training. We eat several times a day, but so often it can be hurried or mindless, so that when we are finished, we almost don't realize what we've done. Mindful eating is a meditative practice, mostly just about being present while eating. It's harder than it sounds! No TV, no reading, just...eating. My brother gave me a book called Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays, MD, and it has some great exercises to practice. I'm trying to practice mindful eating, but it is easy to forget.

Another practice is nonviolent communication. I also read a book, so titled, but Marshall B. Rosenburg. It is perhaps one of the most practical books I've ever read, but harder to practice than you'd think. The basic idea is speaking and listening empathically, by observing, without judgement, your (or another person's) feelings and needs, and making a request based on that. It involves changing the way you think in a very fundamental way. However, I think it's very practical and worth the effort, so I'm working on that too.

So those are my goals. To integrate those practices into my daily life, so that hopefully one day they will be automatic.

On that note - off to the meditation cushion!