fun times in CR :)

im done!! well... not quite, but done my paper! "Liberation Literacy"... about literacy learning in Uganda for social change towards a culture of peace. i know reading papers are hardly anyone's weekend past times... but do read it if you want and have the chance! :)

aaand i can't believe it's already december.. and it'll be time for home (and snow on the mountains!) in just 3 weeks! my goodness the time's flown by!

although, i have to say, this weekend i was re-thinking my whole culture-of-peace, change-the-world grand models, when me and 2 of my classmates were staying at a hostel at the beach - the owner was a 73 year old man from texas, who was maybe *the* most bitter, racist, protective, and kind of calmly hateful person i have personally met! there were stickers on his window - "trespassers will be shot" was one - and as it turned out, i don't think he was kidding! he was talking about the 'crackheads' in town that were always out to get him, stealing his stuff, etc... he has this big metal gate in the front of his hostel, and he sits there, day in day out, in his rocking chair, watching TV, engineering ways to make his hostel more secure... and waiting for these kids to get close enough so he'd have the opportunity to 'jab em in the eye' with his big metal pole. and he sits there with 2 things in front of him - his calculator (calculating his losses from the business maybe?) and a big knife! he was kind and protective of us though - but if we were local, black, israeli, non-English speaking, or a whole list of other things, he would've turned us away! we spent a good chunk of our time there chatting with him and listening to him... we actually got groceries and cooked up a fancy coconut breaded jumbo shrimp dinner in the kitchen to share with him, and i was a little disappointed he didn't want to join us and sat in his chair watching movies by himself instead. but anyways it was really sad, this man hates everything around him! i hope one day he'll know what it is to wake up with a smile. and anyways, it made all of us UPeace students think a lot about what we're trying to do here... and the here-and-now tangible peace making in individual lives. on the way out today, we thanked him for his hospitality and Andro, another student in the International Law and Settlement of Disputes program joked "take care of yourself and don't kill anybody!", to which the man responded "i won't kill any of the good ones". yikes. maybe i should do my next paper or project on him.. anyways, i should get going to bed, but i thought i'd put that up now cuz if i didn't do it now, i'd never get to it later!

anyways, for those of you worrying for me that it's all work and no play out here, don't worry, i do get my share of fun days, in some extravagantly beautiful places here in Costa Rica. sometimes after a few weeks of paper writing it amazes me that im suddenly in a whole another honeymoon-beautiful world that's just a bus ride away! i mean, i just came back from a beach weekend in the pacific to celebrate my roommie's birthday, and got to go surfing when i decided after laying in the sun for awhile with a book and watching some surfers for awhile that it'd be a nice to surf for a bit after all! it really amazes me sometimes. here's some pictures, not from this weekend, because my camera doesn't work anymore... but just a collection of little adventures throughout the last couple months. sorry it's taken me so long to get some of these fun pictures up! :)

good friends from norway... somehow we all found our way to san jose, CR! :)

trying out some tico specialties... tortillas and chicken and some other goodies :)
real live volcano! with debbie who came to visit from vancouver!! :)


waterfalls! :)
natural river hotsprings from the volcano!


not-so-natural but still oh-so-beautiful hotsprings! (but still with all-natural volcano-heated water!)






getting caught in the big pacific waves with joffe!

black sand mud masks in the Caribbean! (and the white sand beach is just around the corner! strange!)


hehe.. snorkeling for the first time in the caribbean with joffe & seeing lots of tropical fish (on the other side of the camera)! :)




so no worries - im definitely getting my share of Costa Rican beach & sun too along with my reading and paper writing! random collection of my adventures here in the last couple months. now just 3 weeks more - planning out my thesis in my Research Methods class, and then home for the holidays! hope you are all doing well! take care & looking forward to coming home... and seeing some of you pretty darn soon!!! :)

xox!
rainbow =)