where in the world is Rainbow??

hellooo lovely friends & family!

i know, i been doing a very terrible job of answering that question!! it's hard to believe over 2 months have passed since i've left Vancouver... it's already more than halfway to coming home for Christmas! yikes! you know i love sharing my travels... but no internet for the first couple weeks here, then finding myself awash in seas of intense classes, readings and papers and life... (and some visits from some wonderful friends!) and poof! here i am November! but yes i DO have much to share with you all... but it might have to happen in bits and pieces as i catch up with the last couple months! anyways, sorry for the very long delay... but BIENVENIDO!! welcome to my blog and mucho gracias for visiting and journeying with me this year!

sooo... where am I??

i'm here in Costa Rica, Central America... in a little-ish town called Ciudad Colon, about a half hour from the capital, San Jose.

i'm here studying for one year, in a masters program in Peace Education at the United Nations University for Peace. briefly, i'm studying about transformative education... how and what kind of education can lead to personal and social change for peace in society. i finished my studies at UBC in Global Resource Systems... studying mostly about international development in Africa. near the end of my studies, i became more and more aware of the challenges that conflict pose to any sort of development - that $$, school buildings or malaria nets, or even technical solutions like infrastructure and economics can't answer. then in Norway i happened to come across a book called "How Children Understand War and Peace: A Call for International Peace Education" and became very intrigued and excited about the possibility of creating cultures of peace through education. some friends in Norway might remember me running into an Applied Tropical Agriculture class with that book one morning saying that i think i'd found my life calling! :) but being one with lots of different ideas all the time (and just figuring it was something a teensy bit closer to my passions than intercropping and soil nitrogen indicators that i just couldn't connect with in that ATA class!), i never thought that a year later, i'd be accepted to study a masters here! anyways, i'm here now, hoping to get a deeper and more purposeful & practical understanding of the field... which, quite honestly, i really don't know how i will apply specifically after this year, but we will see. right now i've just written a paper about human rights education through community-based literacy learning programs in Uganda, and i might explore that a little bit more, but we'll see - ideas are still floating and spinning and off and running. :)

anyways, that's a lot of text... here's some pics of our beautiful campus!





okay, more to come, but i have class in the morning so i should pack up and get some sleep... but i'll be sure to share more soon! :)

lots of love to you all!

xo
rainbow =)

ps. i used to email out my updates to anyone who wanted me to... but nifty new technology says there is a way to subscribe to them through my blog. i haven't quite figured out how to do it, so let me know if you want me to email you for now and i'll direct you to subscribing to them when i figure it out!