The blog that wasn't really.....

The completely adorable cat who invades our kitchen on a daily basis.... really wish she/he(?) weren't so cute ... there are days where I'm almost convinced to let her/him stay.

Rio Celeste... a moment of blue shined through....

INTRO:
So the problem with using pepper here is that you spend double the time you normally would to eat anything because you have to second guess every bite.... because you're sure that every flake is in reality a microscopic ant of the same variety that seem to have camped out within your computer.... and when you let up on the vigilance for a bit... that next bite always has a little extra crunch.


THE EXCUSE:
And the other problem is the fact that I am a massively slow blogger and my life currently is fantastic and inspiring and amazing and I am failing miserably at sharing it with you . So I will give up on trying to catch up on this past month, but do promise to attempt to DO MUCH MUCH better in the future. To very briefly illustrate here is a group photo of my food security class and some of the information I know about them:

L-R standing: Helen - journalist from Ethiopia (FANTASTIC have a very serious friend crush on this one), Aba (who is behind Helen) - Nigerian, Liz - USA, Agnes - VERY pregnant and from Uganda.... sassy... works in development projects in Uganda and Ethiopia to name a few.... upeace baby coming up!, Layla - USA, Suzanne - USA, Ramiro - Bolivian intn'l human rights lawer and B-boy.... apparently teaches hip hop dancing interventions w/gang kids and kids in prisons in Bolivia (yes he is just that cool), Martin - Switzerland, Awa - Cameroon, Tom - UK (the kid we met diving in Punta Uva), Eileen - USA (fantastic... works for the EPA organizing campaigns to clean up schools (getting lead out of schools etc) among other things), Hanada - Japan, Chera Lee - Canada, Jules - USA, me, Caroline - USA, Laura - USA, Azizi - Afghanistan ( Head of UNIDO - United Nations Industrial Development Organization- Operations in Afghanistan, occasionally has to go negotiate with rebels in mountain passes with AK-47s to get food convoys across.... you know... the usual.....), Reg- UK/Canada.... the Prof - lots of fisheries work and ag. development stuff in Malawi

L-R sitting: Rachael - Canada Vday coordinator-need I say more?, Beatrice - Switzerland/Sweden/(Palestinian+Hungarian), Hannah - Canada, Amanda - Canada (more involved in EVERYTHING at UPEACE than basically everyone else put together...), Dora - Hungarian (known to be part of the coordiantion for major music festivals on islands on the danube.....), Dora's Venzuelan husband, Cristobal (not a student but came to class everyday anyways and is an overall fantastic human being), Maya - US/Jamaica - actress, playwright, singer, juliard graduate (etc.) .... and THERE were A WHOLE LOT MORE CLASSROOMS just like it. The downside is you might have noticed that NONE of these people are Costa Rican. Very luckily for me, Chela still seems to enjoy spending time with me so I've gotten some Spanish in once in a while, and I am moving in with a fantastic family in a couple of days soon so that should be much much better.


What I can share is the fact that I just came back from a truly spectacular 3-day jungle adventure up a misty mountain (read volcano) with 3 fantastic ladies from my program....(a totally separate group from the Caribbean adventure - as there are many to choose from...) Rio Celeste (when it doesn't rain) is a river that is supposed to be bright turquoise because of the sulfur running off of the volcano (or some such) but as luck would have it we spent the entire day deep in fog and pouring rain. However as we had a motley assortment of raincoats, umbrellas, dogged determination, peanut butter, banana, honey sandwiches, not enough water, many many cameras, boxed wine and plastic cups with built in straws, fantastic (just to reiterate) traveling companions, and a healthy dose of humor.... we got along spectacularly. And we got to have a slip and slide through ankle deep mud all the way down the mountain!

Arbol de la PAZ.... BIGGEST TREE IN COSTA RICA (or so they say) ... that is Eileen up against the base of it .... just for a size comparison.... please keep in mind that she and I are the same height if attempting any calculations.... also keep in mind that the top of the frame is probably not even a quarter of the way up this tree.The oh-so remarkably dry path

Me, Liz, Emily and the less-than turquoise waterfall

Sippy-cups.... "but they'll ony work if there is something at the very bottom...."

HOT SPRINGS and bathing beauties.


and the rest of my photos can be found:
http://picasaweb.google.com/avra.heller/RioCeleste02?authkey=Gv1sRgCK6egd-VjZWcew#

and eileen's photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/eileennaples82/RioCelesteQueRico#

And we're off.... New Years on the Caribbean

Ok. So I will attempt to start a blog.... but I'm not really sure how to go about this. The thing with Costa Rica is that it feels so comfortable, and my urge to blog is less than when I feel somewhere more dramatically foreign. That aside, I will attempt a brief overview of how the last couple of weeks have gone.... I flew out of SFO with two friends, Tina and Kristine (pictured on the plane shot...) who are both on my program and both from Nor Cal. We flew out on Dec 30th and landed early in the morning on the 31st.... we then dropped our bags with a friend at her new apartment, and then ran back to San Jose to catch a bus to Puerto Viejo for New Years. In total by the time we hit the hostel, we had been traveling for about 24 hours. The hostel, Rocking J's (www.rockingjs.com), is a fantastic hostel if you're goal is a cheap place to stay with fantastic food and friendly folk from around the world, and if you are not interested in spending much time sleeping as it is a pretty raucous crowd (particularly on New Years...) We spent 3 days on the beach and then moved to a dive shop at a beach slightly further south, Punta Uva, to get PADI certified. Diving is completely fantastic and I cannot wait to do it for 'real'. Though Punta Uva is incredibly beautiful (see the photo at the top of this blog) it was really windy and the fine sand while lovely to lounge on, made visibility about the same as if I were diving in my front yard house during the summer.... (read about 6 feet ahead of you...) But breathing underwater is clearly what I was 'born' to do.... so on that front! :).










At Punta Uva we were staying in the dive shop for free and it was a complete 180 shift from Rocking J's. At night the only people around were us and a the dive guides/instructors Juan y Andres, and Juan's girlfriend, Katy, They were all fantastic and we spent the first evening chatting and generally discussing life. The next night was of slightly higher drama, one of my friends got a kidney infection and there was a rush to a local clinic.... but she is fine now, so just to make sure things weren't boring. ... We left Punta Uva Tuesday morning. Our way home took a bit longer than the way there for a variety of reasons including the fact that we had our first run in with a natural resource issue in Costa Rica. We were stuck behind a blockade for about 40 minutes because a town was without water for 2 + days and the city was refusing to provide it, so the town closed down a main highway.... apparently we were very lucky as we came at the tail end of the protest... they had been set up since early that morning! As I still had been unable to get in touch with my landlady I spent that first night at a friend's apartment. Wed-Fri we had orientation - I found out that this degree will apparently be bequeathed upon me by the United Nations .... so there is that. Friday night a couple of girls on my program went out with some new UPEACE colleagues.... 1) was a lawyer on the high court of India when he was 22 2) is a Kurdistani TV news personality/celeb 3+4) are students at a university in the Netherlands and interning here with an organization called Earth Charter.... They're from Ukraine and Azerbaijan respectively. And that was week one.... There has been a good week and a half since, but that will have to be saved for the next one. Besos

some pre central america San Francisco love