C o s t a R i c a 2 0 0 8 / 2 0 0 9

peace ed 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:08:00 +0000

i can harrrdly believe it! we've just finished our last course and had our last ever day of class yesterday!! it really feels like just a little while ago our class was just getting to know each other... and now we've just had our last pizza party and reminisced and laughed about the good/bad/funny times together this year!

it feels like i was still just getting to really know & bond with all of my classmates and now i've said bye already to a couple that had to hurry off home to jobs, etc... but i am thankful for this year of 17 amazing people with very different lives, ideas, passions and quirks coming together to do something so the same and SO very different... and i can indeed say that it was an awesome little family!

group hug!
(all photo credits to the awesome morea steinhauer!)

more to come again.. hopefully soon!

xo
rainbow =)

ps. my classmates are crazy :) here's Trish & Birta's musical social activism for vegetable rights - "LETTUCE BE!" and "GIVE PEAS A CHANCE!"!!

(it actually starts after the first 2 minutes of them just laughing)

oh how i will miss these girls!! :)

life... it keeps me on my toes :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:47:00 +0000

hola friends!! i'm sorry to have disappeared for the month - i hope a nice long blog post will make up for it! :) i've enjoyed my classes and projects but it definitely keeps me energizer-bunny going! i was just reading this morning in a book (called 'The Rest of God: Restoring your soul by restoring the Sabbath' by Mark Buchanan) a little blurb that i think well describes my life here in the last little bit!

"It's not that I don't enjoy what I do - I love it most days, except Mondays, and sometimes Wednesdays, and every Thursday afternoon... but all the rest of the time I love it. Actually, that's the problem: I love it overmuch. I spend an average amount of time doing my work, fifty hours or so a week. No more, maybe a tad less, than most people at their jobs. But then I spend many more hours thinking about my work, talking about it, stewing over it, jotting memos to myself concerning it... I'll lie in bed and remember some [little thing] I want to look up or think up some new slant on a conversation I should therefore resume, and I'll spring out of bed and shuffle downstairs to scrawl something in a journal or rummage a scrap note from a hay stack of paper.

In a word, I'm obsessed."

minus that i don't have stairs to go down, and that i'm pretty sure my school work adds up to well more than 50 hours a week, i say that sums up life here, especially as i'm heading into the last 2 weeks of class (crazy!) and 2 months of thesis! i don't like "obsessed" per se :)... but i guess i am devoting my best to make the most of my time here studying about peace education this year! always too much to think about and not enough time to think about it all... but while the busy-ness is, well.. busy, i do enjoy what im doing for the most part. :) and my friends remind me to take a break every now and then to enjoy a trip out to the movies or into San Jose for nothing more than a stroll and an ice cream like i did this weekend.

here's some of what i've been working on... in no particular order! :)
**i realize that the links aren't working - i'm not sure why, but i'll try to get them up and running soon**

Projects:
- Designing a literacy (reading and writing) program for Sierra Leone that focuses on learning about the "official" post-war justice institutions - the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court - which is generally my idea for my thesis.

- Creating a program lesson plan for "Language-based Literacy and Justice" that is supposed to be a preparation for the post-war justice institutions program, using local-language words, expressions and metaphors as a basis for exploring and evaluating what "justice" means within one's own culture.

- Analyzing the language policy and language situation of Sierra Leone and what this means for literacy programs. In summary, I think that literacy learning in mother tongues is important, and adding second language learning (in Krio especially, as a commonly spoken language throughout the country) can be useful for peacebuilding.

- Designing a proposed 3-week course for the UPEACE MA in Peace Education program on "Peace Education in Violent and Post-Violent Conflicts" because this is what I came to learn about at UPEACE... and to my surprise, hasn't been a major focus throughout the year. So myself and some other students took it on as a final project for one of our courses to do some research and design a new course. I'm not sure if and when it might actually become a course for UPEACE, and I haven't had the time to try working on the logistics of it with our Department Head... but she did come see when we did a presentation and seemed impressed with the positive response from our class.

Other things:

- i started doing an internship last month with the UPEACE Human Rights Center, working with a professor on research to support the work of a UN independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty. we're working on a project on the linkages between poverty, conflict and human rights, which has been really interesting. and sad. i was reading and summarizing an article last night on young people in armed conflict in Sierra Leone and it was sad to see how things that are really supposed to help, like the Disarmament programs for ex-combatants get used by commanders as part of the "deal" for recruiting fighters. i'll be working with the project til mid-June... more to keep me on my toes!

- i applied for an internship with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), in their Education in Post-Conflict and Post-Disaster section and had an interview last week... but i didn't get the job. but that's okay! many things to explore and do!

- quite a few weeks ago now, but i did a presentation about violence against women the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Africa) on campus with my friend Sierra as part of the v-day campaign ... the decades-long civil war has been called the deadliest war since World War II, with rape and sexual violence being used on a massive scale as a tactic of war. the link is for the powerpoint we used, adapted from the v-day support site, and i think it gives a really good overview of the war and situation if you'd like to have a peak.

and lastly, some of what i'd love to be working on one day but just don't have time at the moment to put my mind there yet...

- "techy gadgets and the Congo!" (for lack of a better name at the moment!) from some of the research for the Congo presentation, i found that almost every electronic we use (cell phones, lap tops, ipods) has tin and coltan (minerals) in it. i also found out that something like 80% of the world's coltan and much of the tin is mined in the Congo. the minerals are sold by the conflicting parties in the Congo and the profits used to fund the ongoing war. so... all these gadgets we buy in part helps fund the war in the Congo. who knew??!! soo... what can we do? my idea (which isn't mine!) is to let more people know, and work on pressuring companies like Apple or Motorola or whatever, to ensure that what goes into their products is "conflict free". like the movie Blood Diamond, that at the end, prompted people to buy certified conflict-free diamonds... but to do the same thing for conflict-free coltan and tin in electronics. i have more ideas about this... but they are temporarily on the shelf. if anyone wants to take it on, go get 'er, that would be awesome!! :) here are two websites that might help! Raise Hope for the Congo; Enough Project

- even better than just certified conflict-free diamonds/minerals, how much more awesome would it be still to have certified peace diamonds/minerals? i found out that the peace agreements signed in Sierra Leone at the end of the war spelled out that proceeds from the diamonds were supposed to be used for development (including health services, education, etc). i included in my Post-War Justice Literacy Program plan an idea about fund-matching for raising $$ through projects and having them matched by the government through diamond proceeds, with the $$ going to reparation programs for victims of the war. if there was some way to certify that the proceeds from a diamond went specifically to funding peace-building activities, how wonderful would that be? i'd want one of those on my finger one day! :)

- something we called "Transport Peace"! Myself and two of my classmates "came up" with this idea one day during class of using the Translink bus/skytrain/seabus system in BC as a space for peace education, and kind of designed what some of the elements of it might look like... and then my professor from Argentina told us that it was a nice idea, and went on to tell us about this amazing project she which printed little tid-bits of info about Human Rights on bus tickets in Buenos Ares (the capital of Argentina) to teach people about human rights, and since then, the bus tickets have been used and reserved for educating about social justice-related things! here's some pictures of the bus tickets.

pretty awesome hey? i want to do this in Vancouver before someone gets to Translink to turn the bus tickets into more corporate advertising space...

but i guess we will see... that's it for now! i know this wasn't probably the most exciting post with not a lot of pictures, but as i told my class when i did a presentation on my Language-Based Literacy and Justice project last week - i know it's been a long day, but this is my idea for my thesis, so try to get excited with me for just a little bit! :)

hehe... i've got lots of pictures though, especially from over the Easter break, when my friends came to visit. so i'll try to put some of those up soon to make up for my lack of more fun stories and pictures of this post. just for fun for now, here's a couple more pictures of creepy crawly visitors to our house, til my next post. :)

finger-long millipede of some kind...

i dont know what these beetle-ly bugs are called, but there's tons of them in our house every night if we leave doors or windows open when it gets dark. they fly around and crash into the walls, or walk off the end of the table, and fall on their backs and can't get back up again... so Julianne and i take the broom and play golf with them out the door like at a driving range :)

giant cockroach.. beside my size 6 shoe.

scorpion #3 in our house - longer than the light switch is wide! yikes!

swarms of giant wasp-sized ants i found nesting (nests and eggs and all) in the bookshelves of my room that took me 4 hours to clean out. (for being so bug-squimish i was pretty proud of myself for dealing with them - although my neighbour had no pity on me for massacre-ing another life form and refused to give me a good-job-hug!)

ok, bedtime for me now, sweet dreams! hehe, ill have nicer pictures next time, i promise. (and i'll let you know when i get those links fixed) :)

hugs and smiles,
xo
rainbow =)

caribbean twenty-four! :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:10:00 +0000

i was super lucky last weekend to have my birthday at the beach!! i was much more than counting my blessings to have my bday on a saturday - it was my friend Francine's bday on the wednesday before so we had a little party at her house with our Peace Ed class and some bday cake... but that was after the SIX hours of class we had that day!! i think i got my wish for a fabulous birthday - julianne and i with her parents that came to visit for the weekend took a little trip out to the caribbean coast away from homework and thesis writing... here are some highlights of tropical goodness!

"the wonderful rainforest!" :)

beachykeen goodness!

monkeys at the beach!!

i've never been so close to a live monkey not in a zoo!

and then for some snorkeling!!
(but with some dancing in our snorkel gear first!)

julianne's ONWARD HO! with her giant duck feet!

underwater world!!

(i wish you could see some of the fish in the pictures!)

it's not a bday without a cake! chocolate bday cake on the road (cuz i ate so much delicious pasta on my bday night i couldn't eat my cake til the next day)! :)

mmmm and bday pina coladas too!!

24!! :D

so that's it!! a little bday break, and indeeeeed beautiful start to a new year of being twenty four! school has continued to be intense and a little stressful & exhausting sometimes, but this semester is just zipping by! my friends ashley and jess will be coming in a week for easter break and my family's coming at the end of june for vacation/ graduation! i can't wait to share costa rica with them! :D

anyways, hope you are all doing well! til next time...

MUAH! :)
xo
rainbow =)

my house is a zoo!!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:08:00 +0000

aside from the four friendly neighbourhood cats and couple of dogs that love to wander our home and property, our lovely casita (little house) is home to quite a few other creatures... mostly creepy crawly ones.

giant killer ants! ... eck! extra incentive to try to keep the kitchen spotless!

crickets to sing us to sleep...

sometimes hoppy ones - Ross (our neighbour)'s cat Sylvia and her little toad friend.

and reptiley ones... just little ones though, phew! gecko in our garden!

here he is in our living room, pre-getting swept into a dustpan and swung into the garden

guess what's behind him under the tin can with a heavy bowl on top...?

SCORPION!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAH!! we were warned about these!! our neighbours found this one in the house and got it in a jar. yeeeeeks! we were counting ourselves lucky til i looked down one day doing my homework and saw it and ran and grabbed the first thing i could find to cup him in... and then left him for 3 days cuz we didn't know what to do... and then last night i turned out all the lights after finishing my homework and accidentally kicked the can over on my way back to my room in the dark!! i shrieked and screamed (waking julianne up, who laughed at me in the morning!) and ran for the kitchen and groped madly for the lights and to my relief, found the scorpion still beside the can. i covered him back up and went to bed. :)

thesis joys and woes

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:23:00 +0000

hello amigos! i know i've been quite MIA on my blog the last few weeks, minus the little bit about my new home (which i continue to love and be amazingly thankful for!).... but with good reason! i've been working hard on my thesis the last few weeks because our last visiting professor is the one who's advising my thesis so i've had to be doubly ambitious the last few weeks to do my course work and get as much thesis re-proposing, planning & organizing done together as possible while he was here, so it's been both frustrating and draining but incredibly awesome and exciting!

first of all, let me introduce my adviser - Dr. Thomas Mark Turay, from Sierra Leone, who just taught our course in Education for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding...

here's our class on his birthday with a little surprise celebration! :)

his course was really good - maybe not even so much the formal content of it, but just from who he is as a very inspiring embodiment of peace! here's a very brief background of his story (well, one of a continually unfolding story of his work as a peacemaker!). you can read the full version of the amazing story from his own words here!

"[Dr. Turay] intended to complete the chapter within a couple of months while he gathered background material for a doctoral dissertation and conducted peacebuilding workshops on behalf of a Canadian NGO. His plans were changed dramatically by the January 1999 rebel invasion of Freetown. Trapped for several weeks, Turay then stayed longer until he could make contact with his three daughters—the eldest eighteen and twins aged sixteen—trapped behind rebel lines. In order to raise the money needed to bribe rebel fighters at the many checkpoints between Freetown and Makeni, he took short-term capacity building assignments with a variety of Sierra Leonean NGOs. The ironies trip over each other: aiming to write about capacity building, Turay became a practitioner. Planning to study international humanitarian agencies, he represented one himself until the invasion occurred, when he suddenly became "a local." Studying war, he became its victim. Desperate to find his daughters, and a witness to murder, his belief in peace was put to tests that nobody should endure.

Because of the way events unfolded, it was decided that he should scrap the outline he started with, and, instead, tell the story of his year in Sierra Leone in the first person. The fundamental theme of the book— building local capacities in a complex emergency—emerges in some ways much more clearly than it would have if the chapter had been written as originally intended. We believe that the convictions Turay articulates about the difficulties of capacity building amid collapsing structures and communities has special relevance and urgency."

i really feel privileged to have someone so experienced, knowledgeable and personally & humbly committed to peacebuilding be advising my thesis. he mentioned in class that when he is living in Sierra Leone (as he is now, long term), he makes a point of never sleeping in the cities in nice houses to show in practice that he isn't over and above his fellow rural folks just because he has a doctorate! i love it! and he just has a WEALTH of practical experience & knowledge of what i'm looking into too! in our first meeting together, when i was sharing with him about my research and deciding if i wanted him to be my adviser, i asked if he might know anyone in his Sierra Leone context doing literacy and peacebuilding that might be interested in my research and he just smiled and said, "well, you are looking at the director of an NGO for literacy in Sierra Leone". "oh... i see! all right then!" :)

sooo... my thesis is about peace education through literacy learning programs (programs for learning how to read and write, most basically). there is a big international push towards literacy these days, as a human right and as enabling for many other goals in development. we are actually a little over halfway into the "United Nations Literacy Decade" from 2003-2012.

my research will be focused on Sierra Leone

which is home to about 6 million people in West Africa, and that had a very brutal 11 year civil war that just ended very recently, in 2002. it is a country extraordinarily rich in natural resources, but extremely poor due to well, many things, including bad governance and the war. it ranks 177th / 177 on the United Nations Human Development Index. it's the country where the movie Blood Diamond (mined diamonds whose profits fuel war) was set in.

anyways, my research is going to be looking particularly at the work of an organization called the Sierra Leone Adult Education Association, which is already doing some work in Sierra Leone around peacebuilding in its literacy programs - seeing out what they are doing, what literacy means for them, and how they can frame their programs even more towards effective peacebuilding. here's my proposal for the full wordy version of the description. :) basically, i'll be looking at a lot of what's written about literacy and peacebuilding already, and also doing some phone interviews with the director of SLADEA and program facilitators and participants - lucky for me, Dr. Turay is very connected with the peacebuilding community in Sierra Leone - the director of SLADEA was once a student of his, the umbrella organization that gave me consent for my research is a good friend, and some other names I've run into in the field and emailed turned out to also be good friends! :)

anyways, it will be a very exciting (and intense!) research project in the next few months! so much so, in fact that the next few classes i have left seem to pale in comparison in terms of interesting-ness... and i'd rather just be working on my thesis...
[i've just mapped out thesis life in the next 4 months in calendar form :)... lots to do and not so much time when it's right there in front of me! yeeks!]

but anyways, it'll be good, hopefully! we have a new professor from Argentina coming in tomorrow... so deep breath....phooooooooo... and dive into another course! here we go! :)

home sweet home! :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:02:00 +0000

chronicles of our move from our old apartment to a new home for the next couple months!here's some pictures :)

now, all our bags are packed & ready to go!! (how do we have SO much stuff??!)

bare and scrubbed clean... good bye old apartment!

bye to our next door neighbours! he was so cute, he ran inside the house and brought us a cookie and gave us another hug.

bye to Ana from the pulperia (little shop) a few houses down from us that we visited often when we were cooking and realized we were out of eggs or milk or something!

called a taxi, and we're off!

i can't believe we fit everything into one taxi!

opening the door to our new house!!

moving on in!

my new room... with enough room for guests coming to visit! :)

julianne's new room

more awesome extra's... a hammock to catch a nap in! :)

and a yard to play frisbee in...!

our living-room-turned-saturday-night-theatre with a projector borrowed from school! :)

and, most happy for me, just a very relaxing and quiet spot to write my thesis in for the next couple months! :)

i have to tell you, the last semester i got pretty depressed sometimes in our very new and nice but noisy and stuck-in-the-city home. i used to stay at school from 7am - 7pm so i could get some work done where it's quiet enough for me to think, and before i started walking to school and getting to enjoy a bit of outside that way, i'd go walk to a spot about 20 minutes away and peer through the fence of two houses to get a glimpse of the open valley and river below, and i just wanted so much to be in nature! on sundays especially, i'd try to have a bit more quiet time and read and journal, and i'd get SO frustrated with the car alarms and ATVs and screaming kids in the street, cute as they are in person. i guess i'm not quite a city girl at heart! probably near the end of october, i had found a place i hoped to move into close to here, and when everything was set and ready to go, the owner said he actually wasn't renting it out after all, and i was so disappointed. anyways, this house is even more beautiful and i am SO very thankful now for this home!

so here it is, our new home! great is thy faithfulness! :)

all my bags are packed i'm a-ready to go!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:53:00 +0000

or... i wish! but alas, not quite..

but i AM very excited... to be moving tomorrow!!! i have a beeauutiful country-side house waiting for me to call home for the next couple months, so i've got lots of packing up to do! i have lots more pictures and updates to share - it'll be coming soon!

for now, back to packing up, and until maybe tomorrow, here's a clip from the horse festival (or some sort of festival that involved lots of horses!) in town last week. who knew horses could dance?!

hasta la proxima! (til next time!)
much love!
rainbow =)

"UPMUNC"

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:06:00 +0000

... aka "University for Peace Model United Nations Conference"! like i mentioned briefly in an earlier post, i was representing Uganda on the Security Council, the 15 country council of the United Nations with 5 permanent members (USA, UK, France, China & Russia) and 10 non-permanent members (at the moment, Austria, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Japan, Libya, Mexico, Turkey, Uganda & Vietnam), that has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. What a mandate! And, as I found, it is definitely easier said than done! Our3 day UPMUNC version of Security Council was to "deal with" two issues - (1) the global economic crisis and the possible creation of a new UN council for economic security and (2) criminal responsibility in Gaza which turned into brokering ceasefire between Israel, Palestine and Lebanon.

It was pretty intense; we had nine 1½ hour Security Council sessions in the course of three days, along with the 'extras' like training, opening & closing ceremonies, keynote speakers, a diplomatic reception, social events, etc. I was really into it the first day, especially because I was nervous, trying to figure out as I went what I was doing, and learning all the modes of debate and moderated/unmoderated caucuses, points of order, setting motions and all the formal diplomatic pizazz that Peace Ed'ers never much adhere to! I quite enjoyed it at the beginning, it was fun to wear a different hat and refer to myself in the third person as "the delegation of Uganda" every time I spoke.... hehe, and it was generally just nice to be a bit more formal and academic than my Peace Ed program usually is and have that be appreciated, but by the second day, I was realizing the nitty gritty of negotiating for hostile parties to agree to ceasefire and the tediousness of drafting resolutions word by word that are acceptable to all parties... by the third day, I was completely exhausted and drained, and just wanted to please pass a resolution for world peace!

When by lunch on the third day, we still had talked in 100 circles and still had come to no resolutions, I had said "we have to pass something this afternoon, it would be so sad if we didn't resolve anything!" and someone else pointed out that sad, maybe, but maybe more realistic - the world's problems don't get solved in three days! I guess that's true - though we tried! the UNEP (UN Environmental Program) council participants stormed the Security Council at one point demanding that the global warming issues be brought up in the Security Council with 'activists' yelling to save the whales, and our council chairs escorted them out telling them sorry, people are dying as we speak and we are on the brink of ceasefire in Gaza, and making a formal media statement on how the disruption interrupted the negotiations. on a happy note, we did in the end come to agreed terms for ceasefire between Israel, Palestine & Lebanon, which for some long stretches seemed next to impossible.

"hmmmmm...." - Uganda & Russia, strategizing to change the world!

the media team in action!

"Israel" signing the peace deal

I have to say, I learned a LOT in the 3 days and I hope our program in Peace Ed will soon move from teaching methods and critiques of formal education and deal with real conflict resolution in the world! Meanwhile, I don't think that this heated arguing debates and legal-style negotiations are for me, but I now have that much more appreciation of those students in the International Law and Settlement of Disputes program at UPeace, and kudos to those that devote themselves to this everyday in the real world!

the amazing 'UPMUNC' board (Oscar, Birta & Rawle) that pulled the whole thing together (also photo credits and thanks to Morea for a bunch of these pictures!)

peace & love from the Security Council! :)

happy valentines!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:43:00 +0000

with warmest chocolate chip pancake and raspberry wishes! :)

xo
rainbow =)

scary hat to wear for a couple days...

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:49:00 +0000

So I'm supposed to be representing Uganda in the United Nations Security Council at a mock UN conference for the next three days... which would be fantastic, except that I can't say I've been following much of anything going on in the Security Council these days (or, really, any days as of yet). I've been scrambling to finish a paper after have a final project presentation today, and I'm not even quite done my paper, but it's time to switch gears into Google-ing "Uganda +UN +Security Council" and seeing what I come up with. There are going to be a lot of non-UPeace people there, including the former President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) representative, and the Ambassador of the Netherlands... not to mention a whole crew of high school students from a prestigious international school nearby that are probably a whole lot more prepared than us!

On a different note, I was very paper-ed out and decided to take a break from typing and add a little something more creative. The result? A summary of my Education for Sustainable Development course, in tree form :)

anyways I should run and try to do a little research and figure out something for tomorrow... this could be embarrassing!

xo
rainbow =)

cuisine goodness

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:07:00 +0000

a slightly randomly collection of food related stories!

my first attempt at "gallo pinto"! black beans & rice, yummy costa rican style with onion, green pepper, cilantro and secret ingredient salsa lizano... almost always served with an egg. very traditional everyday dish, usually for breakfast. i've kinda missed most of the cultural experience here, living in an apartment rather than with a host family... but i had to give the national dish(?) a try! :)

i DO have a pseudo host family though! my friends Kyi Kyi from Myanmar and Ochieng from Kenya live with the kindest most hospitable family... they fondly call her host mom Moma Rosa (leftmost in the picture). i've been over a couple times and they invited a few of us over for dinner with them last weekend. me and Julianne actually made African food with Ochieng... but it was a treat to have some family time! :) (im not sure i would survive school with that level of family fun & hype every day though, so im more than happy to be living with Julianne!)

me and Julianne actually make African food every now and then at home... twice this week we had ugali and skumaweeki! (corn flour mixed with water to make between pudding and cake, with spinach stew) my most terribly dreaded dish in Tanzania that avoided at all cost including skipping meals... i never would've thought i'd willingly make and eat it here! but the Africans here (julianne included, at heart!) get soooo genuinely excited about having ugali together it's been rubbing off, and i actually kinda like it now!

and lastly for now, a smorgasbord of yummies last night for european night at our school! french crepes, swiss cheese fondue, spanish gazpacho, italian tiramisu... and even norwegian brødskiver.. basically just bread with anything on top, but it brought back good memories. :) the north americans hosted a traditional thanksgiving dinner last semester, the asian students hosted an asia night before Christmas with all sorts of amazing performances and a dinner feast...

and last night was cocktail party with the europeans! dressing up & classy fun. :)

more to come hopefully soon - i have some good pictures from a field trip for our course yesterday too. but we're wrapping up this course this week and have some more projects to hand in so ill have to see when i can get to it! and we're having a 3 day model United Nations conference at UPeace at the end of the week. i'm going to be representing Uganda on the Security Council... i really have no idea yet what i'm doing! hmmm.. i'll have to squeeze in some research time in there!

have a lovely rest of your weekend and talk to you guys again sometime soon!

xo
rainbow =)

saturday market :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:25:00 +0000

hey all! :)

i hope you have been having a lovely few weeks. a lot has happened here, but alas... i haven't had the chance to do any blogging. we have our Bible study coming over in about 20 minutes so again, just one little thing for now...

this is the saturday morning market in town! fresh local fruits and veggies... one of my favourite parts of the week! :)

the cantaloupe's bigger than julianne's head!! :)

50¢ fresh coconuts to sip on when we're done our shopping!

ooh and this is the "yucca" that we made tasty falafels out of last time

it's also been crazy windy here, like at the front of the ferry... only it's been howling non-stop for almost a week!

it's actually knocked me off balance a couple times and it really feels like you have to swim through it! it's blown our power and internet out numerous times all week, but we've been lucky enough at least that we haven't been losing our water, like many of our classmates! we've been getting a bit tired of the crazy wind, especially when our internet goes out... but this morning julianne and i decided to do some interpretive dancing to the howling wind - i was the wind and she was the curtains... and we rolled on the floor laughing for the next 10 minutes. and we decided the next time we want to be upset at the wind, we have to wind-dance for 5 minutes and see if we have anything more to say. :)

okie, more coming soon. hope you are all having a lovely weekend.

with warm wishes & hugs!
rainbow =)

in and around ciudad colon

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:36:00 +0000

a couple more pictures from life as it is here! :)

life at home...

us vs. coconut

african dinner party for julianne's bday! :)

ice cream man! :) we run out when we hear the tinking bells on his cart

laundry fiasco... we left the water running once for our semi-automatic laundry machine and didn't notice until our kitchen & living room was flooded with 2 inches of water! :) it took us 2 hours to sweep the water out the door, but it was more funny than disastrous - thank goodness for tile floors!

class on hold to all watch the inauguration of Obama last week :)

hiking up to "el mirador" (the viewpoint?) on a few occasions, about a 40 minute hike up near campus, soon-to-be my backyard! :)

on a clear day you can see the pacific ocean over the valley

horsebackriding up near campus! :)

hope you enjoyed a couple more pictures! bedtime again for now before the last week of this course! a girl from Myanmar, Kyi Kyi and i

(picture: myself & Kyi Kyi dressing up in traditional myanmar clothes, and Adelaine from france in Korean (i think!) outfit on "asia night" last semester)

are doing a final project together, about using dramatic theatre to influence policy makers on the issue of access to internet, as a surface issue of dialoguing about perceptions of national security, which is more the heart of it. right now, the Myanmar government internet or blocks sites when they feel it's a threat to them, so we're planning a project that will use drama to bring together people from the government, non-government organizations and rural/urban areas to address the issue. Kyi Kyi's had quite some experience with using drama with youth to bring up child trafficking issues to the government, and what we're working on now is something she might be able to make use of when she goes home, so it's awesome working with her! :)

and lastly for now... in case anyone maybe finds a need for it... here's my mailing address! :)

Rainbow Choi
University for Peace
Department of Academic Administration
P.O. Box 138-6100
San José, Costa Rica
Central America

a week in the life of...

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:21:00 +0000

life in a typical week here in Colon!

i'm at school monday thru friday, in class from 9-12. i'm taking a course now called "facilitation and drama methods for conflict transformation" which has been pretty entertaining (if you need a ever need a good icebreaker/group game, i have a couple pretty hilarious ones now!)

but at first, frustratingly nothing at all to do with real conflict transformation, which was much of my frustration with my classes before Christmas, but in the last couple days it's gotten a bit better and maybe i will be able to take away some things that i can apply later.

but anyways, it's been pretty nice being back up on campus - it really is beautiful, and that makes me happy!

actually one of my favourite parts of week is running up to campus on tuesday and thursday mornings with two of my friends here, francine and andrew, who - crazy as they are! - are both training for half marathons. there's a half marathon in Panama (next door to Costa Rica) at the end of march that andrew's been trying to talk me into joining, but i'm not sure im quite that motivated... but it's still been lots of fun running in the mornings. we've gotten down to about 40 minutes (i think its 6.5ish km, but quite uphill!) but anyways the best part is just being able to enjoy the gorgeous road up free on my feet rather than on the bus!

nice start to the day, eh? :) i printed some pictures when i was at home in vancouver and put up a bunch of pictures in my room from some of the beautiful places i've been - around BC, all over norway, quebec, tanzania & uganda... and i just said, "wow, God.. this is really amazing, and even more, you've given me the privilege to see it... t h a n k y o u!"

anyways, the days im not running, there's a couple students that are awesome yoga teachers and i join them M/W/F's in the morning - also a really nice start to the day. which reminds me, not so much for a typical week!, but for halloween, i found an impromptu costume by (sadly) massacreing a giant teddy bear (which i almost gave to the next door neighbour kids on the way home after they came to give him a big hug)

and lululemons as yogi bear! :)

along with Marilyn Monroe & Volcan Arenal (the volcano debbie & i visited!)

anyways, my morning usually starts at 5:45 and i have some time with God with my Bible & journal at home before heading out the door an hour later for one of those two things. and it's been good to be active in the morning when i sit on my bum in class, in front of my books and in front of my computer for the rest of the day. i used to get SO restless by mid evening and julianne and i and our other apartment mates would frantically jump up and down, kick and wave our arms and do jumping jacks ("porch aerobics") when we couldn't sit still anymore! :)

i usually stay on campus to do some reading...

...wishing i could do it here all the time! :) this is actually at a gorgeous hostel in Malpais on the west coast on weekend surf trip i took with some other girls back in september, but studying up at school really isn't so bad - its beautiful and quiet, and actually julianne and i will be moving up near the school in March, which i'm really looking forward to! we'll be renting a super cute little house with forests around and butterflies and sometimes even monkeys and toucans, so i've been told!, in my backyard. (and there IS a hammock!). i can't wait!

i've just started taking Spanish classes now twice a week, which i'm quite excited about... taking classes in English with English speaking classmates and living with all north americans hasn't been so conducive to picking up the language, but i've found myself a really great teacher who's really sweet and also teaches English to the less-advantaged kids in the community.

otherwise i'm squeezing in time to work on my thesis about peace education through literacy learning in Africa (or somewhere more specific...), which i really am enjoying, and sometimes wish i were working on instead of writing my other papers. but i've gotten some positive response on my thesis proposal from my program advisor. i'm looking for a thesis advisor now - i was hoping to have a professor from Sierre Leone that has done a lot of work with Peace Ed & community development to advise my thesis, but unfortunately, he isn't the best with email communication. i met with a visiting professor from the UPeace Africa programme in Ethiopia, but he will be traveling and teaching until the end of May so he's not able to advise my thesis, but he is going to try to put me in touch with another professor who's working with the Peace Education project there, so fingers crossed, that will work out! :)

julianne and i usually have a nice break in the evenings together making dinner together & we've started a recipe book for some of our random creations - i'm glad she's back! although me and Francine did get together last night to experiment with "yucca" (yoo-kah), which i wish i took a picture of before we cooked it, but i'll do that next time im at the store... it's kind of a thick barky piece-of-a-branch-looking local root vegetable like a potato, and we decided to make yucca burgers with them! we cut off the 'bark' outside, and boiled it up, mashed it up, cut in some red pepper and onion, sour cream and spices and then fried it in a pan... they were pretty good - kind of like hashbrowns but since we decided to have them with tortillas instead of buns, we called them 'yucca falafels' instead - not bad! :)

okay, again, there's still more pictures and stories i'd like to share, but it's much past my usual 10:30ish bedtime... hopefully i'll get the chance to share more soon! thanks for reading! :) buenas noches for now!

love & hugs!
rainbow =)

whirlwind...

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:15:00 +0000

Getting back full on to classes and life here, it's been quite the whirlwind but okay to start these last 2 weeks. as some of you know, the first couple months here were not quite a holiday in the sun - just super intense and frustrated with the program and life here, but it's been a relatively good start this time round, much better being refreshed & renewed in hope for the coming months.

my blog's so scattered cuz i don't get the chance to put things up right away when i want to, but ill try to do more bits and pieces now!

anyways, coming back to "home" here actually was pretty nice

with actually, a pretty nice view from my window that i forgot about, especially now in the dry season when it's beautiful out all the time!

and with that also... the lovely neighbourhood kids that play soccer every day outside and love to drive up

and down

and up

and down our street on their ATVs! i realized soon after i got here that latin american culture has an appreciation for "nice & noisy" that i just haven't been able to quite embrace. there was one time last semester i was exhaustedly trying to finish a paper and it was already well past midnight and i'm used to waking up to car alarms every day (which are going off as i type! but especially in november when kids were setting off firecrackers all day long and the impact of the explosions would set all the car alarms off), but anyways two guys (who don't live near here, or at least on our street as far as i know!) were sitting in their car outside my window with the car alarm going off for a good twenty minutes like music to their ears, until finally my frustration got the better of my respect for culture and i screamed at them over the volume of the whirling beeping alarm and slammed my window shut... yikes. not my proudest moment, but they did drive away to my exasperated relief at the time! and minus that minor incident.. :) ... I really like our neighbours - they are really friendly and it's nice to know most of the kids that congregate on our block at least by face and i'll bring them cookies sometimes if i've baked.

hehe.. but anyways, its been beautiful out - no more rainy day showers on our porch like the last couple months

and, very happily, my roommie Julianne just came back today after spending 2 extra weeks at home in the states... we have such a good time together and she is such a blessing!

holiday in the snow :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 07:22:00 +0000

i don't think i've ever been so excited to spend a couple weeks at home! it was a super nice holiday, and i thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed it! it also hasn't snowed so much in vancouver in 12 years... which made for a lot of fun snowy sledding, snowboarding, snowshoe frolicking with friends and family...

Christmas day snowshoe!

up at big white for our annual family holiday (crumpled over attempt at a handstand!)

big white in all its glorious beauty! :)

always time for a little silly with chocolate mudmasks in the evenings! :) we also had a private outdoor hot tub to soak in apres-ski and watched the Canada-Sweden juniors hockey game one night with the TV pushed up to the window!

well this picture may or may not be from this year, but ashley & chris who've now moved down to California since getting their engineering iron rings and have gotten great jobs were back for a couple days and we had a great little trip up to Grouse mountain and the snow was sooo amazingly good we thought we took a shortcut to whistler! (and joffe wasn't here this time... but he was snowboarding in the swiss alps!!)

my driveway that grew walls taller than me!

debbie that i studied with in norway and lived in france with (2 years ago now?!) so good catching up on the many lives we've lived since we've last seen each other! (between us, ghana, nepal, uganda & costa rica & more norway & canada!)

meredith & jacopo, andrew & his lovely new wife colleen and debbie... some of the wonderful people that made my norwegian experience so awesome! and here we are, the whole vancouverite norwegian crew on the rare chance we are all or will ever be actually in vancouver at the same time! :)

getting my dose of asian yummies with jess & debbie! :)

and me and my awesome UBC Bible study gals having our classic reunion 9" pancake breakfast, catching up and sending each other off for the coming year with prayer! (we missed you Nat!)

i also got to stop in and visit my awesome boss from last summer working with the Youth Peace Network and the other staff at the YMCA... all the participants in the program are back home all over the world now but it was great to chat with Karena about all these wonderful people and get excited for this year's program coming up!

and missing some other pictures, but one in particular... congrats to the newly engaged Leanne soon-to-be-Sawatski!! :) so good to see you guys! and i guess next time i see you, you'll be married!!

some of the favourite things i was looking forward to coming home to - and definitely a refreshing 3 weeks before heading back to Costa Rica! i can't really say exactly that i'm super excited for it just yet, but i'm ready at least after having the break! i was getting pretty burnt out before Christmas. it'll be an intense coming 6 months left of my program, but it'll be good! i'm in LA and going to be hopping on a plane in 20 minutes, so i'll get going for for now!

hope you guys all had a wonderful holiday! a verrry merry Christmas and happy new year! lotsa love and have an awesome start to the year!!

xo
rainbow =)

"i simply remember my favourite thinnnnnnngs..."

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:21:00 +0000

so i just got bitten by a dog on my way to the bank! yowch!! but that's okay - i'm just about t-minus-24 hours to being on my way home for the holidays and i can't wait for all my favourite things back home!! i just hope i don't get swarmed by bees cuz i started singing! :D im just finishing up my thesis proposal that's due tonight... and i'll be on my way tomorrow for 3 weeks of holidays!! i have an 8 hour layover in LA, so i'll probably be able to get more stories and pictures up soon!

can't wait to see lots of you guys!

xo
rainbow =)

fun times in CR :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:37:00 +0000

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 =)

subscribe to my blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:43:00 +0000

also... you can now subscribe to my blog with your email!! just write your email in the little box on the left and my blog updates will get sent directly to your email!

thank you to Svenn Åge for fixing that up for me!! mucho gracias mi amigo! :)

papering...

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:27:00 +0000

i was hoping to post a little more this weekend, but it's been a busy one trying to get my next final paper together - i'm writing about functional literacy learning in Uganda, critiquing the culture of competition and commodification it promotes and how it could be structured more towards a culture of peace... that's the idea anyways - let's see what i can get down onto paper!

for now, if you're a bit curious of what i'm exploring here's my last paper - rationale for integrating Human Rights Education into literacy learning in Uganda, based on the work of the "Uganda Rural Literacy and Community Development Association" in Arua, northwestern Uganda.

i might actually have the opportunity to go to Uganda again for a few weeks in January for some research?! i'm not sure yet, i have to think about it some more... after i hand in this next paper on Tuesday! :)

okay, not too exciting post for now. but hopefully (as always) more coming soon!

a little more of the Costa Rican Costa Rica!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:32:00 +0000

a special bonus edition for tonight, because i have been wanting to put this up almost literally since i arrived! we saw this on our very first day in CR - it was a festival of some sort in town... a perfect welcome! :) well almost, actually - my friend Joffe and i had gotten in very late on a saturday night and i woke up about 5am to what sounded like gunshots out on the streets. a little terrified in a new foreign country and having no idea what was going on, i woke joffe up and heard a couple more "gun shots", followed a few minutes later by the sounds of...some sort of mariachi band!! *whew*!! and a couple hours later, horses (with people!) trotting down our street. hehe... we wandered out to the streets in the morning and found this!

que precioso! :)

peace education!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:29:00 +0000

hello again! im not getting to post half as much as i would like to... but here's a little more for now!! :)

so here's my peace ed class!!

there's 16 of us... mostly from North America this year, funny enough! from the leftish of who you can see - Oliver (Italy/US), Candido (Belize), Trish (Canada), Francine (Canada), Jean-Bosco (Rwanda), moi! :), Liza (US/Costa Rica), Brooke (US), Jesaka (US), Emily (US), Sharon (Costa Rica), Birta (Iceland), Taylor (US), Kerri (US) and the back of those heads would be Julia (US) and Ochieng (Kenya)! and Ellen (US) i think is behind the camera. it's a really good group - lots of very different backgrounds and aspirations... everything from school teachers to eco-camp to-be-starters to Belize prison staff to radio host to Kenyan military trainers... we've definitely always got more to talk about than time allows!

our classes have been good so far... i started off a little overwhelmed trying to get through a couple inches of this every night

... (we get one of these for every 15 day course!) i think i've gotten into the swing of things a little bit more now though and am enjoying my studies a lot more than at the very beginning!

our classes are quite different from course to course, because we get visiting professors in. some classes we've had have been pretty creative in teaching methods, which is what we are hopefully going for as future educators - here's some pics from one of our classes!

discussing human rights of different groups in society

"banana split"... how much of 10 cents should each group in the process get? [answer in reality: growers (1.15), pickers (0.1), packers (0.5), shippers (1), importer (0.75), wholesale (1), retailer (5.5!!!!)].

representing different people in society, make a structure that represents your relative place in world

that was our most "creative" introductory course in peace ed... we've been doing more seminar-like discussion-based types of learning since, and i really wanted to take a picture of our white board the other day when we were creating definitions and our concepts of violence and security, but unfortunately... i'm not sure i'll have a lot of pictures to put up of my recent adventures because my supposedly waterproof camera apparently didn't like the hotsprings very much! :(

but anyways, we're learning a lot about learning as we're challenging traditional teaching & classroom methods, and i'll hopefully tell you more soon... this is definitely a more bits-and-pieces than a chronological blog! but that's ok... :) anyways, bedtime for now!

take care!
xo
rainbow =)

history in the making... :)

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:21:00 +0000

obama's speech!

(not quite MY costa rican news... but what else could be more relevant to where the world and peace is heading?)

where in the world is Rainbow??

noreply@blogger.com (Rainbow Choi =)) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:56:00 +0000

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!