estamos feliZ

UPEACE-- so far, so great! there are 160 students from over 50 countries!

today is the last day of our foundation course--which lasted three weeks and touched upon all of the different masters programs that UPEACE has to offer. so we have all been together and our seminars/discussion groups have been a mix of the different masters too which is cool to get to know other people better because the rest of the year i will just be having classes with my peace ed. program and sometimes the peace and gender program.

so we have had readings and lectures in sustainable development, international human rights law, war crime tribunals, gender issues, quantum physics and peace, peace ed, environmental security, and the processes of conflict transformation in areas of protracted conflict.

you can imagine how mind opening it is to hear these lectures and then go to discussion groups where your peers are from Sri Lanka and can tell you about the conflict there first hand, or from Cambodia where the war crimes are on trial-- or armenia where there is only one women's rights organization which was started by the girl sitting next to you!

the professors have been from egypt, peru, brazil, uk, hungary, um.... and their life experiences are just jaw dropping. the war zones that they have been in, the work that they have accomplished or sometimes just attempted. its really interesting because they aren't just academics.

my peace ed. program is led by a brazilian woman, and her assistant from cameroon. we have 16 classmates including students from Rwanda, Iran, Iceland, Belize, Costa Rica, Canada and the States. we've only met once so far, but they seem like a great group.

its definitely a change of pace to get back into this school thing! i dont know how some people are in so many clubs (though they do have some fabulous clubs at school) plus are doing the 8 page papers we have had almost weekly and 3-4 hrs of reading daily. shew.

although UPEACE is a lot lot lot like evergreen, one thing that is different is that they do give grades here. i havent gotten a grade since high school ten years ago, what a trip! plus they have grade inflation or something too, which i dont really get yet, but anyhow i did great on my first paper.

as you can see below, the parties have been great too! its just so cool that we are all so different and yet are all working for the same cause. also it is great that we all came at the same time so everyone is really open to meeting everyone else.

almost everyone here are world travelers and if not they have established themselves in their local communities in some amazing program or another--there are people who have worked in the u.n., profesors, former peace corp-ers, and more.

alright time for school :)

love to you from us xoxo