Well the first TESOL Certificate course has just ended and I am
totally exhausted. After so much activity this past month, I now sit here alone in the computer room, alone in El Centro Espiral Mana, seemingly alone in the whole town of
It was a good last week. Out of the blue I discovered there was to be a Vipassana course in 
only the third place game)! Oh, this is a great picture of one house where I watched the Brazil-France game. The poor grandfather is watching his Brazil team get ousted below the Brazilian flag as his grandson next to me is cheering on Les Blues… and the hand outside is from some other guy who watched nearly the whole game from that peculiar spot!
I made it to Quepos, saw the CR coast line, watched the first 20 minutes of the France-Portugal game, then put all that behind me by boarding a local bus that went across horrible potted roads to read the small town of Hatillo, about 
passed through small hamlets where the only real defining feature was absolutely beautiful, pristine, full length soccer fields. Sometimes the entire community was literally built around the field on all sides, and the road was dotted with billboards advertising beach-side resorts built with “American standards”. All the time I was just marveling at the fact that a Vipassana course actually awaited me, seemingly miraculously and certainly unexpectedly, on the other side of this trip (that is, if the bus driver remembered me and my poor Spanish request to shout out “Hatillo” when we approached.” (though some part of me must have known what was coming, one morning I had a strange and strong wave of panic and depression pass by…) Here is a picture of some beautiful flowers at the course site, at the close up with the ants!
He did remember, and sure enough I found the “Alma de Hatillo” albergue run
by the Dutch woman who had never taken a Vipassana course but strangely had welcomed the 10 day course to her inn and stranger still was insisting on doing the cooking for the course with her Costa Rican assistant. All of this meant that as I helped get set up and met a few of the students, I was to actually find out just before heading to the hall that I too would be sitting—my server application form wasn’t needed! It was kind of a surprise, but ultimately a welcome one. No, more than that, it was a gift, another “Dhamma works!” for me. I chatted briefly with Carmen, a Panamanian woman who used to live in
The course was three days of extremely difficult and beneficial work, so what else is new! There was only one other non-Latino student there besides me, and only a little over a dozen in total. Only 2 full time male students, and only 1 full time old student! The food was delicious, but because it was largely non-Vipassana people preparing it, we often didn’t get too much of it and it was brought out and taken away at odd times. The meditation “hall” was a converted outside pavilion with several sheets along the sides. This meant that strong equanimity with mosquitoes was a definite must! I would spray on my repellent before sittings and other students wrapped their entire body in sheets. There were also no pillows provided, which I didn’t know about, and some of these new students were braving out the ten days with small couch cushions only. The Costa Rican kept pushing right on through and we had to bring umbrellas everywhere we went because you never knew when it would hit. Once it was coming down so hard during the hour sit that it was totally impossible to hear the chanting telling you that the hour was up. Also, it took out all the electricity so many times that the AT herself had to do the “Bhavatu…” It was interesting, without that chorus of old students, the “Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu” never did catch on… Here's a picture of the meditation "hall"...
I left the course on Day 4 and just managed to hear that
I arrived in Quepos a little before noon and did some craving shopping of things I didn’t need before getting a bite to eat. I knew the final of the World Cup was on today, and given the previous game times had expected it’d start at 1 pm. That would allow me to watch about a half of it before my 2.30 bus came. But by another magnanimous turn of events worked in my favor… inexplicably, the game began at noon! So I watched the entire game, the entire overtime sessions, and finally had to turn away just as Zidane gave that bizarre headbutt. I boarded the minibus and sat in the front next to the driver as he interpreted into easy Spanish (from the radio) the penalties kick-by-kick… then took an hour or so longer getting home by another massive storm that came down…but learned all about CR passing customs on the road, how a slow truck will signal for the car behind that it’s clear and safe to pass… and passed more than a few VERY dodgy bridges…
… and how wonderful to be back after those three days, what changes! A lot of the tensions I felt under I was able to see how slight changes of my own behavior could produce such a profound change. You always know you’re in charge of your own misery, 100%, but to remember what that actually means on a practical level… it’s great!
Now the present course has ended, another karaoke night at
