Costa Rica Vipassana

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 EL INVU. Alone except for the little yapping dogs who still come around to make trouble and the loud and penetrating insects…

It was a good last week. Out of the blue I discovered there was to be a Vipassana course in Costa Rica. It wasn’t listed on the English web pages so it took a little good fortune to come across this. Then it took more good fortune for my supervisor to give me the time off as well as for the transportation to just manage to work out. Dhamma really took care of everything for me so that I’d be able to make it with minimal trouble. I rescheduled one class and missed about a World Cup game and a half (though one was 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 40 km away. Seems like it shouldn’t have been the 2 plus hour ride it ended up being, but that’s what happens when a bus doesn’t break the 15 km speed limit. So we proceeded along at this snails pace, gingerly negotiating our way around dozens of flooded out sections and oversized puddles. We even crossed a fairly large and fast-flowing river that covered the first few steps of the bus in brown water. It was an interesting ride, though, the first part consumed by a large fruit plantation and trucks carrying full loads to a nearby factory spitting out one pure white and another coal black stream of smoke, though I really couldn’t identify which kind of fruit it was. After the plantation we 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 Colorado and was on the RMVA, and best friends with another meditator I had once served with and stayed with in Salt Lake City. Here is a picture of these amazing multicolored leaves at the site... I've never seen anything like it...

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 Morocco as well will get its first ever Vipassana course later this year. I was waiting for the bus as the inn-keeper spotted from a morning jog and said how affected she was from the seriousness of the students. I can’t imagine witnessing so much of a ten day course for the first time from the outside! Then through some other conversation I managed to learn she was from Poland and not Holland, she was a Polish Jew, and was just beginning to tell me about the Polish Jewish community during WWII when the bus appeared over the ridge! So with many of the EL INVU insects bites starting to clear up and the new and diverse Hatillo ones starting to take their place, I got on the bus and went 15 km per hour again back to Quepos. Here's a picture of a huge spider just outside my door there...

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 La Pachuga’s, the Tiki Hut converted into a bar atmosphere that is in the backyard of Manuel’s (an ESL student) house. I went into La Fortuna today for a teeth cleaning and a pizza meal, now a week to prepare and rest up and possibly two round trips to San Jose in the meantime…

Pura Vida

Another quiet night here in EL INVU (those flower pictures are just outside my room). The days are really full here, there’s always so much to get done and there aren’t the normal kinds of distractions going on, it gives one pause to ponder how we normally have time for those distractions to begin with. From auditing the TESOL course to trying to apply these concepts to my own two classes (and then reflect on them), to trying to learn Spanish to enjoying the meditation, it’s a full day’s work. And not included in that is all the mandatory time you have to spend chatting, making small talk, visiting friends’ porches, and other vital activities. My supervisor here made the comment that while the Japanese use silence for greater intimacy, Costa Ricans fill up that space with talk that really means something else. Here's some great goat pictures below... the first one is at the town's soccer field, the second at a student's house...

The classes are going well. It is still quite challenging to have such very non-academic students and at such a beginning level as well. It makes me feel like I have so much to learn and not a lot of time to do it! I always want to rush through material more quickly in order to feel successful as a good teacher and also come up with really creative and dynamic (and alas, complicated) lessons. I keep having to step back and examine what it means for them to actually “know” a word or phrase, and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). The bugs and weather seem to be an issue no matter what around here, in whatever context. Come to think of it I did a lesson on weather terms, I should try another on bugs! One class a bat flew in and took quite some time finding its way back out. Another time a fly the size of a fist came in and it buzzed around like mad until one student caught it. He held onto it gently in his hand for some time, then placed it below his shoulder, on his chest. It stayed there motionless until the class ended. It was like his pet giant fly. I swear, this town really can feel like a town out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, though I’m not sure how to explain it all the time! Yesterday I was teaching the phrase “it’s muggy” just as it was so muggy that you could barely think, then they had a hard time understanding “it’s raining cats and dogs.” As if on cue, the rain outside started up so hard, as it’s ever so apt to do around here, banging away on that tin roof with such vengeance that you have to yell to get heard. Oh, here's the picture of the road leading up to "El Centro Espiral Mana":


Ah, the rain, yes. It’s pretty much daily, and it can just feel like the faucet is turned on non-stop with a kind of force that is hard to describe. That’s what I thought, at least, until last night. It had been a persistently deafening sound, and over a sustained period of time, when I realized this was something a little special, and woke up. The clock read 3.00 a.m. and I slid out of my mosquito net. The sky was flashing outside like a strobe light but the sheer racket outdid any major sound system! I took my flashlight to see if we were soon going to be flooded and as I rounded the corner, my neighbor, John, also a participant on this course, was also just coming out. All I remember him saying is “How am I ever going to be able to describe this to anyone I know?” We just kind of stood there for a minute in our underclothes and then went back to our rooms. All that could come to mind for me was New Orleans, I just had nothing else to really compare it to—somewhat the monsoon season of Japan, somewhat a couple weeks I’d spent in Florida—but not of this intensity! Here are some pictures of "El Centro Espiral Mana": Some good news that came my way with a haircut though. I’d been trying to get one for sometime. I figure I can make up some of the airfare costs by timing my periods overseas with cheap haircuts. So I got one upon arrival in Bombay, one just before leaving, and hadn’t had one since. Mary told me that a woman in town cuts hair, and lives just next to Milagro, one of my students, whose family I hang out with often. So I went to her house and was shown to an adjoining tiled room, where I got a very short haircut (and which cost less than $2). Everyone around here was utterly shocked and said they kind of didn’t know who I was now! They had gotten used to the locks. Anyway, her husband Francisco happened to be watching the Mexico-Argentina game on very poor reception, with commentary from the local radio. I made no attempt to hide my profound interest and was duly invited in to join in. She then said in parting that I’d be welcome to come over anytime future World Cup games were on. (here are some cows below that I spotted on a walk...)

I was a little shy on how to act on that the following morning, but the England-Ecuador elimination game gave me some confidence. They seemed pleased enough to see me and I bought a few sodas for us all at the local (and only) convenience shack around (see photo), owned by Poi, Mary’s husband’s brother (and my new language exchange partner). After the game, they somehow made me to understand that they would not be home for the later Holland-Portugal game, but invited me to come with them. Not knowing exactly where I’d end up, I hopped in the van and we drove across town (which means across the soccer field) and got out to spend about 20 minutes in the intense humidity visiting their aunts, uncles, great uncles, cousins, parents, etc. Then a horde more of us jumped in the van again and drove to a neighboring town of San Isidro to go into a humongous tin shack where just about everyone I have ever met was gathered there to play BING for a school charity event (it reminded me of Simpsons episodes where just about every character you’ve ever met in the series ends up being at some scene!) I kind of shrugged my shoulders and resigned myself to endure how many hours of Bingo until Francisco rescued me by giving me a puzzled look, so I got back in the car, after which he duly drove to the nearest restaurant where we watched the game in full (except we left inexplicably at halftime and went to a market, where Francisco tried to ask me questions that I couldn’t figure out, eventually it was all settled when I suggested going to a nearby restaurant for the second half).

We went back to the Bingo and waited around another hour (they marked their boards with corn pieces). A storm hit and the rain again made such a racket no one could hear anyone and we got soaked to the bone. Then I met Donald again, a serious England supporter who, with his limited English, tries to prove almost mathematically that England is destined to win it all this year. Oh yeah, and he’s a math teacher at the local high school. Somehow the whole thing was happening at Donald’s girlfriend’s house complex, so we went into their kitchen and had some coffee and got again thoroughly wet some more before departing. Here's a church and some cows around here we were... (in the picture above of the two men talking, Francisco is on the right and Donald on the left)

So now I’ve had to add to my daily retinue watching a couple World Cup games per day at Francisco’s house. I haven’t figured out what his work is, but his wife cooks food at the local school (and of course gives haircuts). It’s actually been a pretty fascinating comparison to what happened at the last World Cup for me. It was kind of a watershed time for me. I had been looking forward to it being in Tokyo for years beforehand, but just as it came, I was getting quite involved with Vipassana. I have some very powerful memories from that time, like going to the usual venues with friends, and the energy being some of the most exciting and exhilarating ever. And just learning experientially what this “anicha” was really about, and what I wanted to seek after and what I wanted to let go of, I found it incredibly unsatisfying and empty—much to my shock, I think. I remember once riding my bike by myself to the center of Tokyo one very late weekend night, and finding my way into this huge crowd of futbal aficionados from all different countries, chanting soccer songs and throwing balls into the crowd—it was one of the more amazing spectacles you could hope to find, but it really did nothing for me—I’d never had that kind of reaction before, and what’s more, it almost made me disgusted. So it seems like a funny kind of irony to now, four years later finding myself in a small town, away from any kind of commotion or excitement, and here I’m experiencing this huge craving to watch these games at all cost… well, I guess it is all anicha, eh!

Well, better bring this to an end because the bug bites keep coming the longer I stay here! I went to this one hot springs last weekend that was superb. It had dozens of pools and I’d say it's definitely on a level with Japan! Some pools were actually too hot to get in, even though I like to think of myself as a little seasoned in that area! Another pool I stood under this powerful and hot waterfall that emptied from above, and notice a cord in the air by me. Ah, I thought, must be something to hold onto if the falling water is too strong. Nope, just a live electric wire I found out, getting shocked in the process! The complex even had two entire bars in different pools—not the most ideal for me, but pretty interesting to see. Here is a picture of some of my friends and students...

Oh, and I guess I have to throw in another bug picture, eh....

Getting settled

Day by day here, and the heat and humidity are slowly getting more manageable. The first week I was barely able to have a discussion about teaching schedules because I just couldn’t concentrate on the words, and now I just feel a bit more laziness and lethargy than normal. I’ll be volunteer teaching the first five weeks or so and auditing the SIT TESOL Certification course for beginning teachers. I shadow trained this course in Chicago, and I’ll be actually training on one starting in July. I’ll be going to about half the sessions (the ones in the morning), which will further familiarize me with the material and hopefully help to make me both a better teacher and a little more experienced teacher. Also, I find some of this material is so like Goenkaji’s discourses on the ten day Vipassana courses… the words appear very simple, but it can take quite sometime to really grasp some of the underlying meanings. Every time we hear it we are a different person yet again, and can take more away from the points, and understand things from different angles. Teaching in a way that removes the teacher from the center of attention is the same kind of thing as letting go of that ego—it is so central to our thinking and conditioning that (for me at least) it takes a lot of work to get one’s mind around this subtle truth. Oh, here's a view of what I see as I step outside my room...


The town here is about 500 people and every door is open when one walks through town. There’s not much to do so people spend a lot of time sitting on their porches or going to their neighbor’s porch. The director here, Mary, is married to a local guy in town and that’s why this whole English center is here (Her husband Wilbur’s brother owns the only shop of any kind in town, really a kind of long booth where locals gather to share gossip and play pinball soccer). She takes in volunteers for six months and in return gives them room and board. Any town person who wants to attend an English class can do so for only 500 collones (or $10) per term. If they can’t afford this, then they are able to give back in some other way, such as volunteering to do other things at the center or performing some service in town. One student comes here once a week and cleans the grounds. Another gives cheese from his farm. There are also these SIT TESOL Certification courses running quite a bit. Here are some photos of my student Oscar, who is cutting the coconuts and getting the juice ready for lunch!

I’m set up in my room now and it’s workable. Usually no more than a few hours of sleep at any time due to the heat or bugs. The nice thing is the meditation is finally coming along. It’s so hard sitting at first in a place that doesn’t have a history of it, I find. It’s the hard work of clearing a new path in the jungle. Luckily the chanting tapes I have always help me mightily. But I’ll be moving to another quarter likely for the next course, so will have to get that one going as well. Sometimes I finish a sit and come out to see some cows or goats wandering around, lost, aimless, with a cursing herder charging in rubber boots to collect his misguided animal. A walk through town gives a true cacophony of dog cheers. There are always someone’s chickens wandering through our school and even puppies find their way here at times. Yesterday we had to chase some cows away with a stick in hand before they trampled the plants.

On Thursday there was a big party sending off the two teachers that Terry and I are replacing, who had been here for six months. They both spoke Spanish fluently and we barely speak it at all, so it is a new challenge for all. I’m studying out of my book every day but when I tried to talk to Wilbur’s brother Poi this evening at his store, I realized I had little to say but to tell him where I lived or to pass me one of about a dozen nouns I now know (both of which seemed rather odd and didn’t really leave much in the way of furthering the conversation). Luckily when I don’t know a word I can say the French and it is often close enough.

Anyway, there was this big party Thursday, and I met a lot of the locals. A lot of the young guys were glad to have another male in town and were trying to recruit me to tag along for weekend trips to the discotheque in the nearest town. After the party I got into the back of a pickup with a dozen of them, and the whole town followed to the famous “La Pachuga’s.” One student, Manuel, has set up this enormous kind of Tiki-hut outside his house and wired a karaoke system. So we sung Spanish and English songs, and I watched the natural rhythm as many of the Costa Ricans danced together. A bunch of the men were excited to find I was into soccer and invited me to come to their home to watch World Cup on satellite, but alas they must have forgot as the days still come and pass with only the NY Times and BBC to help me keep track… Costa Rica’s out anyway, and everyone here is pretty upset at the team… “they are so stupid” one guy said. Reminds me of my Saudi students at CU, who liked just about any team better than Saudi Arabia!

On Sunday the course participants arrived on site and on Monday we started workshops. So now the small center is a little more active, more energy and people around. It is just so nice being in such a small town, with nothing else around. Tropical fruit from the trees on the site is served every day as is juice, and good simple food as well. Blackberry juice today, along with some other fruit I’d never seen nor heard of. The only complaint really is the bugs. They are incredible. I get numerous bites every day (and night) and then have to wait to see what kind, the duration, the effect, the size, etc. Will it itch or hurt? Will there be a little blood or a big bump? Will it last a few hours or days? It’s the worst for a Vipassana meditator, because you get like a single mosquito in your room causing you dukkha an entire night with that no-kill clause… Just a few minutes ago we found this beetle about the size of a human hand. Last week in the middle of the road I saw an iguana the size of a small dinosaur!


Ok, that’s it for now! (oh, my room and sitting spot in this picture...)

Bienvenidos a Costa Rica

Arrival
I was met at the airport in San Jose and driven to my hotel, a beautiful place recommended to me called "Kap's Place." I was given some herbal tea and walked around the neat interior, with bright colors and a kind of water-fountain area that makes one feel like you are strolling outside. I knew something was a little off-kilter when I found several people watching Denver channel 9, and later was to find out, rather inexclipably, that Costan Rican TV (or this one at least) includes all of Denver's ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates, meaning that the nearly 7,500 miles I traveled is barely recognizable through the airwaves. Another great thing about the hotel is that it had over a dozen types of herbal teas on hand, most of which I had no idea what they were because of the Spanish, but every cup was a new adventure!

A short sleep later, and I was greeted the following morning with the Costa Rican soccer team kicking off the entire World Cup 2006 in Germany and against Gemany. I walked about 15 minutes to Avenue Centralie (forgive my atrocious Spanish spelling), walking through a neat and very green park, and finding myself in packed crowds on this pedestrian-only street dressed red Tico soccer jerseys. The game was shown and could be heard in every corner store one walked past, every home, every television and radio imaginable. I found a giant screen at one corner where hundreds of fans had assembled for the game and somehow nudged a space for myself in crowd. The pandemonium was amazing. For the opening kick-off, and then the ensuing two CR goals, people jumping up and down, banging on the closed shop-iron doors, hugging, throwing things in the air, all as stern looking police officers circled the area and kept an eye out for anything a tad more serious. A walk during halftime found several more of these gigantic screens hung at other street corners with full sound systems to allow fans to watch everywhere. It was a big deal! The government declared a holiday, so all institutions were closed-- making it hard for me to exchange money to get the Costa Rican Collones, because that Friday was the game and the weekend followed it. For me it was just another reason to root against the Germans, not that another one was needed, but they prevailed just the same, a 4-2 victory, but it was a great game, great atmosphere goes without saying, and I too now sport a red Tico jersey.
There doesn't seem to be much to see in San Jose, so I spent most of the following few days walking around the main pedestrian street some more, watching all the World Cup games, getting one veggie meal after another of rice and beans at the sodas (small CR style restaurants), yet still admiring the fog-covered and not-so-distant mountains that seem to be at every turn. It was amazing just how much the city would change going one small block east or north, say, as it turned from a very cosmopolitan, crowded, busy thorougfare to suddenly being a rather back-alley feel with hardly anyone around save a few straggly characters wondering who the gringo is. I don't know if I've ever seen a city change so much and so fast, well, I suppose some places in India I've seen similar, but the Latin American feel is totally different. Speaking of India, I went to a neat market place here in San Jose, with everything from fresh meat to traditional clothing to spices, etc. It is known as a rather busy place, but compared to similar things I've seen in places like India, Mexico, and Morocco, I was struck by how sanitary and neat it was-- no gut wrenching smells even! Reminds me of a guy I met in Bangkok once who said he's been a vegetarian for a few decades, and what caused him to start? Literally, walking through a meat market in Calcutta... never touched animal or fish again!

I also met the daughter of some Vipassana friends in Boulder who was doing a legal internship in San Jose, and we checked out the Museum of Pre-Colombian gold, it was really neat. Had all kinds of gold figurines that the Native peoples had made before Europe arrived, and described their uses by the village shamans-- I was struck by how much this reminded me of what I've heard of traditional Chinese medicine, but that's not really too surprising...

After a couple days I repacked my bags and found myself back to the airport, to meet with many people coming from many different places in what seemed rather hopeful circumstances. After a little waiting it all turned out, though, and with Terry (my fellow volunteer teacher), Mary (the site director) and her husband, and Noreen (the other Trainer), we drove the 2.5 hours into the CR countryside, stopping once at a roadside Italian restaurant, past decaying bridges over tropical streams and rough roads (though again a piece of cake by Indian standards!) to get to EL IVNU at about 1 a.m., and a night sleep in what should be many here...

The Country
I woke up the next morning to the sound of nature oppressively from all directions! Bugs, frogs, birds, all kinds of animals. It's hard to give an adequate picture of how alive these tropical climates are to anyone who hasn't seen them-- hard for me as well, because I don't know how I could have prepared for being somewhere just so incredibly alive and fertile at every inch. It doesn't take much work to have a good garden, and the landscaping in the area is the most exquisite you can hope to find anywhere. The first couple of days took some weeks to pass, as is normal in such new settings, the most remarkable thing being the equally (or perhaps even more so) indescribably heat and humidity. It made the simplest tasks take a whole morning or more, and when I though about putting forth some thought on a lesson plan or (gasp!) curriculum, it seemed like the hardest thing in the world. It was so overwhelmingly hot and humid that it was about all you could do to just keep your mind functioning throughout the day, to not let the mind roll in where one could go to escape it back to "normality." So we had a short tour of the site, relaxed in the omnipresent hammocks while trying to remember to drink water and to understand the words of the book being read, and spied the incredible variety of plant, animal, reptile, and insect life all around us. I even braved a walk of town, which consisted of a small convenience shop, a beautiful large soccer field, an elementary school, and, um, I think that's it!

Which, coicidentally, is causing me more than a little strain. Under any other condition in these eight or so years I would wholeheartedly welcome this kind of situation, this present time being the _only_ exception to think of, as I gradually grapple more with the realization that I might not see much more of the World Cup... a proposition that seemed unthinkable just a week ago (I have to say the sensations were pretty unpleasant at first!). There is no TV at the site and none in town. I spent way too many hours hoping to believe in miracles by finding an Internet site that would have a live feed with a less than Highspeed connection, and I braved that dripping temperature to bike 3 km to another town in hopes of finding another TV. The options are dwindling to trying to quickly make a soccer-mad friend in this small town, take a 45 minute bus ride, or try to figure out how I can do that small detail of teaching while I also happen to be here! The NY Times and BBC websites just don't seem to quite cut it with that emotion and beauty of the sport.................................................

So, back to another night of off and on sleep, with large unrecognizable fruits hitting the roof like a bomb from overhead (they could literally knock you out if they ever managed to score a direct hit), the heavy rains sounding like machine gun fire, and the myraid bugs getting past the screenless windows and into a mosquioto net that doesn't really seem feasible anyway. And another day of moving through the heat, that humidity that turns any paper or cardboard material into pure lifeless forms that tear and compress at any touch, try battling these two elements as the brain tries to go one Spanish book page at a time! There is also a great cook onsight who makes a good array of veggie dishes, and the most incredible fresh fruits juices of more fruits I have never seen much less am able to pronounce (though that Starfruit Juice was great!). And as the rains come and the thunder breaks so loudly I think it must be napalm, sipping a good cup of coffee, there's a phrase I never though I'd find a way to say for myself, in this lifetime at any rate!

Two more SITers came, a MAT37 and staffer, and we had a great evening at Mary's place, trying to avoid their young dog from tearing our clothes to pieces as we had some sumptuous bananas dipped in chocolate fondue. We gossiped all about mutual friends and mutual understandings of the SIT culture (which is a very close second-- and certainly feels less unwholesome-- than engaging in similar kinds of Vipassana gossip) and then debated about whether to go to the local karaoke "bar", but decided not to since the karaoke spot in town isn't really a bar at all, but rather someone's living room who'd we have to wake up as he set up the equipment for us to sing into. Such is the small town life. We do have a big send-off party at this spot on Thursday, for the teachers now leaving that Terry and I will replace (we vistited their classes the other day, where I was about as much fun as a bag of stale coal as I sat on kindergarten chairs, with my slow thought processing, light fever, sore throat, and general weakness). But the classes were impressive... they are given to the local community free of charge by Mary, and anyone who wants can learn free English. It is quite an amazing community, the town and the site (the town is only about 500 people and just about every house I walked past had its door wide open, the occupants out on the porch in rocking chairs, the males ususally shirtless as they stared at the gringo). The biggest challenge I saw in the beginning class wasn't English forms so much as the very concept of learning and speaking in another language. In this class, a gaucho (local cowboy) stood up and said in translated Spanish, "We are not professionals. We are not academics. We are simple people. We are farmers and housewives and laborers. We want to learn English but we are simple people. We will try hard, but please have patience with us." It is funny, though, and again extraordinarily similar to Vipassana, to again be somewhere on the other side of the world and have so many concepts, theories, people, places, and even "vibes" that are the same all over again. Both these things are such small communities that go the world over and back. And though they may have all kinds of other connections, and for something worldly it's one of the better things I can hope to find, that small subtle but important difference-- boy does it weigh on me sometimes. Anicha eh. Speaking of which I was just delighted and surprised to find there will be a Vipassana course in Costa Rica in July I can probably serve a small portion of!

Ok, that's about up to speed now, other than the amazing tropical hot springs that all of us went out to today (though don't be too envious, it didn't do anything to take me out my misery than an hour sitting does, an hour that is an hour the world around-- well, unless it happens to be India or Burma :)

By the time it got there we saw the real reason it's called a Rain Forest, with the rains and thunder and lightning showing no mercy. When one bolt hit the nearby river, we were all to evacuate the pool and wait for the storm to pass. One nice thing about the rains, though, it has a way of cooling things down... the pools were great, with one at 48 degrees Celsius and actually beginning to rival those steaming pots of Japan. The pools were also very natural like, carved rock places where you could sit and that aliveness of the tropics all around again... below, here's a picture of the gushing river after it swelled up with an hour of rain water...

Ok, that's the update for me at the time, bugs keep dropping from nowheres onto my hands and neck as I write this so that's a sign to let go for now!