- wake up and go swimming in my apartment
- yam hashbrowns and toast for breakfast
- an ample amount of reading and annotating for school
- a great game of soccer with swell friends
- a pretty amazing date with an awesome person involving river walks and revolving restaurants. i hope this works out *crosses fingers*
- reading about activist sociologists for homework while sipping two rivers beer
- sleep

No Toronto. It's too much money for anybody in my family.
I realized this when I calculated that I could buy:
- A season ticket for next year (10 games)
- A jersey
- A ton of awesome food and booze for a grey cup party in Winnipeg

and still come out $200 ahead in comparison to going to Toronto. Plus I wouldn't end up fucking up my school routine. And when I do that it takes me so long to get back on track, so it's never a good idea for me to leave in the middle of a term.

After the Bombers and Riders won, we all drank prairie fires to celebrate the upcoming Banjo Cup/Grey Banjo. It seemed way too appropriate.

Go bombers!

If the Bombers win today I will:
- Drink with jubilation
- Be living in Next Week territory
- Plan a trip to Toronto for the Grey Cup, taking greyhound, VIA, or Air Canada there and Adamn's Taurus on the way back.
- Buy a Terrence Edwards or Derek Armstrong jersey to wear on said trip
- (Maybe) bike to the airport tonight and cheer my fucking head off when the bombers arrive back in town
- Be giddy, and avoid doing my homework.

If the Bombers lose today I will:
- Drink with sorrow
- Be living in Next Year territory
- Stay in Winnipeg until December at least
- Mope, and avoid doing my homework.

Kickoff in 1 hour. Holy shit!

i finished my last exam on friday night. thank god. energy-wise, i finished school tuesday night, with my presentation and my last essay. i didn't have any energy left for my two exams, and i bombed one of them, and semi-bombed the other. it's a shame of sorts, especially the one i bombed, since i was averaging 97% in the class before the exam and now i'm probably down to a 70 or so, but there's nothing i can do. lesson learned: don't take 5 courses in the spring term.

it's also been a heavily emotional time, especially recently. my babba (grandma) has been in the hospital for about 9 weeks now, progressively getting worse. on wednesday night, i came home after studying to a message "call your dad -- urgent" and expected to hear that she had died. i called and found out the doctors said she had about two or three days left to live. i wanted to come out to vancouver immediately to see her, but my parents said to hold off and finish my exams, and that after my exams there'd be little point to coming since she'd probably be in a coma by then.

on saturday morning i got a call from my dad saying that babba was alert and wanted to see me, and that if i could, i should take the next flight out. a couple cancelled plans, and eight hours later i was in vancouver at the hospital. it's been up and down here, but yesterday she looked better than any of the days i've seen her. its been almost a week since we were told she has only two days to live. now we hear that she has "anywhere from two hours to two weeks". it's been a rough time but also a really special one visiting her. i've seen her for a couple hours a day each day since i got here.

some observations:
- people look really androgenous when they die of old age. my babba looks almost exactly like my zaida when he died, and yet in their vibrant lives, they looked nothing alike. gender is so socially constructed. at birth, and near death, gender, and sex fall out the window.
- the ward she is in is called GATU - geriatric assessment and treatment unit. whenever i walk in I get getchoo by weezer stuck in my head. it's pretty awesome.
- i had a really nice visit yesterday. my babba was slightly delusional and kept asking me to see what the people were selling down there on the sidewalk. so i walked out of the room and came back a few minutes later with a fictional setting of hot dog vendors (selling veggie dogs as well), ice cream for sale, mini donuts, a car insurance agency and a couple more things along the ocean in white rock. my babba suggested we start our own business and she proceeded to tell me that business is about getting on the phone and talking to the people. we decided we would start a used books vendor. later, she was concerned that she didn't know what was going on, and that we were breaking the law. i assured her that we weren't, and said that she could blame me if anything happened. then she became concerned that i would go to jail if she ratted me out. i spent the rest of my time there assuring her that everything was okay and that we weren't doing anything wrong.
- i walked most of the way to the airport on saturday. took a bus (my first of the summer... damnit!) to polo park so i could deposit rent money and then walked from polo park to the airport. it felt awesome to walk into the airport terminal. i love taking alternative transportation methods to substantial public places such as the airport or winnipeg stadium. i contemplated biking there as per andy's suggestion, but i called and they didn't have bike parking there, and plus, my "this bike is a pipe bomb" sticker likely would not have gone overwell in an airport setting.
- my sister and i are off to walk to the hospital now. i have 'the brothers karamazov' with me, and i'm attempting to knock off pages of the 1050 page book while i visit. my goal is to read the whole thing before august's end.

reading pedagogy of the oppressed (or at least chapter 3). thinking in terms of limit-situations, and limit-acts, and being a subject in the world. applying this theory to my anxiety, and overcoming it, a bit, at least temporarily. trying to get something done for thursday morning, to hand in my last overdue assignment, at which point i will be finished 3 of 5 courses. having a C in that course already, even if I get a 0 on the assignment. aiming for 14/30 on the assignment, which will give me a B in the course. i hope i get it. trying to figure out what to sign up for next year, debating between 3 potential degrees: an honours, a double honours, and a 4 year. likely aiming for the 4 year and then upgrading from there if i feel like it then. applying for practicums for next year at the canadian centre for policy alternatives and at the canadian foodgrains bank. maybe applying at one or two other places. getting permission to take a spanish course next year, but not permission to take a 4th year course in race and ethnic relations. maybe next year?

listening to crimpshrine in my head, and really believing that "there's no sanctuary, this will have to do". it's all in my life. i can't escape it. just live through it, and grow. and grow. and grow. trying to figure out if i have a permanent psychological disability, and actually hoping that what i have can be diagnosed as one. i have an anxiety disorder. if it's considered permanent i might qualify to goto school for free, if the bc government agrees. i hope it's considered permanent in that case. bursaries and grants > loans.

my watch broke last week in the rain. i destroyed two library books walking home in the rain on saturday. the pedagogy of the oppressed was oppressed by the downpour. probably 50-100 dollars down the drain. it's been a rough time. economically, emotionally, physically. but life isn't so bad. life isn't so bad. it's rough, and this is probably the roughest it's been in a long while. the most heightened. but it isn't so bad. and if i get through this, i'll be tougher and stronger than i'd imagined.

time to go home now. back tomorrow morning. one last day of work. one last push towards the finish line. i plan to put my alarm clock underneath my bed so i don't just rollover and shut it off like i did this morning. i hope to be back at school in about 8 hours. and to stay here for 14 hours tomorrow. a long day tomorrow, but i'll feel so good at the end if i can stay dedicated throughout the day. by thursday at noon: three courses finished. an A or an A+, a B or a B+ and hopefully another B. i'm in over my head but i'm working myself back up towards the surface. i'm not drowning. i'm fighting and i'm surviving. and that's what matters.

- the preston manor was broken into yesterday, and the thief made off with my laptop, discman and mp3 player as well as kayleigh's discman. i've had my own computer in some form or another since i was 12, and now i don't, nor do i have financial prospects to buy one again.
- i forgot to avoid touching my door, and so i probably ruined the fingerprints that may have come in handy in investigating.
- anxiety attacks resumed on friday and heightened when my usb key, with a lot of my work on it, got corrupted. i decided to quit doing my huge assignment and request a grade deferral in that course.
- my babba is in the hospital with potentially permanent mental and physical health issues. i don't think she'll ever be the same again.
- my cold is back as of today. i had a one day reprieve and now i'm coughing like crazy again. i've already taken antibiotics and codeine cough syrup for it. i don't think i'm meant to be healthy.

on the bright side
+ i had an awesome time this weekend hanging out with friends, new and old. three great nights of beer-fueled fun.
+ i have friends that watch hockey with me. and cousins is showing all the stanley cup final games. it fucking rules. plus ottawa won on saturday. andy and i are betting a veggie burger on the outcome. i jokingly suggested we bet one months rent, but i was very relieved that he said no to that. i have a suspicion that the number one way to ruin a friendship is betting rent money.
+ i got 90% on my take-home exam for qualitative research methods when i expected a 50 or a 60. even if i don't get the grade deferral on my huge project, i still pass the course with at least a D and potentially a C. this is rather relieving, although i still hope for the deferral.

i'm off to pawn shops and to put up posters now.

- Having anxiety attacks about my schoolwork this past weekend, with specifically terrible ones Monday afternoon and night. It took me a long time to calm down that day, and I tried many different ways before anything had an effect.
+ Doing exceptionally well the past couple of days. I finished three big assignments and two small ones in two days, and received two assignments back, both of which I got 100% on (although I should have got 95% and 90% respectively, I lucked out due to odd circumstances in each case).
- Procrastinating the past two and a half hours and now feeling anxious again, but not to the same extent.

+ Resuming therapy tommorow and getting a prescription for anti-anxiety meds.
- Being totally sketched out by the side effects and potential dependency issues/withdrawal effects of my prescribed medication. I think I am going to decline to take it.

+ I am going to leave the computer lab as soon as I finish typing this, and I'm going to finish one small assignment that I am late on before I leave school tonight.
- I still have 3 overdue labs, and each one I lose 5% for every day it's late. At least they are only worth 3.3% of my grade each so it's not a huge deal.

+ I asked for an extension on my major qualitative research proposal due to my anxiety attacks.
- I haven't received a response yet from the professor, and it's due on Monday without the extension.

+ Two of my courses are almost finished. I only have one exam left in Quantitative Research Methods, and then the 3 labs and proposal for Qualitative. It's still stressful, but I think the last 3 days were worse than the next week will be.
- I made a baby cry today at my practicum. I was playing with a toy that makes squeeky noises in front of her, and it scared her instead of amusing her.

+ Biking over the CP rail yard in my journey to my practicum.
- The north wind in said journey.

+ The person in one of my classes with the "How's my deriving? Call 1-800-PROVEIT" Math Club Hoodie
- That class is in the TV Lab and I hate being filmed in class. I love to contribute to dialogue but not when I can see my face on big tvs in the class and I have to hold a microphone.

+ Meeting awesome new people.
- Feeling like a dirty scumbag recently as I haven't had time to do laundry.

+ I am the president of Haiti in my Development Aid class' donor conference simulation next week. (This is more funny than positive).
- I might be taken out by a Canadian military supported coup.

+ Friday Night Lights was renewed for a 2nd season!
- Being obsessed with Friday Night Lights

+ The Ottawa Senators
- Being a hockey addict

+ When we signed the lease for The Preston Manor, the landlord asked me if I was a biker and if I had any hells angels patches on my hoodie. I replied that I had a patch that said "honesty".

+ The Spice Girls-esque vocals in "relief" by Anthem Red. Fucking amazing.

+ Finishing at least one of my overdue labs tonight? (So I hope.)

Off to the library!

It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be finished.

No more procrastination!

Andy, Shelagh and I moved into our amazing new house in Wolseley a few days ago, and continuing (copying) the tradition of naming punk projects after intelligent right wing fucks (thanks Margaret Thrasher!) I think we're going to be calling it The Preston Manor.

Come by Saturday night to hang out. We're gonna have a 3rd floor dance party and maybe a backyard firepit in the pile of bricks that Andy assembled. I also might make vegan cocktail weenies, however there is always the possibility that I will be too lazy to follow through on this idea.

202 Evanson St (at Preston).
774-0052

Saturday night!

Also, send letters or long distance phone calls our way if you live outside of Southern Manitoba!

Love
Kevin


------------

In a few minutes I am going to goto the library to research taxidermy for an hour for a sociology project. Weird, isn't it? We have to practice writing field notes for an hour, an the idea is to pick a topic and see where our thoughts take us. So I figured that taxidermy is as good a topic as any.

Winnipeg has been pretty amazing, save for a couple of days of feeling bummed out. I am so stoked on our house though. It felt so amazing to sign a one year lease. Longevity and stability!

I got to see 3 of the best frontpersons in punk play right after each other on Monday night when seeing Search and Destroy, Defect Defect, and Under Pressure. Amazing stage presence by all 3, and in totally different ways. Awesome!

I also decided that I absolutely love Blakes singing of "I've got it!" in Oyster by Jawbreaker. It's so hopefully self-affirming and yet kind of depressing at the same time. Or something like that. I had better adjectives when I first thought of this but they have escaped me.

º Yesterday I bought pipa fria (a green coconut with a hole cut into it and a straw jammed in) from a local juice stand in Alajuela. It had a really interesting taste. I've never tried raw coconut before, and I was interesting drinking juice right from the middle of one. I was really intrigued by how hard the shell of the coconut was, so upon finishing I tried to crack it against the outside corner wall of the building I was leaning against. To my dismay, instead of cracking the coconut I ended up chipping off a piece of the cement wall. An interesting commentary on the strength of coconuts versus the strength of old Costa Rican cement.

º In the past two days I've travelled to all 4 provinces in the Central Valley and all 4 provincial capitals. It sounds more impressive than it is though, given that all 4 cities would fit into an area the size of the GVRD.

º Yesterday I bought a hard wood mortar and pestle from an crafts market in San Josè. After passing 3 stands that sold them, and debating whether or not to buy one, I decided to go for it, and then immediately regretted it when realizing that I'm contributing to deforestation in Costa Rica. I'm stoked on having the mortar and pestle, which completes the awesome coffee making set I've compiled in the past few days, but I feel like an asshole for contributing to the unsustainable pillaging of natural resources in this beautiful country.

º I remembered today a funny conversation I had in my first week here, on my first night at Finca La Flor de Paraiso. I was talking with my middle aged roommate about the Quakers in Costa Rica and mentioned that my school is associated with the Mennonite religion. This led to a discussion of the differences between the Quakers and the Mennonites, in which we heartily agreed that in spite of their differences a Quaker and a Mennonite would never come to fisticuffs.

º Yesterday I was perusing the U of W General Calendar and noticed that there is now an Honours degree in IDS. I then spent hours planning my schedule for the next two years in order to receive this degree. Unfortunately I have to take around 15 credit hours on top of the normal 120, because a few of the courses I've taken thus far don't count for anything. But, on the bright side, I get to take a few interesting theory courses, including Liberals, Marxists and Anarchists, and Violence, Hegemony and the Rise of Mass Politics. I changed my spring schedule as well in order to match my new degree requirements, and I have a feeling it's going to be a bit rough.

My courses this spring will be:
- Poverty Focused Development
- An Analysis of Development Aid Policies
- Quantitative Research Methods
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Special Topics: Social Change

I imagine that the Research Methods courses and Analysis of Development Aid Policies are going to be pretty dry. May, in particular, will be an interesting month. Both my research methods courses are only a month long, so after a month of relative hell it'll be over. Social Change also is a short course, and it ends at the end of June. I realized yesterday that the course takes place on (I think) Sunday afternoons, in a church in Osborne, which will be interesting. My July is shaping up to be really easy in comparison, as I'll have 9 credit hours finished and only 2 night courses left.

I'm so stoked for school!

º In about 8 hours I'll be back in the land of toilets that have the power to flush toilet paper.

° I've travelled through 4 cities today in the Central Valley of Costa Rica taking photos and buying gifts and keepsakes before I leave on Wednesday. In a couple hours I'll be backtracking my steps through Paraiso, Cartago, and San José back to my hostel in Alajuela. Just have one more thing to buy and I'm all set.}

° I love when busses between cities cost only $0.50 Canadian and are more comfortable than the average transit bus in North America. I don't quite understand it though. Gas is rather comparable in price here to Canada, and yet the cost of public transportation is so much more in Canada. Is the wage difference between staff here and unionized staff in Canada that great? Or perhaps it's a result of the difference in ridership. Here, and especially in Nicaragua, busses are always full.

° I also love high speed internet access at internet cafes for only 100 colones per hour, or approximately 25 cents canadian. Fuck paying 6 bucks an hour in a Quebec City web cafe!

° After I get off the computer I'm off to eat the best empanadas in Costa Rica from a restaurant run out of a woman's home about a block away from here. I went there once before, while suffering from a horrible eye infection as a result of misplaced sunscreen (I'm an idiot!) and the empanada was so good I forgot my eye hurt. Seriously amazing. A giant veg empanada, salad and fresh mango juice for around $5 canadian. First I need to regain my hunger.

° I love that "I'm hungry" in Spanish when translated literally back into English reads as "I have hunger". Similarily, "I have 23 years".

° I'm really stoked on my potential job when I get back to Winnipeg. Being a referee for a touch football league and getting paid roughly $20 a game, while setting my own schedule. I'm seriously crossing my fingers for this. It'd be a perfect way to get out of debt while taking full time classes at UW.

° I'm really gung ho on being a football fan this summer. I wanna go to the Bomber home opener in July. Anyone want to come?

° I have giant Zs on both of my feet as a result of getting a ridiculous tan while wearing Chaco sandals. I am probably darker than I've been in my life, but my tan is hideously misshapen and pretty amusing.

° I think one of the best ways to finish off a longish bike ride is by ending up at the ocean. I received this reward last week when biking to Poneloya and the Pacific Ocean from León, using a bike that I rented from the security guard at my hostel. It was really crazy in Poneloya since it was the Saturday of Semana Santa, the biggest beach weekend all year. I've never seen so many people at a beach. I also found out that the beach is definitely better suited for surfing than for swimming, and pretty much every half hour three lifeguards would bolt from their tent in the water to save some unlucky fellow who was stranded far out between waves. Every rescue was succesful fortunately.

° Not so rewarding was the sunburn I received on my back and shoulders as a result of my inability to reach my back when applying sunscreen. Also unrewarding was the ride back into León in the middle of the day when I was exhausted, and avoiding the crazy drivers who would pass me with maybe 6 inches of clearance. I also had to work with unfunctioning, grinding gears which weren't the most pleasant noise or feeling to bike along to. To make matters worse, the security guard had told me prior to giving me the bike that everything was functioning, so I was freaking out thinking that I had broken the nice guys bike. Fortunately, when trying to help him fix the bike, I realized that he didn't really know what he was talking about, and that the bike was in the same condition as when I left. It turns out that he thought that if the gearshift rotated, then the gears were functioning, when actually the chain never moved during the vast majority of the shifts.

° It's a pretty amazing feeling to camp in a valley a 20 minute walk away from the crater of an active volcano. However, it is a bad idea to hike up to this point in a desert climate while already fighting dehydration in the form of stomach problems and diarrhea. I went on a hike to Volcan Telica with a great organization called Quetzaltrekkers that leads hikes to the Volcanoes surrounding León and donates all profits to an organization that helps street kids in León. The hike was really well organized, and the crater was well worth seeing, but I had a ton of difficulty rationing my water over the course of the hike. I had 6 liters of water on me, but the way up was so brutal in the desert climate, and we had no shade the majority of the way up. I downed about 4 liters of water the first day, and purposefully went to sleep early that night so as to conserve water. I made it back to the bottom just as I finished my last bit of water, and then proceeded to down a liter of ice water in the closest restaurant.

° The sulfuric gasses rising from the crater really hurt my lungs. I didn't go back up to the crater for the sunrise because I didn't want to subject my lungs to that again.

° I hate when hardware keyboard layouts and software keyboard layouts don't correspond. I'm now accustomed to Spanish keyboard layouts, but I'm typing on an English keyboard, while using a Spanish layout. I now have memorized that @ is character code 64, or Alt-Gr+2, if I'm lucky. It's a small frustration. But on the bright side I get to type this character ° easily instead, which makes me happy.

° I arrive in Vancouver in just over 2 days. I'm really stoked.

° I realized that I haven't lived in one place for more than 4 or 5 months at a time for almost 2 years now. I'm so excited to settle down in Winnipeg.

° Between our street name, and our downstairs neighbour, our house can be called the Young Granny.

I haven't written in here in a while, though I've been on the computer just as much as usual the past couple weeks. I've been meaning to write a lot, and theres a lot that I've thought of to say but I haven't just sat down to write. I hate these streaks of procrastination. I better not succumb to them next month.

The past two weeks have been filled with the most intense physical exertion of my life. Definitely more than any other two week period. To start it off, around March 24th I spent two days climbing Cerro Chirripo, the highest mountain in Costa Rica at an altitude of 3820m. To say that I made it up gracefully would be an outright lie, as evident by my self portraits about 3/4 up the mountain when even standing and breathing was almost too much to ask of my body. But I made it. A climb and descent of 2.5 km, and 44km of walking with a pack over the course of 35 hours. It was rather insane. The climb is really interesting and went through a couple different ecosystems, from rain forest, to dry, dusty rocks with only a little bit of brush. There is a base lodge at 3400m where I spent the night, and I left at 3am with a couple other trekkers to climb the last 400m to the summit in time for sunrise. I didn't quite make the sunrise, as I took about 20minutes longer than my friends, but even post sunrise it was so incredible up there, standing at the literal top of the country. It was crazy realizing that I had made it to elevations that are suitable for air travel, mostly based on leg power (the first 1300m above sea level I owe to a rickety school bus). When I finally made it back to my hotel in San Gerardo de Rivas at about 4pm, after 2 hours of miserable rain, and 3 falls climbing down, one into a pile of horse shit, I felt as close to dead as I ever have. For the next 3 days I could imagine how my grandmother feels when she walks around. The pain in my legs was so great I had to hold the railing in order to stand a chance of making it down the stairs.

After a day of vegging out in San Isidro del General watching tv in a cool hotel room and drinking a ton of gatorade, I left for San Josè for a night, and then a 6am bus ride up to Granada, Nicaragua. I spent a few days hanging out at a cool (albeit completely gringo) hostel in Granada and then took a bus and a ferry to Isla Ometepe in the middle of Lago Nicaragua. Isla Ometepe is pretty amazing, and in the local indigenous language (Nicarao?) Ometepe means two volcanoes. It's quite a sight to see with a perfect cone volcano, a smaller green dormant volcano next to it, and a figure eight of highways around them with small towns and villages. I took a 3 hour rickety bus ride (in total I travelled about 100km that day as the crow flies, but it took about 6 or 7 hours) and got to a collective organic farm called Finca Magdalena. I went to bed really early, which is quite the norm for me here, and woke early to prepare to hike Volcan Maderas with a group of people. Maderas is about 1300m up and its a climb of about 1200m because you start off close to sea level. Yet in spite of it being a much shorter climb than Chirripo, it proved to be much steeper and more challenging. Essentially, the "trail" consists of walking up a muddy river bed that doesn't carry water in the dry season. Going up wasn't so bad, a bit hard on the heart and lungs, but in an enjoyable way. We climbed the 5km to the lip of the crater in 3-4 hours, and then did a steep and muddy descent into the crater. Guidebooks say that you need a rope in order to safely make this descent, but our guides didn't bring one for some reason. It definitely would have been helpful. In the crater we ate lunch and I swam in the frigid water and mud of the lagoon in the center of the crater. Lagoon is definitely an optimistic name for the body of water in the volcano, and a more apt description is "giant mud puddle". Its about 3 feet of mud, and only 1 foot of water in depth, but it was still enjoyable aside from the smell of sulphur. It was really great when I realized that I was swimming in the middle of a lagoon in the middle of a volcano in the middle of an island, located in the middle of a lake in the middle of a country that is in the middle of america. kind of like those chinese dolls that fit inside one another.

In contrast to my enjoyment of the way up, the first 3km of the way down were awful. The trail became more muddy and slippery as the day progressed, and every step was a struggle for me. Balance is not my forte, and I ended up going slower than the majority of the group, so we divided into a slow group and a fast group. Then our guide ended up ditching us, and me and another person ended up walking through the unmarked trail system alone for a good half hour, hoping that we were heading the right way. The last couple kilometers were drier and less steep, and armed with a walking stick I made it down without any problems. By the time I got down I was so grossly muddy that I ended up showering with all my clothes on in order to attempt to clean them. After a certain point I had given up on any hope of staying clean, and I started to slide down parts of the volcano on my ass instead of risking a face first tumble. This trek was definitely on the edge of safety. There isn't really much of a threat of a free fall, but theres plenty of opportunity for broken ankles or for concussions. A lot of jagged rocks and places that would be extremely easy to trip on. It was interesting to talk after the climb of whether a place like it would exist in the US, or whether you would need to sign a waiver in order to climb. Talking about american lawsuits led me to realize that the american dream is about wanting as much individual freedom as possible without any individual responsibility. take everything and blame everyone else.

For some ridiculous reason, the next morning I decided that the perfect follow up to hiking a volcano would be to rent a bike and to cycle to the opposite side of the island in pursuit of the only ATM on the island. In theory this made a ton of sense to me, since the bus ride took 3 hours each way with a ton of stops I figured that it would be much faster by bike. I rented a crappy canadian tire style bike from a local family for a really great price, and took off at about 9 or so through some of the worst roads and humidity I have ever encountered. After a roughly 60km round trip, more than I've ever biked in a day before, in sweltering heat, over hilly dirt roads and sand drifts, and over a small mountain in between the two volcanoes, I realized that I'm bad at judging distances when looking at maps. To make matters worse, the ATM didn't work with Canadian cards, leaving me broke, in the middle of an island, and owing more money to the farm than I had on me. Fortunately I was able to get a cash advance from my visa from the one grocery store that took visa, so things ended up working out. I contemplated taking a taxi back from Moyogalpa to the farm, but the $25 price range was too steep for my budget, so I ended up biking back 15km, getting a ride with a bus for about 6 until the turnoff from the paved highway, and then biking the last 9 through the dirt and sand drifts.

This is really long, so I'll write more later instead. I'm in Leòn right now and it's good friday of Semana Santa, so I'm going to hit the streets and look at the religious processions and the drunken partying, which is a pretty amusing combination.

It's really crazy that within 3 weeks I'll be in Winnipeg, having passed through Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Houston, Seattle and Vancouver. I'm so stoked to get there. To live in the Granny house and to be a student again.

Two things I'm especially stoked on returning to in Canada:
- The Margaret Trasher / B Lines show the weekend I'm in Vancouver
- This course I found out about at U of W which was just added to the Spring Calendar:
Creative Tools for Social Change
is an interactive, learner-centred course that seeks to empower students to understand and better confront
social injustice and inequality. Through a practicum experience within a community organization of their
choice, they will explore the role that community plays in transforming society. Students will increase their
self-awareness and practice holistic self-care for their body, mind, emotions and spirit that will sustain their
involvement in social change. They will be involved in shaping course material, depending on their own
identified learning goals, as well as the knowledge, passion and experience that they bring to the
classroom. The course will be taught using a variety of participatory formats, including reflection, readings,
simulations and popular education tools.

I made it to Isla San Lucas today, and got to see the prison for a couple hours. I took a few hundred photos and now I'm in a web cafe in Puntarenas copying them to a cd so that I can clear my camera again.

When I got to Puntarenas I didn't think I'd be able to goto Isla San Lucas. The tourism office, and the people at my hotel both said that Isla San Lucas was closed to the public. So did the ferry company when I asked them. Before heading back to my hotel yesterday, I asked one more place, a tourist information office at the ferry terminal and the guy there hooked me up. It was pretty steep, as the tours to San Lucas are usually for 4 people, and I was only one, but I think it's worth it. The prison was pretty chilling, different than what I expected. I don't really want to look at my photos right now. I'm not sure if they did it justice. It was hard to capture everything. The way the light struck made it difficult. I took a lot of photos of the graffiti, and of the old cells and bathrooms. There were hundreds of bats in the prison, and though normally I tremble in fear at the sight of those creatures, I kept it together for the most part as they flew over my head, at times only inches from it. Something about being there, and knowing the immense amount of suffering that went on in that very place helped me to keep it together, to not let my normal petty fears consume me. I hope I captured it. I really hope so. I guess these expectations are partially because of the money I spent (it was a $100 US tour), and partially because of what I hope to do with these photos. I think that this is a case where I'll be really critical if I look right now but if I give it some time I will appreciate them more and more.

I hope to make an art project of some sort involving these photos, a zine of photos or enlargements of such perhaps, that I can "sell" for donations to a Latin American books for prisoners project. Perhaps have a show or something as well for donations as well, and possibly a reading from La Isla De Los Hombres Solos, the famous book about the prison. I emailed someone that I really respect who does prison advocacy work in Kansas about his thoughts on the ethics of prison tours, and of a tourist economy developing based on places of such immense suffering and his thoughts were that what matters is if the moment will lead to further work in the future towards improving/eliminating this suffering in the present. The question was whether I would use this experience in the future as inspiration towards working towards helping prisoners in horrible situations today, or whether this was just an unusual experience to add to my vault of travelling experiences, an experience in "Zapatourismo". I definitely don't want it to be the latter. I want to do something based on what I saw, or more accurately, with what I saw. I think with the resources at my disposal (free printing) I can hopefully do something.

Tonight I'm just going to take it easy, not that that's a change from what I've done every night. Its been rare that I've been awake past 11, and rare that I've woken up past 6. I kind of like this schedule but I also feel like I'm missing out by not going out at night. Although I never go to bars in Canada so I guess it'd be unnatural to go here.

Anyways... tonight is pizza and a beer perhaps at the place next door. And then tomorrow, early morning I'm off to San Josè, San Isidro del General and finally, San Gerardo de Rivas and Cerro Chirripo. I have no idea of whether I'll be able to climb the mountain, of whether I physically am able to and of whether there's room in the hostel but I guess I'll find out. I've tried to call ahead a couple times but I am always given a different phone number, and nobody seems to have information. Plus, my broken Spanish is even more broken given the distance of telephone contact.

Hopefully it'll work out like today did.

After that:
- Nicaragua for a couple weeks
- Studying Spanish for a week in Nicaragua
- The Caribbean?
- Pòas or Irazu?
- A canopy tour?
- Another fùtbol game in Alajuela
- The best smelling coffee in the world in Cartago
- Home.

I'm going to be so broke. Debt is fucking scary! I kind of want to be home right now just so I can start to do something about it. Here all I can do is spend, spend, spend. And I keep getting enticed by the "I'm already here so whats a few more dollars for ...." thoughts. Not good for my financial situation at all. Live now, pay later.

i finally got around to posting some photos of my trip so far.

if you wanna see, check out http://kevincornflake.wordpress.com/ for a huge page.

or for specific and smaller pages:

the farm
the view from sol y valle (my house at the farm)
football classic -- saprissa vs alajuela
anti TLC manifestation
playa sámara

now off to a volcano or to puntarenas. i need to decide in 3 minutes!

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate -- "We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their mind don't understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mothers blanket -- take this for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning -- from "I" to "we."

If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could seperate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we." (p. 165)

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also, I'm in Playa Samara, Nicoya Peninsula, Guanacaste, Costa Rica right now. I'm studying Spanish at a school that's on the beach. It's phenomenal here. I'm living with a family that has tons of chickens, pigs, cows and 2 geese, and has monkeys that live in the trees around the house and make the funniest noises at night. I love it.

I'm gonna make a big post later this week but I haven't been able to get to it yet.
So far I've
- volunteer for two weeks
- been away from the internet for longer than i have in years
- taken part in the biggest protest i've ever seen against the TLC in San Jose
- took 200 photos at said protest
- got an eye infection
- cured my painful eye infection with $17 eye drops
- eaten a ton of rice and beans
- eaten more plaintains than ever before in my life. more in 3 weeks than in 23 years prior
- learned some spanish

i want to climb cerro chirripo, take a bunch more photos, go to nicaragua, visit isla san lucas for a day, check out the Caribbean for a few days, goto at least one soccer game (hopefully in Alajuela)...

i'm going to head off. i have no patience with slow internet access so i think i'll wait until i goto nicoya tomorrow where hopefully it'll be faster. it doesnt help that i have a ton of photos to upload. i've probably taken about 700 since i got here. of course, i'll only upload around 50 but still.

xoxo

Salgo para/por (??) Costa Rica en veinte minutos.

Nos vemos en dos meses.

Keep in touch. It'd be great to hear from people in Van/Winnipeg and I think I'll be sending out update emails so if you're interested in getting them let me know.

i saw about half an episode of friday night lights at my parents house when i stayed there and in the past few days i've downloaded and watched every single episode. such a phenomenal show. i'm already eager to see the new episode on wednesday. i have an obsessive personality about these type of things. something about sports totally captivates me. when i was a kid i followed sports religiously. i brought the sports pages into kindergarten for show and tell nearly every week.

the show is an awesome depiction of life in a small highschool football obsessed college town. really amazing mix teen drama ala degrassi, or more like freaks and geeks/dawsons creek, but revolving around football players and cheerleaders. some of them are total assholes but the majority are really incredible characters. it's pretty embarassing to say but i've cried during a few of the episodes already. an incredible character becomes paralyzed in the first episode which is so intense, and there's so many other moments that are so sad or so heartwarming. it also deals with mental health issues, racism, hurricane katrina, among other subplots.

i've realized i still harbor a childhood dream of being a good football player, or hockey player, or whatnot. never for playing pro -- i can't grasp the bullshit that some players make as much money as millions of people combined do in poor countries, nevermind what the owners make. but for the camaraderie of being part of a team, of dedicating efforts collectively to a game. of giving myself so fully to something. i don't think i've done that for more than one or two projects in my entire life. i almost always live with one foot out the door and one foot in. this dream combined with awesome indie rock (explosions in the sky) makes me an addict. i'm totally hooked.

i'm pretty curious what non football fans would think of the show. as for myself i can see this being the only show i've ever seen other than freaks and geeks where i could withstand 12 hours straight of watching it, like the freaks and geeks marathon we had over the summer in winnipeg. in hindsight, i can't believe we sat in front of the tv from about 9am till 1pm watching all 18 episodes. halfway through i sat on one of those wicker chairs that's a half sphere mounted on a cylindrical base and tipped it over, falling with a loud crash on the hardwood. that was pretty awesome.

derry left for winnipeg a few minutes ago and now i feel kind of distraught. i'm really stoked for him and i really hope that winnipeg goes well for him. i think the reasons that he's moving back are very admirable, and i'm really happy that he'll be back there and at the u of w when i move back. but for now this is really harsh.

i realized recently that some of the main reasons that vancouver has felt like home to me have been living with him and living with andy. i'm no good at making plans with people and i definitely have relied on them being a huge part of my social life. either tagging along with them or hanging out at home. it's been really hard having them leave, losing my closest friends at each of the times to geographic distance.

but it's also a time for growth and change i guess. to get out of the house on my own and make plans independently. i think i'm pretty good at doing things by myself -- getting outside to explore the city or whatever -- but i'm terrible at making plans with others. i hate making phone calls. my in person awkwardness increases tenfold on the phone. right now i'm longing so much for february, for leaving for costa rica. but i don't want to live through the next two months just surviving until that date. i really want to fight against my tendency to be reclusive.

so if anyone wants to hang out in the next while i'd be really stoked to. i definitely want to make sure i get out more.

also, we finally took house photos yesterday before derry left.
i especially like this one:

akron/family is perhaps the only band i've ever seen that has exceeded my expectations tenfold when my expectations were already extremely high. holy shit!

if anyone is looking for something to do tomorrow night i highly suggest coming to seattle with me to see them. they are phenomenal.

my plans for the near/semi near future have changed drastically over the past two days. i found out that Scotty will also be moving out on February 1st, along with Derry leaving us for Winnipeg in two weeks. this sort of inspired me to get my ass in gear and start dealing with shit that I've been neglecting. i haven't been feeling too well in Vancouver the past couple months. i have fun times, here and there, and pretty often actually but in general i feel really unfulfilled. September felt really hopeful and i was so stoked on being back here but now i don't really know what I'm doing here. i don't think I'm really accomplishing anything. i stay up on the computer till late, then sleep in. I'm such a homebody, and often i don't leave the house until 4 or 5 pm. the only challenges i really throw at myself are my job and cooking/baking. and I'm really stoked on both of those now, but it totally isn't enough. there's no longevity in this, nothing big that I'm striving towards. it feels really empty, and i feel pretty wasteful.

so...
- i plan to go to Costa Rica around February 12th to volunteer at la flor de paraiso farm and to learn Spanish there. that is, if it's still around. the website doesn't appear to have been updated since give or take 2004.
- I'll probably stay there or around central america until mid April and then come back to Vancouver for a week or two
- I'll be starting school again at the U of W on May 1st, hopefully taking an Analysis of Development Aid Policies, Poverty Focused Development, and a history course on the topic of Islam and the West. 12 credit hours in a term for the first time in about 3 years.
- come back to Vancouver in august after school is done to visit and to finally be here in the summer. I've been here at every other time of year but I've never been able to enjoy summer here, save for two days on tour.
- back to Winnipeg in the fall to continue school.

it's all very up in the air, but I've been looking pretty seriously for plane tickets and if I buy soon the ticket is a pretty affordable $670 Canadian round trip from Seattle to San Jose. it's so rushy, but i feel like i should buy soon before the prices go up. I've been thinking about going to la flor de paraiso for about three years now and maybe now is the time to go.

as for a smaller journey, tomorrow i plan to walk to spanish lessons stopping at pizza jerk, red cat records, potentially a place on Main or Fraser for samosas, and somewhere along 41st if another stop is in order. I'm kind of stoked on the idea of taking like 4 or 5 hours to do what is ordinarily a 40 minute commute.