Write a 250 word essay starting with "Why......"

Why is educating equivalent to watering down so many times? If we looked like we wanted to learn halfway, we actually preferred playing outside, but guess what? We get up at 6 am for twelve plus years, brush our teeth, grimace at our pimply faces and march off to school, so don't, DON'T belledddy patronize us, please!

History textbooks for example. Each era/period/century is made to snugly fit into 10 pages of badly typed up text. It's like watching a horrible trailer for a movie that will never be released. So you have kids walking around under the impression that most of the Indian Independence struggle started with salt on a beach and ended with salt-holding person's dietary changes. Not cool.

Science is another gassy explosion altogether. To draw from personal experience, I spent a large part of my youth thinking we get Vitamin D from the sun and milk i.e. that both are separate sources of the thing. But as I learnt and only because I took specific chemistry classes, energy from the sun converts pro-Vitamin D which we get from foods like said milk into Vitamin D. And here I thought that there were invisible Vitamin D packets floating around in the sky between the times of 12pm-4pm. It would have been a simple enough thing to explain to a child but nooo, hide this scarring truth from us.

Geography makes me seasick (my oversmart quips are a result of this poor education, I don't know enough so I think I know a lot, geddit, geddit). The world somehow manages to be completely boring in a geography textbook and learning from television has its perils. Most channels, through Hollywood movies make the Ptolemaic mistake of showing the States to be the center of the universe.

This non-critical, biased, way of learning infects higher education too and we sit around in graduate level classes and ponder completely uninteresting, inherently flawed, meaningless questions like, "If someone on LSD thinks he is flying, do we say he isn't?" Word.

2 year old limerick

The secret to poetry is rice
Each grain a sticky thought
You chew on it, don't forget to share
If it's too hard, then make curry!

...

Words, how did we come to make them? Who thought of putting an e after an a to give us such a pretty looking word as "faery" or make the daily ritual sound like a rare and special thing by calling it "quotidian"? And then we have QWERTY which really shouldn't be a thing.

Casa Bonita

I feel a think coming on as some favourite but forgotten character once said. I have moved into a new place a mere catapult shot away from my old apartment, and yet, so very different. It is the place I have always wanted but did not know I wanted, and now that I have it, I cannot but want to have it longer! So goes my fierce nostalgia for the present projected into the future. The perfect little apartment on the second floor of an open set of homes, with a central shared space where children play, an old railing to which I lock my bike, paint peeling in just the right places all give the facade character. Imagine that, after living in a chunky, dingy apartment building with blinding white walls and little else that stood out. And the inside of our new abode is an even more cutesy tale. A cosy living room lit by a lamp, a thirty year old couch, a recliner in the corner and a view of the park. Two bedrooms with our lives in them, a kitchen full of brand new dishes waiting to be filled with our food experiemnts, beer in the fridge, a makeshift bathroom curtain to block out the streaky windows and a very chic shower curtain. Domestic bliss is quite real, I have to admit. But if it seems like I attribute it all to simply these objects, it certainly is not the case. We have fun neighbours, and I have a brand new roommate who is easygoing and a friend which is pretty stellar as roommates go so really I saved the best for last. We also have a theme of leaves to bond us :)

Mind Farts and Psychic Vampires

This is a post dedicated to expanding the English lexicon. I introduce two words, the first of which I had coined awhile back and the second was introduced to me by Victor and Caitlin.

Mind farts came to me in a brilliant flash of mindfartiness during a long, intellectual discussion filled with obscure references and random philosophy. It means to let off fumes of nothingness which if done in large amounts may contribute to global warming, but which relieves you (like this post).

Psychic vampires, as was explained to me by V and C, are people who tire you by their mere presence. Interaction with them leaves you needing a Gatorade and so in the interests of your sanity, you should identify those people early and not let them get to you. Sounds good.

Costarricense!!

I think the last year was what I'd call a money's worth year or in other words a full-on paisa vasool Bollywood entertainer! There was separation, drama, happiness, laughter, loneliness, fun, friendship and so much newness. Visited three new countries and in one of them as I write this. We are in Monteverde, Costa Rica now. It's been a week since we landed in San Jose and 14 frijoles y arroz (beans and rice) later, I can say that I'm looking forward to the next six weeks.

I am so happy here that I had to analyze the feeling. I have concluded that it is because this place reminds me of home so much. It's hot, sweaty and tropical green everywhere. I already have a pimple on my forehead and an uneven tan. We walk an hour everyday uphill and downhill to and from Instituto de Monteverde (MVI). Right next to it is The Cheese Factory that has icecream and shakes but we are trying to keep the visits weekly. Our walks are in single file with Caitlin periodically calling, "A la derecha/esquierda" when vehicles pass, Yamuna clicking pictures of every interesting thing she sees, Kotrina with her cute "Pinto" a dog who has taken her as its owner and me dreaming of watermelons! We've seen caimans, vultures, a toucan, white-headed capuchins, hummingbirds and countless chihuahauas.

Costa Ricans live life at their own pace, are very friendly and one of the tiquismos (local expressions) is "pura vida". Very touristy but what the hell. This Costariccense is taken out of context in funny ways too. We wanted to do yoga here since Ernesto told us about the studios, but since the cheaper and better one was closed on Saturday, we went to the expensive one called "Rio Shanti", already strike one! We enter to meet two breathy ladies who used "that is so awesome" in the most irritating falsettos 3 times in the same sentence, strike two! And they hugged and said, "second hug, see you tomorrow morning at 9", strike three!

Downtown consists of shops and restaurants and can be navigated in 5 minutes. There is a hippy resthouse with the token hippies strategically placed along the banisters, the SuperMercado (supermarket), the souvenir shops, the local watering hole called Bar Amigos, out of whose back windows we "chicas" were hollered and catcalled at as we went home and there is another bar which we haven't tried yet which is the chica-friendly one.

The project that I'm going to be working on looks very promising and Ernesto, my adviser and teacher here at MVI is a Costa Rican from heaven! He is doing research on food insecurity and nutrition and health impacts of eco-tourism and integration into the market economy in the community. I will be doing a literature review on public health program models and their adaptability, talking to people in the community and even trying to work with them if possible in the fields or at the workplace. I will be able to improve my Spanish and talk to people, see what life here is like and live like a Tica for awhile! On the weekends, we plan to go on hikes, drive up to Mt. Arenal, hang out at the Common Cup which is the local coffee shop that sells coffee from the farmers in San Rafael, and visit the famous Cloud Forest Reserve at some point. This is excellent.

Estabien,
To life