I love this place!

So, I'm about to run off to the beach for the weekend, but I figured I'd say hi. This week has been awesome. Beautiful weather. Beautiful places, and amazing people. I found out I could walk home along these abandoned train tracks, and it's a really pretty way to go... it winds right through the university row of shops and restaurants, then through this park and a residential neighborhood where the flowers overflow from people's back yards and you can hear them sweeping or playing soccer or listening to music. I went to the town of Cartago yesterday.. it's the oldest city in the country, once the capital... and we visited the church of la virgen de los angeles, which has been in the same place for four centuries, built over a river because they found an idol that kept magically reappearing on a rock on the bank. The river flows right under the church, and you can still go down underneath and see the rock. In august, there's a holiday where people walk to this church from all over the country to ask miracles, and under the church where the rock is they have hundreds of little silver offerings... shapes of legs and eyes and heads and things for healing miracles, little children, houses, boats, army badges, the occasional sports trophy to give thanks to the virgin. Makes me wonder a little if WE're not the blind ones, refusing to see miracles when they happen in small ways everywhere.

I've also been hanging out with the biology group that Cooper is with at the University of Costa Rica. It's a really cool, interesting group of people. Four girls from sweden rented their own apartment here, so we went there wednesday night to hang out. They had a second story, and from their place there was a walkway along the roof of the house below to a little open air alcove with candles and a view of the city. It was gorgeous. I stayed up until two in the morning, mostly talking politics with the swedes, a canadian girl, and these two very activist americans, one of whom went to the world development conference in Rio last year, and the other one who was grilling him on what he actually, tangibly did with that knowledge. Josh, the second one, had a fidel castro beard, and went on a lot about how important it is to take tangible action against things when they know they are wrong, and they know what they should do. How much atrocity is enough? One of the things he said...In all my organizing, I've never fought conservatives, I've just fought liberals to get off their asses. We are the reason we don't have any power.