Quick Update

Things have been very busy for us, as we have been making great headway on the documentary.  We are getting learning much about Costa Rica, and we have spoken with many interesting and insightful people.  The warm receptions that we have received from individuals and organizations has made us feel much more at home here.

We have seen so much in the past two weeks.  We visited Centro de Amigos para la Paz, who run the hostel Casa Ridgway, where we heard Honduran author Jorge Miralda speak about his recent book and the coup in Honduras.  We then visited the University for Peace, the only UN mandated graduate school for peace and conflict studies.  Yesterday we spent a day at a high school in the town of Santa Ana.  Luckily, we had a chance to speak with a teacher there who is certified in peace education by the Rasur Foundation.

We apologize that this is such a short update.  Blog posts in the not-too-distant future will cover more of the details, and there will be video clips of some of our footage posted soon.  Thanks for keeping track of our project!

First Stages of Filming

On Friday we spent time at Rasur and filmed a nonviolent communication training for Nashua Community College. This was our first real attempt at filming and besides for a few glitches we got all of the technology to work. At the training, we met many students of NCC´s Peace and Justice Studies program who came to Costa Rica to learn experientially about peace. The Rob Atkinson Scholarship Fund, created to honor Rob Atkinson who was a member of the Student Peace Alliance in the United States, sponsored many of the students on the trip. Since then, we have been working on lining up interviews and making connections to other organizations in Costa Rica. The project is progressing just as we had hoped, and we are excited for the coming week when we hope to continue to film!

Figuring Things Out

Well, we´re here! We arrived in Costa Rica on Tuesday at 10:30am to discover our bags failed to make the journey with us (they eventually showed up). We found Jonah´s friend who brought us to our apartment, which is in a beautiful neighborhood of San Jose called Rohrmoser. We took the rest of the day to get our bearings, get some food for the apartment, and figure our way around where we live and San Jose in general. The following day we took all of our gear to the Rasur Foundation, the organization that we´re working with for the project.

After a long busride and a 3 mile walk in the Costa Rican humidity, we arrived at Rasur, which has a stunning facility. We took the time to work with JP, our extremely helpful contact at Rasur, to further our understanding of our camera gear and to conduct practice interviews. We were pleased to discover that all our gear works properly, which is a miracle considering that we carried all of it while traveling. Today we are working on scheduling interviews and further developing our storyboard. Both are progressing just as we had hoped. Tomorrow we are back at Rasur to watch and perhaps film a nonviolent communication training, which will be an awesome opportunity. All three of us are fast becoming more and more excited about the project as we move from our theoretical plan to more concrete expereiences. Until our next update . . . pura vida!

  

 Ned, Jonah, and Alex at 4am at Logan Airport, Boston, embarking on the project.

  

 Our living room of the apartment in Rohrmoser.

  

 Conducting a mock interview.

 

Ned, Jonah, and JP working with the equipment.