In which I pack it up pack it in, realise it is time to say goodbye, and rip off other song lyrics to try and mop up the sop

It is strange to think that just under a year ago I opened up my computer to write a blog which word for word could describe my feelings now. Those feelings, stripped of their poetic elegance, go something like this: Noooooooooooooooooo I don't want to go!!!!

The last few days of my time in Costa Rica passed in a blur of numb packing and emotionally charged goodbyes. I dragged all my books and readers up to campus and lugged my heavy heart back home with me. Don´t get me wrong, I was seriously excited about heading back (briefly!) to see friends and family and for all my adventures ahead but over the months my Costa Rica life had become, well, my life. This was my town, my routine, my favourite foods and my new extended family, and it seemed totally incomprehensible that I should be leaving it all behind. Again.

As you may have gathered over the past few blogs this has been an incredible year. I haven´t mentioned my classes that much, and heaven knows I´m not sure I feel like an MA student, but it has been absolutely fascinating to study again and International Law and Human Rights was the perfect course for me. But my head is filled with more than just facts, I also have a cranium full of memories which I am truly grateful for. Like tea and cake on Marion's porch, the looks of locals faces as I did my lonely Santa fun run, sitting out on my porch playing guitar and singing to the evening sky with Ben, wild dance moves and eternal bus rides with Isabelle, hang-over market breakfasts with Rafa and green food-dye with Patrick and a hundred other people and places that made this a special time.

The only thing that really got me through it was thinking back to the very first blog I wrote, where I was sure I was making the biggest mistake of my life walking away from the people and place I love. I read those words again trying to make this girl recognise herself in that girl and reassuring myself that the future will bring more good times.

So I have decided to keep this blog going a while longer. It is meant to be lessons from Central America, but there are lessons to learn elsewhere too. I have made it to eight countries and 3 continents in the past 9 months... and the plan is not to slow down just yet.

So I´ll close this soppy chapter with a poem my Mum gave to me on my very first, fresh faced adventure (I went inter-railing at 17 and caught the travel bug... and miraculously not bed bugs!) I am trying to hold on to the words of this poem and keep my achy breaky leaving heart together for a while longer.

Away and See- Carol Ann Duffy

Away and see an ocean suck at a boiled sun
and say to someone things I’d blush even to dream.
Slip off your dress in a high room over the harbour.
Write to me soon.
New fruits sing on the flipside of night in a market
of language, light, a tune from the chapel nearby
stopping you dead, the peach in your palm respiring.
Taste it for me.
Away and see the things that wordsgive a name to, the flight
of syllables, wingspan stretching a noun. Test words
wherever they live; listen and touch, smell, believe.
Spell them with love.
Skedaddle. Somebody chaps at the door at a year’s end, hopeful.
Away and see who it is. Let in the new, the vivid,
horror and pity, passion, the stranger holding the future.
Ask him his name.
Nothing’s the same as anything else. Away and see
for yourself. Walk. Take a boat till land reappears,
altered forever, ringing its bells, alive. Go on. G’on. Gon.
Away and see.

Lessons learnt:

Costa Rica is paradise. UPEACE is a weird and very special place. The students there are the most fascinating and brilliant student body around!

Rice and beans doesn´t get old!

I am an unattractive crier (but I knew that already)