Sworn-in

On Wednesday October 28th I became an official Peace Corps Volunteer.

The ceremony took place at the beautiful training center that had served as a home base during our weeks in the capital. The acting ambassador to the DR, as Obama has yet to appoint one, spoke. Our fantastic Country Director spoke. Two of our fellow trainees spoke. A couple of other distinguished guests spoke. Then we took the oath and became Volunteers. The ceremony was great and seemed to pass by just as quickly as the 10 weeks of training.

The only left to do before heading back to our sites to begin our lives as PCVs was to celebrate. We spent a significant chunk of the day Thursday eating cheeseburgers and enjoying the pool at the US Embassy. It was a small taste of all things great about America. (I forgot what a luxury it is to actually flush toilet paper.) Thursday night we crammed into a hotel and celebrated the night away. We Youth Volunteers found our own little Loma in the City and had one last hurrah until the day in just under a month when we reunite to eat turkey, stuffing and pie and swap stories of volunteerism and cultural/linguistic blunders.

As I sat and sunburned beside the Embassy pool on Friday, I couldn't help but feel like I had won the lottery. The Peace Corps lottery. Of the 70+ countries the Peace Corps sends Volunteers, I found myself siting beside a pool on a tropical island that I will call home for the next two years. I could be under feet of snow in Eastern Europe right now or living in a mud hut somewhere, which I was more than willing to do. But here I am in the DR. Like I said, the lottery.

With that we're official. 45 of us from 4 different sectors are the newest additions to the DR team. It really did feel on Friday as we headed back to our respective sites that the training wheels had come off and we were entering into new, exciting and unknown territory.

It's time to see what I learned these past 10 weeks.