It's Official!

So, it's official...I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer!! We swore in yesterday at the US Ambassador's house. We were 33 strong because 6 people didn't pass their language tests and one more person left this past week. It was a great ceremony and so surreal, it's bizarre to think that our training is finally over and that we're official. A lot of current PCVs came in as well as a lot of people from the ex-pat community. It was held at the Ambassador's house on her lawn overlooking the Niger river. It was a pretty short ceremony but with a lot of speeches--our training manager, country director, Ambassador and three stagaires spoke, one in each language (Zarma, Hausa, and French). Then we took our oath in English and French. There was a lot of media there too and I got interviewed with Ariel, a fellow PCV, about our feelings after the ceremony and stuff. After the ceremony we went back to the training site for dinner. Today is our recovery day in Niamey - we went to the bank, did some shopping, ate lunch, and the Ambassador opened up her house for swimming and an ultimate frisbee tournament between the different regions.

Everyone's heading out tomorrow to their different regions, we're leaving at 6:30 am for Maradi. It will be sad to leave people knowing that we won't see each other for the next few months -- we're not allowed to leave our villages for the first month and we're not allowed to leave our region for the first three months. We'll all be back together for In Service Training (IST) though, which is in January back in Hamdallaye.

I'll be sure to write some more and put up some pictures this week before I leave for my town since I won't have Internet access for the following month or so. I hope all is well with everyone, I've been getting family updates from my mom so I am pretty much up to speed with everything. Thank you for all the comments and messages, it means a lot. Take care everyone!