Ok, so it’s been a while since my last post. A lot of things have happened since then, but I don’t have anywhere near enough time to go into all of it. There’s no point in recounting the excitement of us learning about our sites, as here I am, already in my new home. Independence day would be neat to write about, but it seems so long ago now. The weekend before we left the entire group went out for a party that we titled ‘Peace Corps Prom’, which was great. You can see the pictures to get an idea of how that went.
I guess I’ll just skip ahead to our swearing-in ceremony.
Ceremony at the U.S. Embassy, Thursday, September 22nd.
The whole day is a blur now. In the morning we went to Tegucigalpa to meet our counterparts. I met the principal of the High School I will be working at, but we didn’t get much of a chance to really talk. As a group we sat through some charlas to discuss things such as expectations for our work in the future. Truth be told I was only half paying attention, as the anticipation of the approaching ceremony occupied my mind.
Early in the afternoon they shipped our entire group to the Embassy. The grounds were beautiful, and we spent a while just taking pictures. For some reason I decided to take a picture of myself in the reflection of the door that leads to the inner part of the complex. I never take those ‘myspace’ style photos (where you take a picture of yourself looking at a mirror), but for that split second it seemed like a good idea. Almost immediately after, one of the officials at the embassy asked me sternly but calmly if he could look through my photos. Turns out it’s a security risk to take pictures of the doorways in an embassy. All I had to do was delete the one photo, and after a slight moment of embarrassment I went back out to the grounds.
The ceremony itself was great. There were speeches by our directors, the ambassador, a youth that had a personal testimony about how his life was affected by a Peace Corps Volunteer, and of course a speech by one of our own volunteers, Constance. Her speech was great, and right after that all fifteen of our group of volunteers went on stage to sing ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens. One of our group members, Chris (probably my best friend of all the volunteers, and an amazing guitar player) was asked by our director to prepare a musical event for the ceremony. He ended up playing guitar on stage, while the rest of our group sang the chorus as we stood behind him. The song went just as we practiced.
After the ceremony, we got to hang out and enjoy some refreshments. We took full advantage of our final opportunities to hang out and joke around as a group. Even on our way home (in our fully-loaded Peace Corps Land Rover) we continued to enjoy ourselves. Hotel California came on the radio, and we sang it out loud at the top of our lungs with the windows down through the streets of Teguz. None of us completely knew the words or could sing particularly well, but it didn’t matter. As much fun as I was having, inside I felt a little sad knowing that in 24 hours the world I had grown accustomed to in the past three months would completely change.
When we got back home, I was excited for dinner. Gloria asked me what I had wanted, and I told her pizza (of course). However, when I arrived they told me that they weren’t able to get all of the ingredients together in time, so they made tacos for me instead. Keep in mind they aren’t really like anything you would call a taco in the United States. Though I didn’t enjoy them anywhere near as much as I would have enjoyed pizza, I appreciated the gesture of them making a special meal for me all the same. When we were done eating I gave them a small parting gift. I ended up buying them a few mugs, as my host mother and I had a little bit of an inside joke. Three mugs had been broken during the span of one week during my stay. A couple of the times it was because I put a mug I had used on the edge of the counter, and Gloria then accidentally knocked them onto the floor. The third mug was broken entirely by Gloria and had absolutely nothing to do with me. Thus, I thought it would be a cute parting gift, and they liked it.
More coming soon! I was going to make one really long post, but I haven't finished writing everything, so I figure I'll just post this for now
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