Swear In

I'm officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!! Go mee!!

21 of us (we started training with 26) were officially sworn in as volunteers on July 18th and it felt soooo good!  The ceremony was held at the US Ambassador's mansion and it was a very nice ceremony.  It lasted about one hour with several speeches being made by the now, volunteers.  Two speeches were made in English, two in French, and one in Kinyarwanda--the latter speech was done by myself and Donovan, another volunteer.  All of the speeches went well, however mine and Donovan's speech was the most recognized since it was the one done in the language that everyone could actually understand.

Once the ceremony was over, we had some 'decent' food.  Small pizza rounds, sambusa (basically a triangle shaped taquito), quiche, carrot cake, chocolate cake, oatmeal cookies, chips and guacamole, vegetable rolls, and of course the refreshments list would not have been complete without Fanta and passion fruit juice! 

After standing around and trying to mingle in the language that we did our best to learn in 10 short weeks, we all took a million pictures and spoke to our families (the ones that were invited and actually came to the ceremony) for the last time.  My host mother was there in her fanciest all-white dress and we agreed that I would try to go back to visit her sometime in August.  I can't wait to see her again!! 

Of course, the night of swear-in was party time, so the volunteers split up into a few small groups and went out for a night on the town; some went to restaurants and others went to a club/lounge type place.  From the sounds of it, we all had a good time!  I would have guessed everything in Kigali would be closed by 10pm on a Wednesday night, but there were tons of places to go that were open late.  Kigali never ceases to amaze me; each time I go always ends up being better than the last :)

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea