Official Peace Corps Volunteer!

This morning the office brought mail for me – an inspirational card with a poem and jokes from my parent’s neighbors. She indicated that a package was on the way. It was so neat to receive words of encouragement from home!

We got ready and hopped in the Peace Corps van at 9:45 and headed to the hotel for the ceremony. My host mom, dad and a little brother showed up and greeted me with a lei and kisses. We listened to speeches from the village pastor, director of Catholic education, country director and US Charge d’ Affairs. We ended with our speech – given by Marques. He did such a great job with his humorous, fun-loving speech. As part of the gift for the trainers, we showed a slide show presentation with pictures of them throughout the past ten weeks and presented a copy of the slide show to each of them. We at with our families and then my host parents slipped me $20 and told me to buy something that I wanted.

One of the trainers took us back to our hotel and told us that we were his favorite group (he has been with the Peace Corps for five years) and we were touched. He drove some of us to the Peace Corps office to pick up our brand new bikes – mid-range Treks. A couple of us rode them to the hotel and then walked over to the post office to pick up packages. The package I received was from my parent’s neighbors. They sent me a nice letter, more jokes, gum, candy, ramen and easy mac pastas and lots of fun things. It was such a nice gesture and I am so grateful for all the love that is coming my way from the States.

Well, all 14 of us are officially Peace Corps Volunteers! We are the first group in at least five years from PC Samoa to all make it through training. It is pretty common for 1-2 to drop out during the training period. We are all going to strive to close our service as 14 strong. I have bittersweet feelings about becoming a volunteer. I thoroughly enjoy being pampered as much as we were as trainees. I truly love all of our trainers and took great pleasure in spending time with them getting to know them. They are my brothers and sisters and I am sad about leaving their care and attention. I am excited to start a new chapter in my career with the Peace Corps. It is also good to know that I will begin chipping away at my two year service.