Graduation

After 10 weeks of our lives flew by through intensive training in Spanish, domino playing and tree memorizing, Thursday, on the 8th of May, 2008 36 of us were sworn in to serve as volunteers for the Peace Corps of the United States of America. Several super important men and women were in attendance, along with our host families and Spanish teachers, all of whom have welcomed us to the country, seen us through and helped us grow in the last 7o days of our lives. Pictured below seated left to right are Mr. Noble: USAID, Romeo Massey: PCDR Country Director, P. Robert Fannin: U.S. Ambassador to the DR, and the DR Secretary of the Environment!

Behind them is a map of the DR with volunteers pictures posted at their sites. There are approximately 150 of us in the country at any one time. This is a very special day in the life of Peace Corps trainees as we add our pictures to the map, take the oath of service that all who serve the United States government do, they change our titles from PCT (trainee) to PCV (volunteer), and we also begin accruing vacation days and in this country, get cell phones!

One of the most important things we've learned in training over the last two months is that here in the Dominican Republic non-verbal communication is everywhere. It so common that no matter where in the country you go they know the gestures, it seems that they have a sign language system of their own. There are signs for do you want to dance?, what is that?, you are cheap, various public transportation routes, and even a new (slightly Americanized) combination of gestures to indicate "I dont know what that is but I doing want any you cheap bitch." To show how well we've assimilated to the culture my good friends Destin, Pedro and I (shown here in our graduation best) demonstrate the non-verbal lip point to indicate direction. If you look close you can see that I'm sporting my new, offical DR/USA/Peace Corps pin!

Yesterday to celebrate our big accomplishment the Ambassador threw us an embassy pool party - American style - complete with hot dogs and potato salad, and I had a taste of my first mango grown on U.S. soil.

Today we will all head off in different directions spread across the country to begin the real work on Monday. We all feel prepared and super excited to get started on our work, but also a little sad that this part of our journey together is ending.