I passed my final language test! Yay! And haven't thought about the language since. After Wednesday I'll have no choice but to learn it, so I'll worry about it then. Swear-in in Dakar at the Ambassador's house was great. The place is HUGE and so American... its refreshing to come across things like this. We had a ceremony where our country director, training director, the Ambassador and some other uber important people talk to us. We're the first stage to swear-in in Senegal this year and its the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, so that's pretty cool. I've obviously never been to another swearing-in so I don't know if they did anything special for us or not, but it was a good time regardless. They made a compilation of footage from the ceremony and put it on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTL-u1UM4oI
After the ceremony, we had hors d'oeuvres in the Ambassador's posh back yard. Good thing I was wearing my fancy clothes because it may have been a little too classy for me. I mean, she has green grass in her backyard. Whoa, haven't seen that stuff in a while. The food was so good! Little toasts smothered with guacamole topped with shrimp! Meat on a stick! Quiche... multiple types of quiche! Fataya! Frozen creme puffs drizzled with fudge! AND ice in bottomless glasses of soda! America overload, for sure! Afterwards, we went to the Atlantic club (which yesterday I found out used to be the American club until 9/11 when they changed the name so it wouldn't be targeted. Interesting) for cocktails and swimming. We came back to Thies and went to dinner, where I enjoyed the most delicious goat cheese and beef pizza! A bunch of people went out dancing afterwards but I was so beat, I couldn't go to sleep fast enough. BUT now I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer instead of PC Trainee. Pretty exciting! But now I have to take care of myself, like finding transportation and stuff. The security blanket is definitely being ripped off. I'm ready.... I hope!
A little more than half of our group left today to go to their regions. Its pretty sad. I won't see them again until the 4th of July party. Its kind of a sad tone around here, like the end of summer camp or something. I've never actually been to summer camp, but I would imagine this is what it feels like. I'm one of the lucky ones who get to leave tomorrow, the only downside being that its at 6am instead of 2pm like today's group. Not too bad though. The Tamba peeps have chosen the theme of "black tie affair" for our install party. We have to buy everything from a "fuky jye" (definitely butchered that spelling, but its phonetic). A fuky jye is basically like Goodwill in the States. I don't know where they get these clothes from but sometimes they still have Goodwill tags on them. Its just huge piles of clothes in the market that you can sift through and buy what you want. You know I love thrift stores hence I love fuky jye. Have to find out how to spell that.
Ok, have to run. I'll try to update this again before I leave Tamba-meme. Oh, CNN followed one of the chicks here around while we were in DC for staging and they aired the footage the other day. If you pay attention you can see me. And I posted more pictures on Picasa. Love to all... xoxo
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/14/baldwin.peace.corps.at.50.cnn?iref=allsearch
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