Friday, September 13, 2013

It's Official!!!


It’s been a long time since I’ve written.  Things have been really crazy.  The biggest news is that I finished training!!!  I am now sitting in my own house in my own town.  The end of training was hard, it was really hard to say good bye to our host families.  It was also intimidating knowing that we were all about to go off on our own and really not see that much of each other.  Over the 10 weeks of training and seeing everyone every day I have become really good friends with people here.  I don’t think I have ever become so close with so many people so quickly.  We have been in Sierra Leone for 3 months now and unfortunately we‘ve already had 3 volunteers decide to go home, very sad. 
Anyway, yes it was hard to leave Bo.  From Bo we all went to Freetown for the swearing in ceremony.  It was kind of strange, most of us were staying in the same hostel that we stayed in when we first arrived in country, the difference between us then and now was obvious.  We got to see the Peace Corps compound and that is a really cool place.  It has a med building, volunteers tend to need that a lot, it has a couple of admin and programing buildings, and it also has a hostel for the volunteers to use when they have work to do in Freetown.  The whole compound is beautiful and sits on top of a tall hill overlooking Freetown and the ocean. 
The swearing in ceremony was exciting.  We were all dressed in traditional Africana gara.  A lot of the Salone 3 volunteers who had helped train us came too so it was great.  The American Ambassador was the one who swore us in.  I think they said it was the same oath that all appointed positions of government must take, except Obama, but his is similar just with more added on ha ha.  Anyway from there we went to the beach.  Finally.  It was a great, great day.  We swam and ate and drank and had fun together all day, after working our asses off for the last 2 and a half months.  That ceremony was in a way the culmination of years of effort to become Peace Corps Volunteers for many of us.  It was an awesome day.  At the end of the night though things did get a little sad.  We were all going to our own sites in the morning and I had to say good bye to my best friend here and that sucked.  She was placed in the South of the country, which is not super easy to get too.  Sad.
The next morning saying goodbye to all the people I care about was really hard.  I’m very lucky to have made such good friends here, but it made saying good bye that much harder.  I left Freetown around 9 in the morning with 2 of my site mates and another volunteer who lives near our town.  On top of our car were our 4 huge metal trunks, 4 mountain bikes and a mattress covered with a tarp because it was pouring rain.  It was about 3 ½ hour drive, not too bad.  Then we got to my house, unpacked my stuff and I was alone in my new home. Wow.

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