The End of the Beginning...

 The past two months of training have been intense and packed full of emotions--happiness, sadness, stress, freedom, loneliness, friendship, frustration, accomplishment,  purpose, uselessness, excitement, anxiety, and most of all, more laughter and tears than I ever thought possible.  But training has finally come to an end.  It’s a very bittersweet feeling.  I’m so excited to be done with the 9 hours a day of class and the stress that that entailed! But I feel like even though I’m tired of it, there are definitely more things that I could do to prepare-especially in regards to language and teaching.  And I’m so excited to go out to my village and start meeting the people and my students and building relationships there. However, I’m desperately going to miss my family in Utulaelae and all of my friends in the village.  I’m thrilled to get settled into my house and make it feel like home, but I’m really going to miss my little samoan house, that was so breezy and cute.  And I’m also excited to get into a routine that I have more control of-including diet, I’m hoping to limit my taro eating to once or twice a week (in my dreams!).   But it makes me tear up just thinking that my new routine won’t include hanging out with, playing volley with, or watching dance practice with my PC friends that I have become so close with over the last two months—missing them will be one of the hardest parts of adjustment. Despite all of the things that I feel kind of anxious about or that I know I will miss about the training village, I’m mostly just really excited to get into the classroom and actually start teaching and working with my literacy groups.  That’s why I came here and I’m really excited to get to work doing it! I know the transition will be rough, but I also am looking forward to all of the great experiences I will have during this time.

Our Swearing In ceremony is on Friday at the US Embassy (which is where we went for thanksgiving dinner—and is probably the swankiest place in town, super nice house!).  This will be when we will do our official “I promise to be a good Peace Corps Volunteer and serve my country and Samoa” spiel.  I already know it’s going to be an emotional day, but I know it will be one of those events that I never forget.   We go out to our permanent sites the next morning (Saturday) and say Fa Soifua to all of the other volunteers, and Talofa to our new village.  Big day!