The ceremony was short and sweet. There were a few speakers and then I raised my right hand and repeated the oath. No turning back!
There isn't much to say about swearing in, but that I felt extremely proud when the Peace Corps Morocco director talked and when I took the oath I was beaming. It's been a hard 9 weeks and has gone by so fast. Our CBT group has been through a lot to get here and I'm really going to miss having their daily support. I'm looking forward to starting my service and it's weird to think it's finally here. Hopefully at the end of this I will still be full of pride for what I have accomplished, but for now I will take pride in my day to day accomplishments, no matter how small.
To be honest though.... Man I will miss my Azrou family. They are amazing people and the whole community was great. I already have plans to visit them next year Inshallah, but know I will be getting phone calls from them every once in a while. Hopefully my tamazight will be better and I can really express how great they were during training.
For a parting gift, a lot of the members of our CBT printed out pictures and gave them to our host families. My family was over the moon excited when I gave them a photo album with some of the pictures I had taken. It was the first pictures they had of baby Omar, so I think that alone was a hit. Then we went through all the old photos they had while they put them into the photo album and they insisted I take a picture of the family when the twins were just babies. It was incredibly sweet of them. I also gave the kids my jump rope I brought from the States, because honestly.... I hate jumping rope, I'm not going to do it, sure I need to excersise, but not in that form. Well anyway.... my oldest host sister started crying she was so happy. I know they'll get a lot of great use out of it. I hope that we will stay in touch as best as we can. I really did feel like part of the family.
Now comes the hardest part?
We head off to our final sites tomorrow and will be there for 3 months until we all meet again for Post Pre-service training. Now I will be going from structure, schedules, Americans all the time, amazing host family: to lots of free time, lots of pushing myself to meet people, lots of frustrations with language and continuing my learning, new host family and dealing with the burning desire to move out on my own.
I knew what I signed up for. Peace Corps is a challenging, rewarding experience, but really though these next two months.... I might need some cheerleaders. You can do it Spencey! Okay, so I'm not such a bad cheerleader for myself, but a few hoorahs from home make all the difference.
But who knows.... maybe these two months will be a piece of cake. Either way..... I say.... bring it on! I'm a PCV now. :)
1 comments on "Today I am no longer a PCT"
you can do it spency!
-greg
Post a Comment