Yesterday was the big day!

Yesterday was our counterpart day/swearing-in ceremony/goodbye party, 15 hours of excitement and new experiences. All of the aspirantes arrived to our training center for the last morning, at the normal 7:30 start time, all dressed up and looking pretty. After lots of pictures and nervous laughter and final preparations, we started meeting our counterparts one by one. My counterpart totally threw me off by being fairly young (though his first name is Elder), easy to understand, and really, really cool. He was very welcoming and our first chat went very well.

After a welcome from our training director and someone else from the Peace Corps, the whole group split into work areas. Sammy led us in a series of a few activities, typical stuff like talking about expectations and planning and culture differences and the like. It was helpful and interesting to hear from different perspectives. Then, my counterpart spoke to the group of aspirantes, which I didn’t know was happening. After that, everyone was jealous of me for having such a great guy as a counterpart. It was very cool. We were also all given a snack midway through, and the Peace Corps even sprung for catered food throughout the day. Between all the food and service, the travel money, and the hotel/transportation for our counterparts, it must have been quite the expensive day overall.

But after our group sessions, we all received our own travel money. It was interesting that I received the most out of everyone. I knew my group would, since we were the furthest away, but somehow I got the most. Weird, because I was not the longest trip. But then we all ate lunch together and it was a TOTAL ResLife flashback. Somewhat bland chicken, salad with ranch dressing, dinner roll, cheesy mashed potatoes, sodas to choose from, and a piece of cake. Sound familiar? It’s pretty much what we’d been given at any catered ResLife event going back to all time. Strange and reassuring. The highlight, for me, was the crouton. I only had one and it was delicious.

After lunch, we all got onto our busses and made our way down to Teguc. It was an exciting bus ride, typically Honduran with its awesome 80s music blasting. Once we arrived, we waited outside the embassy for what seemed like forever as all the Honduran people checked in. There was lots of gratuitous picture-taking, with interesting poses and many different combinations of people. That part was fun, but the waiting got old after a bit. Finally, when it was our turn to go in, we walked right through to the back garden. No showing of IDs, checking to make sure we didn’t have phones, or anything other than going through a metal detector. The garden was set up nicely, with a podium, a central table, and the Honduran and American flags on the stage. There was a section for us aspirantes, a section for our counterparts and other people who came to watch (mostly current volunteers), and a section for staff. There was also a small coffee place but I decided to save my money.

We waited around there for a while, chatting and being nervously excited. After a few people ventured to the bathroom inside, most of us went because we were told, “It smells like the US in the bathrooms!” It’s hard to explain but it kind of did. We were also able to flush the toilet paper down the toilet (everywhere else in Honduras it’s thrown in the garbage) and enjoy hot and cold water right at the sink. Needless to say, the building was also air conditioned (still a rare Honduran occurrence) and had a very clean and American-looking cafeteria that we couldn’t go in. Overall, it was a very cool part of the experience, to be on American soil (technically) for the first time in months.

Finally the ceremony got started with speeches from our training director, a Peace Corps representative, and the American ambassador. They were all fairly straightforward, but I liked it a lot when our training director said more or less, “They came to the country as 57 trainees. Now today, we swear in only the best of them – our 57 soon-to-be volunteers.” That was really sweet. We also sung both national anthems. We raised our right hands, repeated after the speaker, and were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. That was pretty sweet; to go from PCTs to PCVs and really feel like we made it. The final speeches were from two of our representatives. Jessica, the final speaker, did an amazing job, even reading a poem she wrote about Honduras. That was pretty inspiring and beautiful. Afterwards, it was mingling and more picture-taking time while having refreshments. The refreshments even included a super-mini-cheeseburger, a pizza on a cracker, and a mini cherry pie. Very American.

The last few minutes of our time at the embassy were spent in our Ocotepeque group, where the seven of us volunteers and our counterparts worked out the details for the next day’s trip. We drew maps, explained things the best we could, and pretty much hoped for the best. The group of counterparts would be leaving their hotel in Valle at four am to drive down and start picking us up for the 10ish hour trip. It was exciting to think about but I think most of us were just ready to go the after-party.

We finally got on our way, having an even more exciting and fun bus ride back to Valle. After dropping off a few people who couldn’t go or didn’t want to go to the party, we made it to the restaurant/bar that was open just for us and immediately began ordering food and drinks, as we were leaving the restaurant by nine to get back to our host families for the last night at a somewhat decent hour. It was a fun party, mostly everyone just talking excitedly about their sites and plans and lamenting that we wouldn’t be seeing each other for a while. There was at least one old volunteer there too and I talked to him and other volunteers I hadn’t talked to too much before for a long time. By the end of the night (a whopping like 8:30pm), just about everyone was dancing and starting to get nostalgic. I don’t think anyone wanted to leave when the bus came.

The bus ride home took a long while but was again fun, filled with American music and really festive people. I didn’t get home until after ten but my host mom and sister were still up so I got to talk to them for a little while before heading to my room. I did some last minute packing, internetting, and finally went to sleep for just a few fitful hours of sleep. I was dead tired but I think the idea of starting an entirely new life the next day kept me from sleeping soundly. Overall though, it was quite the perfect day that made me really exciting for everything to come.