Swearing Inn and the End of Pledge-ship

My Matching dress

My Family

My teacher and training

Swearing in, what we all worked toward since Oct. 5th. The day came with as much apprehension as it did joy, we all knew that swearing in meant that we were separating and moving out to our sites the next day. The girls all dresses made and looked like a bunch of gorgeous green apple lollypops. It was held at the Change de Fairs house, the place we had Thanksgiving. Two members of our host families from the training villages were invited to come. My host mother and sister came to watch me “graduate” as that is the closest Samoan equivalent. We did two oaths, one inside where we swore allegiance to America and another outside in front of the audience and press (yes it was televised, this is a small island). In this second oath we swore to integrate, respect and to the best of our ability create positive change. It was great fun and all of our host families seemed very proud to have been part of it, which is only fair since most everything I learned about Samoan culture was from staying with them for six weeks. They covered us with candy and flower lays in celebration our achievement and we all sat down to some tasty food. It was quite serial and over quite quickly. We got in the bus to head back to the hotel and all kind of turned to each other and said “Did that just happen? Did we just become volunteers?” I was in sorority in College, which I loved and through it met my two best friends, but let me just say going through what was an oddly similar second pledge-ship was not always a picnic. Now we are full blown volunteers. We get to go into the office, use the library, the resources, and best of all we get to go into the resource room (which is just a fancy way to say volunteer club house). Now when I come into town I get to use my cool new secret code to get into the office, use the computers, check out books…. and lets not forget the crème de le crème, the hard drive. There is a communal hard-drive in the clubhouse that has more movies and TV series then you could imagine YAY! Just to be fair it is also full of educational resources but those aren’t as exciting as Glee and True Blood. So lets just say it’s nice to be one the other side. It was a great time and it was fun to share it with my group members and now it’s off to my new village. Ready or not, here I come.