Recap of Last Days at Training

Today is my third day as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. I'm writing from my site in Surat Thani, having arrived on April 1st after a full day of traveling. It's been a week full of excitement and all kinds of emotional swings. As always, there's way too much to say and not enough time to say it, so I'll try to hit the high points:

Without exaggeration, I think I can say that the last few days of training were near-perfect. On Saturday night, my tambon hosted a goodbye party for the 12 volunteers residing with families there. There was music, dancing, and great food. The volunteers put on several skits and performances, and undoubtedly the highlight was supplied by the four males of our group. We decked ourselves out in women's clothes, grabbed our pom-poms, and did a surprisingly well choreographed dance to the popular Thai pop song "Rawn Jing Jing", which basically translates to "really really hot". And we were. Check out the pics below to prove it.

We left our host families the next day, as we all stayed in the hotel for the last three nights of training. That was initally sad, but it turns out it was far from goodbye... a few families came back to the hotel that night to kidnap (or Thai-nap, as we call it) their volunteers to take them to dinner. My family was one of them. We had dinner again the next night, when I decided to call them because I had nothing better to do. The next night was the same, except that this time they invited my Thai counterparts from Surat Thani, who were in town for a Peace Corps conference along with the counterparts of all the other volunteers. That was a cool experience - my old family meeting my new family. Finally, the next day they were at the hotel to drop me off at the bus station... more on that in a second.

On Monday we had the official Swearing In Ceremony. Here, we took the swearing in oath administered by a US Embassy representative and in doing so officially transitioned from trainees to volunteers. What I haven't mentioned up until now is that the Peace Corps staff had asked me a few weeks ago to make a speech, in Thai, at this ceremony on behalf of my CBOD group. Another volunteer, Emily, spoke on behalf of TCCO. We wrote our speeches in English, the staff helped translate them into Thai, then we struggled through practicing. We didn't have to memorize our parts, thankfully, but nevertheless it was a huge challenge to get the pronounciation and tones right. It was about 15 minutes worth of speaking between the two of us, which meant a lot of words to mess up. On the day of Swearing In, I still didn't feel fully prepared. But we did it, and I think we pulled it off pretty well. Afterwards we got to represent our group during lunch with the government big wigs, including the Governor of Chainat Province, the Embassy person, some Royal Thai Government people, and the Peace Corps Thailand Country Director. Cool experience, undoubtedly a bit awkward, but the food was great.

Our last day in Chainat was Wednesday. The previous night was a lot of fun with all the volunteers, but that also meant virtually no sleep leading into our day of departure. Somehow we made it through the agonizing morning sessions, after which we went to finish up our last bit of packing. My family came to the hotel at noon. Given that I had to make a 1:00 bus, this unfortunately didn't leave us much time to chat. 12:30 rolled around, and we were still hanging at the hotel. My family assured me it was only a two minute drive, we'd be fine. At 12:45, after my counterparts called wondering where I was, my family finally decided it was time to leave. At 12:55, a funny thing happened - we were sitting in traffic and saw a bus driving the opposite way down the street. After my family frantically urged me to get out of the car, I realized that was probably the bus I was supposed to be on. Next thing I know I'm running down the street chasing the bus, with all my luggage in tow. My host mom sped ahead on her motorcycle and caught it before it was too late. I had just enough time to hug her goodbye before getting whisked onto the bus by my laughing counterparts. Once on the bus, my family pulled up alongside it. We saw each other and waved goodbye one last time. My host mom started to cry. It was quite an end to quite an emotional few days.

Since I've already written quite a bit, I'm not going to go into my first few days at site just yet. Suffice it to say, everyone is generally nice, but it will take a good period of adjustment to feel totally comfortable. I'll try to update within the next week.

Oh, and of course the highly anticipated pictures: