The Week of Being A Real Volunteer

Friday morning was… well… it was certainly eventful. I had stayed up all night Thursday celebrating the holiday, as well as Ayjemal’s 2nd birthday, and after everyone else had finished celebrating and went to bed, I still had to stay up and pack up all of my belongings to get ready to go to Dashoguz the next morning.

The plan was for all of the volunteers to head into the city with all of their possessions on Friday, spend Friday throughTuesday in the city being sworn in as volunteers and celebrating Christmas, then to head to our respective permenant sites on Wednesday. As the van pulled up to take me to Ashgabat Friday morning at 7:30, I was still trying to cram the last of my possessions into my suitcases as my family hugged and kissed me goodbye. I was wearing my new dress that they had made for me, and after a lot of teary goodbyes, I stuffed all of my things into the van with the other volunteers, and headed into the city. It was really embarrassing, I had as much luggage in the van as all of the rest of the four of them combined. I swear I really don’t know how I manage to accumulate so much stuff…

Lex made sure everyone remembered it was my birthday (yikes, how did I manage to turn 24 already?!) and it was really nice to know that if I wasn’t able to spend my birthday with my real family, at least I was going to be spending it with my new Peace Corps family. I had a great birthday, we all went out to eat, then hung out in the hotel where there were real showers, soft beds, and lots of other Americans to play with. It was heaven.

The remainder of the week seemed to fly by in a cloud of training sessions, last minute shopping, and socializing, and before I knew it, I was standing there today saying my vows that made me an official Peace Corps Volunteer. No more being called a “trainee”, I am the real deal now, and it feels so amazing. I can’t believe I actually made it through all twelve weeks of training. It’s nice ot know that no matter how homesick I got, and no matter how strange and foreign everything here was, I still managed to stick it out and see it through. Now to get through the next two years in the same fashion…