¡Somos Voluntarios!

We are now officially Peace Corps Volunteers! We've been in Managua this week having our last training sessions, administrative sessions, and preparing ourselves to go off to our sites and no longer be the baby trainees. Today was our juramentación (swearing in) ceremony. We sang the Nicaraguan and US national anthems, swore in in Spanish and English ("to defend the constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic," etc.), said goodbye to all our training families who came in for the ceremony, and took lots of pictures!

First, this is our entire TEFL group of 17 along with our technical trainer and project directors.
This is me shaking the hand of the US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli. He spoke to us on Wednesday and swore us in today.
Here is Paul with his host mom, Doña Rosita.

This was the fancy (and yummy) cake they had for us.
Finally, they had a traditional Nicaraguan folklórico band come and play for us. Here is a quick video of them playing their super-cool music.

I think we're all going to miss our host families the other trainees in our group since we're all spead out over the country, but I think we're also ready to get to our sites and start working! Wish us luck as Peace Corps Volunteers!