Swearing In!

Well, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Friday might have been the busiest day of my life, but it was a fantastic experience and everything went really well. Apparently, it's one of the only times that an entire stage has made it through training without anyone quitting, so we're all pretty full of ourselves right now. My fellow stage members are fantastic, and it was quite sad to see them all leave this morning. Right now, there's 8 of us left here in Thies, and tomorrow night, we will be down to 2 (me being one of them). As for Friday, here is a breakdown of all that happened:
6:00 am- Get up, dress up in Thies
7:30 am- Get on Bus to Dakar
7:31-10:45- Sweat out 50% of body weight on said bus
11:00-12:30- Swearing in!
12:30-2:00- Lunch at ambassadors residence
2:00-3:30- Pool time at the American Club
3:30-6:00- Travel back to Thies on sweaty bus
7:00-11:00- Enjoy dinner/music/dancing with host families in Training Center
11:30-4:00am- Celebrate and get into trouble with fellow volunteers

As you can all see, it was almost a full 24 hour day. In addition to swearing, the party with the host families was also a great time, as one member of each family got to come to the training center and enjoy a great dinner with some wild dancing. I also forgot to mention about our election party. A local hotel let us use their conference room to watch the election, so almost everybody went to watch. While most people left around 2-3 in the morning, some of us toughed it out and watched the entire thing, leaving the hotel at 6:15 in the morning...and having class at 8. Despite being exhausting, it was an amazing experience to be able to watch everything unfold live from Africa. Everyone around town is ecstatic about Obama's win, and everywhere we go people are chanting his name at us. Well, I'm off to enjoy the company of my friends for one last afternoon, so see you all in Ngaye Mekhe! Ba ci kanaam samay xarit ak sama waa ker!

Pictures are of the SED group in our stage (20 out of 40 of us), the dance party, and my friends here in Senegal...
Sorry for the low quality of pictures, but I wanted to get several in this post despite the slow internet. A Google photo album will be availabe shortly as i will have constant access to the internet.