Congrats to SA-16 on their recent Swearing-In

Last Thursday, Peace Corps South Africa celebrated it's 10th year in South Africa. Prior to the event, rumors were flying around about the big name guests that were supposed to attend...Nelson Mandela was one of them. Big dissapointment! He was a no show! At the actual event, however, there were a bunch of supervisors who came to pick up their new volunteers, visitors, the Ambassador to South Africa and the Regional Director for Peace Corps South Africa. One of the things I spoke about with the Regional Director was my plan for post Peace Corps. Among many ideas, I'm considering extending service for a year...to cool places like Ethiopia or Ghana! I'll keep you posted on what I really do.

I'd say that one of the highlights of the event was the gift from SA-16's training village to the new volunteers, a traditional dance from a group of the village's young girls. I tried to upload the video, but the file is too big, so here's the no-so-good picture instead:




Other highlights include seeing friends,




pigging out at the buffet line (I perhaps had the best, most tender steak ever), and meeting up with my friend Rich who was a PCV in SA-8. During the summer between my freshman and sophmore year of college, I went to Tanzania for a couple of months with Operation Crossroads Africa (wonderful program by the way...I put the link up for it in the last post). While participating in the program (during orientation I met my soon to be best friend/soul mate Jeb), I made friends with Rich who went to Howard University. Rich joined Peace Corps as a member of SA-8 and still lives and works in South Africa. It's a shame that it's taken us a year (since I've been in country) to meet up, particularly since we live an hour away from each other. It was fun none the less!



After Swearing In, new volunteers were shuttled off to their sites, and the rest of us lived it up in Pretoria, etc. for the rest of the long weekend. I'll make another post to explain what I did.

Once again, congrats to SA-16, you've now joined the ranks!