Swearing In & Moving Out

This is my first post as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. Our swearing-in ceremony was on Monday and all 13 of us decided to make the 2-year commitment! It was a really nice ceremony. It was held at the Kingstown Government Building and a bunch of representatives from the press came. We were on the SVG Evening News a few times and I'm pretty sure our picture came out in today's paper (I'm buying a few copies). We're practically famous. :)
Swearing-in begot moving out and most of us have left our home-stay lives behind and begun our official duties (a few are still in home-stay for an extra week or so). We are all enjoying being out on our own, although it gets pretty lonely at times. I have a cute house with a fantastic porch. It has two bedrooms, a living/dining room, a small kitchen and a bathroom (pictures are up). The porch has a hammock hook-up, so I'll have to buy one. The house is actually closer to my school than my homestay family's house - about a 15 minute walk. I live right across from a soccer playing-field where they play games Monday - Saturday. I haven't had a chance to go watch a game yet, but I hear they're pretty exciting. It is about a 15 - 20 minute walk to the grocery store, post office, police station and hospital. I have met a few of my neighbors and everyone seems really nice. Most of them were on good terms with the PCV before me, so I am already a more or less accepted member of the community. The nice thing about replacing a PCV is that you already have a set of friends waiting for you. The not-so-nice thing is that most people assume that you will be exactly like the volunteer you are replacing, which is rarely true.
My first week as an official PCV was pretty uneventful. The teachers in SVG were still on strike this week (from last week), so only about half of the Emmanual High School teachers came each day. We had official school on Tuesday and Wednesday, although the students spent most of their time alone in the classroom or running around the school grounds and school dismissed at lunch. On Thursday, we had an SVG Independence ceremony for a couple of hours, complete with a flag-raising ceremony and the national anthem. SVG Independence is on Monday, October 27th and all schools have a holiday on Friday and Monday. This year is the 29th year of SVG Independence. To celebrate on Monday, a couple of volunteers and I are going to Bequia, the nearest Grenadine to St. Vincent. It should be great fun.

SVG Funerals

I went to my first St. Vincent funeral on Saturday afternoon/evening. In the US, funerals are often perceived as sad and kind of bleak, but funerals in St. Vincent are really a celebration of the person's life. The whole town is invited to attend and hundreds of people come to pay their last respects. Funerals typically begin with an open-casket viewing, with funeral attendees forming a procession through the church to walk by the casket. The typical funeral service lasts 2 - 3 hours, though I've heard of services pushing toward 4 hours. During the service, family members and friends give testimonies about the person's life and everyone sings, dances and prays. There is some crying, but the ceremony is generally viewed as a moment of celebration both of the life and the after-life of the person. After the ceremony, the coffin is driven to the cemetary and the funeral procession follows on foot or by car (depending on how far the cemetary is from the church). If on foot, the group dances and sings during the journey. At the cemetary, there is more dancing and singing as the person is buried, and then special dances and songs are performed in which participants (mainly family and friends) lay flowers over the gravesite and light candles. The graves are literally heaped with flowers - in SVG, it is customary for people to bring wreaths of flowers to a funeral and ALL the wreaths are piled up on the grave. After finishing at the cemetary, family and friends will usually convene at a nearby house and spend the rest of the evening eating, drinking and remembering the life of the deceased. SVG funerals are truly festive celebrations of a life well lived.

Training Update

We are now in our final week-and-a-half of training and we're all pretty anxious to push through. Most of us will move into our houses in exactly 11 days (not that we're counting...), although a few people have to remain at home stay for a couple of weeks more due to housing issues. We are all grateful for the integration opportunities presented to us during training and homestay, but the days tend to drag on and mix together into an endless blur of flip charts and white-boards. At this point, we are ready to begin our lives as PCVs in the EC and to face our real challenges.
Last night, I went to the movies with some colleagues/friends from the high school I work at. It was really exciting to see a movie and to spend some time with this group outside of work. We saw "Pineapple Express," which was hilarious! We were also the only 5 people in the theater, so we could laugh as loudly and talk as much as we wanted (and we wanted). After the movie, we went to a local arcade, where we raced video game cars. Obviously, I won - I told them that it was in my genes because I have an uncle who is a race car driver. I'm lucky that many of the people I work with are young - we seem to have a lot in common and we are able to work as a collective team, with no person taking too dominant a role. I can definately say that EHS has a great staff!
Last Saturday, I went to the beach for recreation! It was amazing. The place we went was called a salt pond, although I'm not sure it was a true salt pond, because it was connected to the ocean. It was separated from the Atlantic Ocean by some rocks, so the water was very calm and very warm. We went with a group from my church and we swam and ate delicious food for hours! I'm posting pictures so you can all see SVG's beautiful beaches! I hope that we can go back there again...it's supposed to rain all weekend, but maybe once we're sworn in, we'll get some relief!