ere I forget. . .

It’s easy when life is trucking along at a fast clip to forget to chronicle rites of passage.

Last Friday, David and I moved from being Peace Corps trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers. I know it may not seem like much other than governmental semantics, but it is a milestone.   For over two years , we completed applications, paperwork, and mounds of more paperwork,  just to be given a shot to be trainees.  There were no promises that we’d get the job.  Then for almost three months here in Romania, we interviewed and trained for this job, knowing full well that if it wasn’t a “good fit” we’d be on a plane home.  But we made it.  That’s a 27-month interview for a 24-month job.  Needless to say, we were excited to become real live volunteers.

Our swearing-in ceremony was brief and simple, but meaningful and memorable.  Jeri Guthrie-Corn, the Charge d’Affaires spoke and then swore us in as volunteers.  We swore to uphold and defend the Constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic.  Fun stuff.  Amanda and I were elected by our fellow volunteers to give a brief address in Romanian to those in attendance.  I was quite nervous —  not of speaking in front of people, but of speaking Romanian in front of a group of Romanians.  The mini-speech is nothing fantastic in English — not eloquent or life-changing or really cohesive for that matter.  But it was a speech that I wrote and delivered in Romanian.  For that, I’ll give myself a fist bump.

A few folks requested that I post it on the blog, so here it is in Romanian and here is the English translation.

Courtney, David & Veronica