T-minus 8 hours!

So yesterday was swear-in day for Peace Corps Burkina Faso!! Our ceremony was held at the new American Embassy in Ouagadougou, which is less than a year old! We are the first group of Peace Corps volunteers to be sworn in at that building, so that was pretty cool :) The First Lady of Burkina Faso was also in attendance, which was a really big honor. The ceremony included speeches from 6 of the stagiaires, each in a different language, as well as speeches by our director, the Charge d’Affair (Burkina doesn’t currently have an ambassador, so the Charge d’Affair is the person in charge of the affairs of the office :P), and the Madame First Lady Chantal Compaore! We all said our oath of office as a group, which while maybe not super exciting, definitely kept the show shorter, because 77 new volunteers is a lot of people!

After the official parts of the ceremony there was a reception inside the embassy with drinks and appetizers. And cake! After that we decided to hit the town by going out to an American style restaurant and dance club!! It was a lot of fun and a great way to spend one of our last night’s together :)

So, today I spent my first full day as an official volunteer doing very official volunteer business, shopping. I get to my site of the first possible day, meaning I really only had today to get everything I need! I bought a stove (which is really just the range part and I’ll have to buy the gas tank separately), buckets for water, a 100L plastic trashcan looking thing which is used to store water, and a large wash basin for washing my clothes and dishes. I never really realized this before when I was living with my host families, but there are a lot of things necessary for getting, storing, and using water!! And I still need to buy plastic bidons, too (which are like gas cans, but used to get water from point A to point B)!

I also went to the large super market here in the capital, which is the closest thing to an American grocery store that you are going to get here in Burkina. (It definitely made me think of and miss Target!!) It was interesting though, because while they definitely had things that I will not be able to find anywhere else in the country, they didn’t have some of the most basic things I was looking for. I guess specialty stores in the US are the same, but it was just weird to go to what I felt like was finally a normal grocery room and not be able to find peanut butter… (which I can find everywhere here, I just wanted to buy one jar of it so I can get the jar filled up at my market). I think the only really exciting things I got at the market were lentils and olive oil and maybe a candy bar (or two) :P

Well, tomorrow (or 8 hours from now) is move in day!! I think I’m ready, and I’m really excited to get started. I will miss all my stagemates a lot, but I just keep thinking of all the amazing stories I am going to hear at our in-service training in December, haha!