Swearing-in Ceremony

Okay, so the swearing-in ceremony was what, exactly 2 months and some odd days days ago and I'm just now posting about it? Oh well...

On May 5th, 2008 the members of Group 24 were officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. The ceremony was held at the residence of the American Ambassador to Romania (a really beautiful place, by the way!). Two representatives from our group were nominated to give speeches at the event, and our very own Nils Bergeson had the honor of being one of them. The other speaker was Melissa Culkin, another marvelous volunteer whom we all agreed could represent our group well. Both did a wonderful job and even gave their speeches in Romanian and in English. Members of the media were present and the ceremony was filmed. Afterward, people from radio stations interviewed a few of us and recorded our responses. I was interviewed, but was too shy to do it all in Romanian (I couldn't anyway despite the best efforts of our language teachers... ). I'm not sure what happened to these, but I did get something important on film.... Nils' speech. It's just taking me forever to load it. So while I work on that, here are some pictures of the event, people, and maybe a short video.....

Here's everyone in Group 24.

Nils and Emily

And a little "Hello" from the new Peace Corps Romania Volunteers! (from the bus ride back to Ploiesti)

"Hello" video transcript:

Emily: Hey!

Nils: Hi.

Emily: This is Nils and I. We just finished being at the Ambassador's house for our, ah, swearing-in ceremony. We're now *officially volunteers for the Peace Corps, and umm....this is the bus. And here are some of the sites...

Nils: Bu-cu-resti

Emily: uh-huh