Thursday, January 30, 2014

Officially Volunteers!

On January 23rd, 2014, Kris, I, and our fellow volunteers were sworn in as official Peace Corps volunteers at the house of the American ambassador to Uganda, Ambassador Scott DeLisi. Our two years here has now begun! It feels good to finally be Volunteers, and no longer Trainees, but our work at the Primary Teacher's College (PTC) and Demonstration School has not started yet. Actually, for the next three months, our main job as volunteers will be what is called the School Profile Tool - weekly assignments set by Peace Corps designed to help familiarize ourselves with our schools and their staff, integrate into our community, and assess the needs of our schools and community.

There will be other important initial tasks too, however, like administering the Early Grade Reading Assessment, designed to both gather data on early grade literacy in Uganda and inform my decision on which students to select for reading intervention, and a week-long HIV workshop at the end of February. We are also currently attending a School Health and Reading Program (SHARP) workshop. SHARP is a new program set out by the Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES - also, so many acronyms!) and USAID to promote literacy, and my school has been selected as one of the pilot schools.

So there are many exciting things, hopefully, to come, but for now, it is mostly the settling-in period. That means that there are pictures of our house also coming soon! For now though, here are some snapshots of our transition to becoming official volunteers.

 Street meat!

 Amanda in her tree-climbing lion costume. Yay for opening the bags we stored away a week into country!

 Our awesome, official invites.

 On our way!



 Singing the National Anthem, and beautifully, I might add. 


 Kris and three other friends of ours represented our group with an awesome spoken word.

 Southwest represents with the Ambassador and Country Director!

 Our amazing language trainers.


 Kris's counterpart and my supervisor.


 This is what happens when Codie steals my camera.



 Oh, the North.

 We're thinking of starting "Dipping Around the World" themed pictures.


 Celebrating our momentous occasion, Titanic-style.


Enjoying our moment with some awesome Peeps that Kris's mom sent to us!


"We need someone with the boldness of a pioneer, the resourcefulness of an inventor, and the faith of a sword swallower."
- Ambassador DeLisi, quoting a Peace Corps saying


2 comments:

  1. So much awesomeness! And, peeps on a stick? Really?

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  2. I am so surprised that those peeps came through intact! Enjoy yourselves and be safe. Love you much!

    ReplyDelete