So, we have come to swearing in day! Graduation Day! The day we move on in our service! In short it was a very big day with all the pomp and circumstance that surrounds celebrations such as this.
Each sector was required to perform something during Swearing in, as a way to break up the monotony of speeches, add a human touch to it, and show case the personalities of each sector! Let me tell you, each sector has VERY different personalities, and each skit highlighted these, that’s for SURE! Boni our training manager showed us his favorite skit and it was a CYF skit and it had lots of feeling behind it. He showed us this skit to be a model of what ours was supposed to be like. Man did we not know what to do. CRM is notoriously silly goofy and borderline inappropriate. Luckily we had two amazing PCTs step up to the plate. Shout out to Chelsea and Neill for volunteering to create lead and direct this skit and dealing with our bickering and attempts at revisions. Being the analytical people that we are, we practiced every night for 5 days to get our skit perfect. The movements needed to be in sync, the words needed to be clear and we needed to find ways to be funny in a way that was appropriate for the US embassy.
So Chelsea and Neill rewrote the words for: 1) Yellow Submarine to be about living in the sunny Philippines and our journey here, 2) I will Survive à I Will Tabo, a song about how at first we were afraid we were petrified about the idea of Taboing (where you don’t use toilet paper but your hand and a pail of water…), 3) I’ll Tell You What I Want by the Spice Girls to be about how being a CRM volunteer, our kasamas, our group lolo, our TCFs and Sector Manager. 4) We are Family, we changed the words to say we are family in all of our different local languages. Click here to check out our skit!
We practiced and practiced and finally comes the day for us to present. We arranged all of our props and loaded up onto the bus. 2 hours of traffic later… we arrived at the US embassy. There were very specific rules for how we were to enter the Embassy compound. Groups of 15-20 were allowed to enter at a time, once in the grounds no photos allowed and you had to keep moving, no stopping! But man, are the US embassy grounds beautiful.
It was also really cool to be inside the embassy as well. Seeing all the historic photos and being in such a really important historical and political place was fascinating. But we weren’t there for the history… nah… we were there for the food. The atrium inside where they were to serve our reception was decorated beautifully. With a bubbling fountain in the middle, flowering trees and red white and blue fairy lights hanging from the ceiling I felt like I was in a romanticized version of a French courtyard… but in the US embassy… in the Philippines… I know weird.
The Ceremony itself was long, with lots of speeches and introducing of speakers. But our EMCEEs made it very entertaining. With their dry sarcastic and corny humor they were easily the best speakers. One in particular reminded me of Aziz Ansari, because he had dry monotone sarcastic humor and his voice sounded a little similar.
The highlight of the ceremony, well actually there were two. The two highlights of the ceremony were when my sector went up to do our skit. We BLEW the competition out of the water they ate our bubbles! Wait… this wasn’t a competition you say? Oh… was that the most American thing I could have said? Oh…. Well… everything in life can be a competition if you want it to be (#spencer) Competition of not when every we would finish a song the whole room ERUPTED in applause, they laughed and clapped! The best part was looking out into the audience and seeing out TCFs, LCFs and Country Director (CD) beaming up at us with pride in their eyes.
We executed our skit perfectly, not one mess up, not one stammer, not one movement out of place. It was perfection. All those countless hours of practice and wanting to kill each other when SOME PEOPLE (ahem… the back row boys…) would get rowdy and start popping balloons all over the place. It was great. I was just so happy. Oh and did I mention, I had a solo! That’s right! I rapped some spice girl lyrics! I didn’t get nervous OR awkward, I was very proud of myself my tone deaf and rhythm deaf voice.
So during the actually swearing in oath reading part we saw all of our teachers slowly sidling up the sides of the aisles looking all sheepish and not conspicuous at all. Then after we were “officially” sworn in they all of a sudden whipped out glitter confetti guns and shot them off in the historic assembly hall and all you could here were pops and shots going off! With a cascade of beautiful colored papers and glitter. All of us volunteers LOVED it… there were some people that were a little less than pleased.
For example, apparently no one informed the embassy so when the shots went off it sounded like gunfire and the ambassador ducked and covered and his bodyguards raced to guard him. It was told to me that our CD was less than pleased. Also, the entire swearing in was being live streamed online, so when the confetti shots went off the live stream system decided that right then would be a great time (!) for the live feed to go all fuzzy cut out and go offline. My poor family was so concerned, and I’m sure others were confused just as well. To all of a sudden hear gunshots, screaming and no live coverage feed… woops… But alas, us volunteers (myself the most I believe) loved the confetti! I wanted to cover myself in it and never take it off my hair, I love sparkles and glitter and it made me feel even more like an international fairy than I did before!
So you might have noticed I wrote “officially” sworn in, the quotes were on purpose. Apparently the person reading the oath to us screwed up by adding or forgetting one word. According to CD Jean this oath is very solemn and met to be read the exact right way or it’s not binding. So instead of rushing to the cheese tables like we were all planning on doing, we filed up onto stage and did the whole thing over again. I’m pretty sure CD Jean was the only one taking it seriously, because, as soon as we could we rushed off stage to run into line and stuff our faces with cheese.
Now enter in the food. Cheese glorious cheese! Brie, havarti and cheddar! (Sung to the tune of “Food glorious food!”) They were constantly bringing out new plates of cheese, delicious chocolate-y deserts, artichoke spinach lasagna, prime-rib, soup in bread bowls. Oh man deliciousness. We all ate until we were stuffed and fearing a lactose in tolerance attack! Darn it… now I’m hungry!
We spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures with our batchmates, instructors, admin team, anyone that wanted to really. There was such a feeling of joyousness and excitement in the air it was palpable.
Sadly, all of that had to come to an end and we were quickly and brusquely whisked out of the Embassy at exactly 5pm and sent away in our busses. 4 hours of traffic and 19 miles later…. We arrived back at our hotel ready for a night of sadness, excitement, reminiscing, dancing and hugs with friends.
There was no place else I would have rather been at that moment.
A Mermaid in the Philippines 