Officially Volunteers

Since my last update, I am now officially a voluntaria, instead of just an aspirante – a trainee. We had our swearing-in ceremony on April 20th, after spending a week in Quito, recuperating from the cold campo Cayambe climate (pretty nice alliteration, huh). But pictures are more fun than words, so here we go:

For the first time since leaving the States for most of us, we all bathed and actually put some effort into our looks that morning and piled onto a bus to take us to the ambassador’s house.






After singing both the US and Ecuadorian national anthem, we listened to an introduction by our Habitat Conservation boss, Kerry.






Then the big boss gave us a final talking to, reminding us to be good little volunteers and stay under his radar.






Then the ambassador gave a heartfelt speech, bringing even herself to tears.






Enter John Wilson, with the translation help of Jason K and Vargas, giving his fellow volunteers a few words of wisdom.






Then Steve, with grace and poise, looking like an eyeglasses model, addressed his fellow volunteers as well.








And then yours truly, on my lovely ebay violin, played some good ol Bach.






And wrapping up the musical section, Jeremy plucked out an amazing piece on the guitar.






Then, after swearing our lives away to who knows what for the next two years, we each got little certificates reminding us of what we just signed up for. And we got to shake hands with the ambassador. Look there’s me!








And that was pretty much all of the formalities. Here’s the whole group… 39 of us in all, at the time.






As beautiful and touching as the ceremony was, the best part, by far, was the bagels. You don’t realize what three months without bagels will do to you until it actually happens. Boy those bagels came just in time.






Here’s the Cariacu gang one last time before parting.






Before changing to head over to a BBQ at the big boss’s house, Laura, Stephanie, and I went up on the roof for our own little photo shoot with a Quito backdrop.








Then we took another bus over the well fenced-in house of our Country Director, Cisco, for a BBQ and some football (American style) in his lawn.






With complementary Pilsener…Ecuador’s finest, not to mention only, beer.






Some more flowery words from the jefe

and off we were to celebrate the night, dancing our hearts out in some club in the middle of Quito.