Swearing in Ceremony

Today we swore in officially as Peace Corps Volunteers. There was a whole ceremony for it- in fact, we spent all day yesterday practicing for the ceremony. Which I thought was rather silly, but I've never been a fan of this type of event. I wanted Bryn Mawr to just mail me my diploma.

You can decide for yourself if the day of practice was worth it: the entire ceremony was video taped, and posted on YouTube for you to watch. The one things that might make me rethink my position on the ceremonial aspect of the day- that is, stretching into several hours what could have been accomplished in 15 minutes- was how much significance the event was given by Armenia. There were lots and lots of press photographers there, and every Armenian news station fan footage of the event on the evening broadcast. Given this kind of attention, putting a commensurate level of effort into the ceremony is a sort of mark of respect for Armenia and its people. Like wearing a suit to an interview. I might think that the kind of significance people place on clothes is ridiculous, but dressing professionally is another way of showing the parties with whom you interact that you respect them. Just so with the swearing in ceremony.

As far as the swearing-in itself: although it was a little weird to promise to defend the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I admit that taking the oath did feel solemn and significant. The pledge we took in Armenian on the other hand, felt a little silly. For one thing, I have idea what was said. I could have promised Armenia my first born child and not known it. We were given transliterated copies of the pledge that morning, which helped a little as we all muddled along trying to pronounce the super long polysyllabic words after our pledge leader. But apart from a word here and there, and the last sentence, we were mostly just repeating jibberish. 

In any case, it's official- I'm a real PCV now.