Hey everyone!
We are in they city now. No more NAKS for us! We just got back from a second stay with out host families and it was great. It was wonderful getting to see our host families again and to see how far we have progressed with our language skills. My host dad gets a kick out of teaching me the language so he has been a huge help to me with my language. This visit my other little host sister was at the house too. Last time she was in Paramaribo for school. She is 19 years old. I hung out with her a lot and she was so great to learn from. We played a game called Slagball one day. The game is as if baseball and Cricket had a baby. The women and young girls here play slagball so we were trained on how to play. It was a lot of fun but super muddy. After three matches with the girls of the village our team of Peace Corps Trainees managed to win! Woo woo!
One day during home stay was Keti Koti, the Surinamese emancipation day. My host mom gave me a koosu (sarong type skirt) that she sewed for me to wear and we all went to church. It was really interesting to see how dressed up everyone was. It was very colorful and all the women wore brand new koosu's and head wraps. The men all wore bandja koto's, a sarong they tie over one shoulder. The children in the church put on skit about Keti Koti and it was super cute. My little sister, the 12 year old, was in the skit and she was hilarious. I loved it. After church we took family photos. Yay!
We got to teach English one day at the local primary school. Each of us taught something different during our session. I taught the students how to sing "the itsy bitsy spider". It was super cute and they did a great job with it!
Now we are in Paramaribo and doing our final training sessions before swearing in. We had our final language and program interviews today and I passed! Woo woo!! Looks like i'll be officially sworn in on July 13th!
Yesterday we went to a huge July 4th celebration at the Ambassador's house. Our whole class was unofficially sworn in by the Ambassador and we all got to meet the President of Suriname. It was really fun and we got to get all dressed up. We had a great time. You all should try and google it because there was a ton of media there and we saw ourselves on the Suriname nightly news!
This week we have a little more training then swearing in! After swearing in i'll start shopping for my little house. I'm excited for my adventure to really get started!
I miss everyone! Love you guys!
