End of Training, Seeing Biden, Swearing In with Ambassador Locke, Moving to Chongqing

Good lord. I haven't updated this in a month and there's way too much that has happened to try to write about here. I'll give some highlights The last few weeks of pre service training were super busy. We went to Sichuan University to see Vice President Biden give a speech. He shook hands with a few volunteers. The next day we were sworn in by Ambassador Gary Locke. I got to shake his hand. We got group pictures, he gave a speech, and he talked to the press. Later we were all on national TV. I saw myself on TV, which was pretty cool. We all moved out of our host family houses and went to an extremely nice hotel for a few days before leaving for our permanent sites. It was nice to have everyone together one last time. We had some final training sessions. Usually this is when volunteers have their swearing in ceremony, but we had ours early. Because of Biden's visit and coordinating with the Ambassador, the schedule got shifted around. It worked out well to have it it like that. It seemed like it would have been more stressful if we had swearing in at the hotel. Then we all went off to our sites. I was lucky, a guy from my Wai Ban office at Jiaotong University came to pick me up with a driver. Having to take the train would not have been fun. Peace Corps gave me a water distiller and an air purifier in these huge boxes. Combined with my other luggage, it would have been impossible to carry around myself. I arrived in Chongqing at my apartment after a 4 hour car ride. I met my site mate, who was really helpful. I had a good week before my classes started. It was nice of them not to make me teach as soon as I got there. I spent the time setting up my apartment, meeting people, hanging out with some volunteers in Chongqing, exploring a bit.