I can't believe that we're finally here... the night before Flag Day. I didn't mention that it was coming up in my last posting because, well frankly, I was too tired when I was writing and it would've taken up way too much space. Now, here I am, the night before Flag Day, waiting for Steph and my parents to arrive. I'm going to be so glad to see them, especially Steph. I can't believe I haven't seen her in an entire month. I'm very much looking forward to having someone else in the apartment for a bit. I just don't think I'm that good at living alone.
The week leading up to Flag Day has definitely gone quickly. On Monday and Tuesday our Core Skills Rotation continued. Team Monroe spent the two days learning about and practicing our public speaking skills. On Monday we spent 8 hours reviewing tips, tricks, and elements to be used for all kinds of public speaking. We even got down to reviewing appropriate, off-the-cuff, presentation practices. On Tuesday we actually delivered speeches we wrote t6:he night before. My speech was about freedom of the press and was delivered to a fake audience of journalism students in Venezuela. They videotaped our speeches for us to review on our own and I was pretty happy with my performance. In fact, the instructor told me one portion of my speech was "perfect." Too bad I ruined the 6 and a half minute speech with a two minute conclusion. In fact, I actually delivered two conclusions on accident... apparently a "call to charge" is a good enough ending and you don't have to wrap the speech back to the intro if you do that. Unfortunately, I did both... oh well!
The last two days have been filled with some wrap-up and policy sessions. I can definitely feel my classmates getting anxious. I can't blame them. I'm so ready for tomorrow to come. To think that in less than an hour the next two or so years of our lives will be set. It will be good to finally know and be able to look forward.
I know that many of you are going to be extremely curious about where we get posted. I promise that we will try to get to a computer tomorrow to post where we're going, but we'll get something up by Saturday morning for sure.
The Flag Day ceremony will take place in the late afternoon tomorrow. The ceremony is expected to last about an hour, which is pretty impressive considering our class is over ninety people! The ceremony consists of the Ambassador in charge of our placements raising the flag of a country. Sometimes they announch the country the flag belongs to and sometimes they leave it up for the class to announce. Once the country is identified, the Ambassador lists the jobs and people from our class that will be heading to each post. After receiving your flag and getting your picture taken, we have the opportunity to review the packet of information that tells us when we'll be leaving and what our next round of training will be. There's not much to the whole thing as you can tell, but obviously there's a lot riding on that short hour.
That's about it. We'll be sure to let you know where we'll be for the next two years of our lives. Wish us luck!!
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