Week 11: Monday, November 6 – Sunday, November 12, 2023

Well, everyone, we did it! Of the 39 volunteers who started training back in August, 37 of us became official Peace Corps Volunteers this week! (One member of our cohort was sent back early due to an injury and another one decided to stay in Querétaro and teach elementary school kids). But of the volunteers who wanted to become volunteers, we all passed go, we all collected our $200, we didn’t go to jail... wait, those are the rules of Monopoly... but I think you get the point (hehe).

Nevertheless, this week I became a Peace Corps Volunteer. And on top of that, I moved to my new home in Neblinas! I already feel so lucky to live here. The people, the environment, the animals, the food — everything is beautiful, and it really feels like I won the Peace Corps lottery. But before I talk about this amazing community, let me back track a little bit though and tell you about this week and how we got to where we are today.

Monday this week was our final day of training, our final day of sitting through sessions focusing on policy and procedure and all the fun things that the last 10 weeks focused on. To celebrate our last official day of training, my friends Rachel, Kay, Pat, Jordan, Ellie, and I went to a nice Italian restaurant down the street from the office and enjoyed our hour and half of reminiscing about the last 10 weeks we spent together.

Tuesday was our last official day in the office. To celebrate, we had a talent show! A number of staff members sang, one member of our cohort (Jesse) played the guitar, I played the violin, my friends Adri and Lily put together a slide show of creative superlatives for each of the members of the cohort and read them to the group, and to end the whole thing, our wonderful language and culture facilitators (LCFs) performed a choreographed dance to “Everybody” (aka “Backstreet’s Back Alright”), dressed up in drag Backstreet Boy costumes.

We also had the chance to name the office kitties! Mama cat is now Mama Coco from Coco, the orange kitty is named Cempa (short for Cempasuchil, the Día de Muertos flower), the two black kitties are Frijol and Catrin, and the white kitty is Horchata. I’m not sure if the kitties will be staying at the office, but I hope wherever they go, they have a nice home. I would adopt one if I could, but neither am I close enough to the office to justify taking one home and as of right now, I’m not sure my host would approve of me having a little kitty running around the house, but only time shall tell.

After the festivities, we had a celebratory lunch of pizza and salad and pumpkin pie (a little slice of the U.S.)! It was a lovely way to wrap up our time at the Peace Corps office, which, by the way, we will all be returning to at some point or another in the next 2 years, but it was an ending to the last 10 weeks of preparing for service and building lifelong friendships. I said my goodbyes to the LCFs and of course the kitties and headed home.

Wednesday and Thursday were counterpart workshop days, an opportunity for us volunteers to get to know the agency and community members we will be working with for the next two years. Two of my counterparts came to Querétaro for the workshop: Guadalupe (Lupe for short), a member of CONANP (the Mexican agency that we are collaborating with), and Feliciano, the delegado of Neblinas (basically the local government representative/mayor of the town). We spent Wednesday and Thursday getting to know our counterparts and discussing priorities for the next two years of service. Both counterparts had some excellent ideas about projects we could conduct with the community, and it was a great opportunity for us to understand how we will all best work together, given that Rayanne and I will be living in the community of Neblinas, but our counterpart office is about 2 hours away in Jalpan.

After our last counterpart workshop session in the morning on Thursday, we volunteers prepared ourselves for our swearing in ceremony — the culmination of our training where we take the oath of office and become Peace Corps Volunteers!

The ceremony was truly wonderful. Multiple representatives from the Mexican government spoke on behalf of the agencies Peace Corps Mexico collaborates with. We heard from one of our fellow volunteers, Luis, who gave a moving speech about his reason for coming back to Mexico as a volunteer after his parents immigrated to the U.S. to provide a better life for their children. And the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico spoke about his experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer and gave words of advice for us as we embark on our service journey. Finally, after all the speeches were through, we took our oath of office and our toma de protesta (our promise to the Mexican people) to serve faithfully and with cultural sensitivity and patience and a whole lot of other good stuff. It was a beautiful ceremony that ended with a reception and a final opportunity to take pictures with friends and say goodbye for the time being.

After saying our goodbyes, we gathered our things and right away started our journey (and when I say journey, I mean journey) to Neblinas. Six hours later, up the windy road through the mountains, and after stopping in Jalpan for dinner, we finally arrived in Neblinas!

Thursday night when we arrived, we (Rayanne and I) went to our respective houses and went to sleep. But Friday, we hit the ground running! Rayanne, Delegado Feliciano, and I spent all of Friday afternoon going door to door in the community introducing ourselves and getting to know each family individually. It is tiring work, but it is likely the best way for us to get to know the members of the community and for the members of the community to get to know us.

As I said earlier, I really feel like I’ve won the Peace Corps lottery. To be able to live in such a beautiful place with such lovely people and such an incredible environment is unbelievable. I’m sure I’ll have so much more to share with you in the coming days, weeks, months, years, but right now I’m going to go entertain some children.

Lots of love, 

Ilana <3







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