American Citizen

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 I became an American citizen in Greenville, Tennessee along with 234 other people from more than 70 different countries. Colin stayed home cleaning up vomit and diarrhea. (Poor Ben... and Colin! I definitely got the better end of that deal!) It was a good ceremony - the choir from the high school next door sang the national anthem really, really well. We all said the pledge of allegiance. There were a few formalities and then came time for the judge's remarks. He made a joke about this being the part we were all dreading (he was right) and then basically said that he didn't have anything to say because what did he know about what this moment meant to us? We all breathed a sigh of relief and clapped heartily. An official read the oath, we all said "I do," and then we efficiently filed across the stage, shook hands with the judge and received our certificate of naturalization.

While we were waiting for the ceremony to begin I discovered that the ladies to my left were from Eritrea, a country, I am ashamed to say, which I could neither locate on a map, nor spell correctly. (It's north of Ethiopia, if you're wondering.) The man to my right was from South Africa. He bellowed a hearty "God bless America!" after receiving his certificate. There was a woman behind me who could speak 6 languages - French, English and 4 African languages. It was quite a mix of people; some by themselves, some with large cheering galleries.

Here's a link to an article that was in the Greenville newspaper. Note that the people were from more than 70 different countries, not 7...



And this was one of the first things I saw after leaving the ceremony. Made me laugh.