the Czech Republic at 4am, anxiously updating CNN.com to get the latest poll results, electoral vote counts, and to ensure that my fellow Massachusetts residents had voted correctly ...for Barack Obama. I was satisfied with the results I saw early on.I stayed up as long as I could before passing out in front of the computer monitor; having no coffee or much company, it was tough to stay awake for the duration. So I decided to head to bed, with fingers crossed and hope things would work out. I woke up at 8am, having gotten a rejuvenating 4 hours of sleep, and immediately went to the computer lounge. About 5 seconds later, once CNN.com loaded in the browser, a broad smile came across my face.
The British guy who was sitting across from me noticed and inquired,
"The election over?"
"Sure is", I replied with a smile.
"Obama?"
"Yup."
"Nice."
A little while later, after watching Obama's acceptance speech online, I was in the kitchen cooking up some breakfast when two American girls walked in and made some mention of the election - which obviously started a conversation between us. The one girl described herself as "relieved" that Obama had won. Just then a British girl who overheard us interrupted, "So Obama won?!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Yeah!", gushed one of my fellow Americans in the kitchen. A sense of relief was definitely abound.
In the past 9 weeks, I can count the number of people I met who were in favor of McCain and Palin, from the
US or other countries: zero. All I heard from conversations were of how the people thought Bush was horrible, the US needed damage-control big time, and how they though Obama was our (America's) only shot at saving face in the international community.I've had countless discussions and have been asked so many times about the election and the candidates since leaving the US. I never fully appreciated how much other countries might be interested in our elections, where I was never even fully aware of theirs; until now. I even met a couple from New Zealand who mentioned that they were having elections at the same time as us, but that they were more concerned with our elections than their own, as they felt they would be alright whoever won, but that our election would have a greater impact on how our country goes forward.
