I woke up this morning and turned on the BBC News to discover America has officially elected Barack Obama as our new President. I know that everyone feels differently about this, and I´m not here to get all political. But I´ll tell you that being out of the country during this election, surrounded by all non-Americans, has been an eye-opening experience.
In short...we´re not very popular. I know that my groupmates don´t mean anything personal, but almost every comment about ¨America¨ is negative. I´m sure there´s been more, but the only positive thing I can recall right now is someone saying they can´t wait to get to the states so they can order a big salad and not worry about the lettuce being clean. That is so sad...and often frustrating for me.
However, I found it interesting that everyone was extremely involved in the US Election... reading the news online and asking me lots of questions (now they really think we´re a bunch of morons, sorry guys!)...and every single person was hoping that Barack Obama would win. They all kept saying, ¨I wish the rest of the world could vote, so the right person will win¨. So while I think that both candidates could have brought positive change one way or another (I mean, we can really only go up from here), I feel very positive that with Obama as President we are opening up lots of doors around the world that were previously closed (even if those doors were only minds). Now of course there is a huge challenge ahead and lots of questions to be answered, but I know one thing, and that´s that we have people around the world proud of us, rooting for us, and backing us up...and at least that´s something.
So that´s the ¨New President¨ part of my entry. The ¨New Country¨ part is that I´ve arrived safely in Bolivia! We had to leave Peru a day early due to a country-wide strike (something about the electric company wanting to control the water, which farmers use for free now...and would presumably have to pay for if the change goes through). Today was my first full day in La Paz. I just wandered around with some friends for about 8 hours. Tomorrow I plan to explore some of the museums and art galleries. I´m here for 4 whole days and look forward to meeting my new group leader and group members this Friday night. Until then, we´ll be hanging out, eating great food (had the best Indian last night and some killer gelato this afternoon) and saying good-bye´s. I´ll miss some of my new friends!
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If you get a chance you will have to listen to his acceptance speech when you return. Let me just say it is an exciting time here.
Hey Cara,
It's cool that you got to be outside looking in for the election. My coworkers felt equally as passionate about the international community needing the chance to vote in an US election. I told my father that Australia would like to be able to vote and with a grin on his face he said "Oh, we could arrange that...the US would love to have a 51st state." He then said, "heck how big is Australia? Let's give them 3 states!" I relayed this to my co-workers to find they didn't think my dad's humour was that funny. :) But as you can imagine everyone down under is thrilled to have Obama in office.
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