"There's a strong wind blowing, and it has nothing to do with the weather"

If you know me, you probably know what I've been doing for the last six months, and you definitely know how much I wanted to be in the States on January 20^th. (If you don't, I was a field organizer for the Obama campaign, and if your head is stuck in the sand, January 20^th was the day we started rebuilding both the perception and reality of the United States.) Suffice it to say, missing Barack Obama's inauguration wasn't easy for me.

I had tickets. Not to gloat or anything, but I had two tickets to the swearing in ceremony (of the coveted 200,000 issued), two tickets to the Western Regional Inaugural Ball that same night, and two tickets to the Obama For America Staff Ball the next night, on the 21^st. Every single other field organizer from Pittsburgh (where I worked), my Regional Field Director, and most of the rest of the Western Pennsylvania Regional Headquarters staff, would be there. My friend Freddi was flying in from Berlin for the weekend. After sleeping off the 120-hour weeks, we were finally going to get to celebrate in style.

I didn't go. But I did watch.

Among Ticos (Costa Ricans), there hasn't seemed to be a lot of hype about Obama. People definitely knew about him, and seemed generally to like him (more than Bush, at least), but it wasn't a big thing. My host family here watches the national news every morning and night, but the first time Barack's name was mentioned since I have been here was the morning of the 19^th, the day before the inauguration. There definitely wasn't the same excitement I remember experiencing in Israel last January, when a Palestinian taxi driver in the West Bank, as well as practically every Israeli I met, asked about the elections.

So, you can probably guess that seeing this sign posted in the front window of the Monteverde Institute, when I arrived a few days before the inauguration, made my day:

The Institute, where I take classes this semester, is staffed and frequented by an awesome variety of people. Founded in '86 by the local ex-pat Quaker community, the Institute is both run and used by a combination of locals whose devotion to principles of sustainability mandates an unusually international focus, American citizens, Quakers, and a plethora of globally-minded scientists from all over the place. It's pretty easy to figure out which candidate they overwhelmingly supported, so I felt right at home.

On Tuesday the 20^th, we arranged our classes so we had a gap between ten and two. All 23 students from our program, most of our faculty, and a majority of the Institute staff, walked to a small inn on the Quaker side and joined about 30 other English speakers to watch, laugh (mainly at the botched presidential oath and Dr. Joseph Lowery's amazing benediction), and cheer. I was surrounded friends, some new, some old, and witnessed what all of us at some point thought would never happen. It was amazing.

Plus, I wasn't stuck in the Purple Tunnel of Doom.

What I really missed though, was the staff ball the following night. Imagine: three thousand people from around the country and the world, mostly young and all in black-tie dress, celebrating their new President. The event was closed to press, so we could all speak freely – even Barack. And these were his people – folks from all walks of life who had given up their lives, some for more than two years, to work their asses off for a dark-horse candidate with an unheard-of campaign strategy, a great voice, and a strange sense of optimism.

Above, Barack and Michelle on stage at the Staff Ball. Below, a few of my friends afterwards. Pictures by Troy Stevenson.

When Barack spoke that night, he sounded far more exuberant and definitely less exhausted than he did on the conference calls he would lead with the staff during the campaign. But his mannerisms were the same – still (as always) well-spoken, but a human being who makes mistakes, says what he thinks, and mentions non-vetted ideas and unplanned words in an off-the-cuff manner that politicians simply cannot afford in public events. How do I know? Thanks to the wonder that is youtube.

So here you go, videos of Barack Obama speaking at a closed-press event. The first video covers the first five minutes of his speech, the second covers the last eight. There are a couple more minutes in the middle there I haven't found – he jumps from reason one to reason three – so I guess I'll never know the second reason why we won.

To top it off, Arcade Fire played a set, including Born In the USA. C'est la vie.

In other news, at the inauguration watch party I was introduced to the yoga teacher who worked for the Obama campaign I mentioned in my last post. Unfortunately for me, she's in her fifties, with kids my age. Oops. It was really, really hard not to laugh.

----

Translation of the Day: Llamarse - to call one's self. Not a particularly exciting word, I know. If you've taken even one week of one Spanish class sometime in the last five years, you know that that's how Spanish speakers say, "My name is...." It's a different grammar structure, though - "me llamo Mateo" = "I call myself Mateo." I bring it up because I had a moment (I don't know if it's worth calling an epiphany) the other day on my 50 minute walk home from school. It struck me that, had Moby Dick been written in Spanish, the infamous first line, "They call me Ishmael" wouldn't have been anything special. (You never find out if that's his actual name or not. Or so I'm told - I didn't get very far past the first line of the book: I hated it.) "Me llaman Ishmael" = "They call me Ishmael" = "My name is Ishmael." All the same; no special meaning.

How did this come up? I have no idea.

----

Blog title from this huffpost blog entry.