Obama wins as Austria watches

Since my absentee ballot never came in the mail, I sadly couldn't actually be a part of history being made on November 4th. But I thought the next best thing would be to watch it being made. The other American TAs and I finally settled on a plan to camp out all night in the TV room of the dorm one of us lives in. We figured we'd either celebrate or console each other depending on the result, but either way, we should be together. Polls on the East Coast started closing at 1am Austrian time, so we woke up from our 2ish hour nap to break out the American treats and all the patriotism we could muster. See, we even broke out the s'mores to get us in the American mood.


By about 2:15, everyone had shown up. I'm impressed with the Brit we've all adopted as our own. She showed up, too. We'll have her speaking and acting just like an American before the year is out. She eats s'mores and peanutbutter on apples now. It's a good start.


I'm glad I got the phone plan that's just 10 cents/minute to call the US, because it meant I got to briefly connect with a friend who was at the Obama Rally in Grant Park. However, that was long before we knew what the results were. It was around 5 am Austrian time when they closed the polls on the West Coast and announced that Obama was (projected to be) the president elect. AND THE CROWD WENT WILD! That's when I was really jealous of my friend in Grant Park. Ugh, all I could get was a picture of Grant Park on the television. So jealous!


Break out the beer, break out the champagne! We toasted the next American president in the good ol' Austrian way.
We may not have been in Grant Park, but satisfaction and relief felt by the good group of Obama fans we had among us was pleasing enough. I'm pretty sure I saw tears in a couple people's eyes.