Bubbly at 6am

Last night I had plans to attend a local election-watching party, but my plan to sleep in between poll closings kept me home. So when the 5am hour rolled around and CNN proclaimed Obama the winner, I cheered to myself. (Well, and I went and woke up Nacho to tell him…) I broke open the bubbly while watching John McCain’s concession speech and waiting for Obama’s victory one. Shortly after Obama wowed us all with his impressive discourse (McCain’s was note-worthily good too!) it was lights out for me for a couple hours of sleep before heading to work, palmeritas in hand.

Heading out into the world today was a new experience for me as an expat. Why? When I studied abroad in Spain 11 years ago people talked about putting Canadian flag patches on their backpacks to cover up the fact that they were American, to avoid dealing with people’s preconceived notions. It wasn’t done out of shame over their nationality, but instead as a defense mechanism against how judgmental some people can be. Today, I thought, “Let them judge us. We’ll come out with flying colors.“ Today I WANTED people to notice my accent, to know that I’m American, to know that I contributed, even if in the form of my one vote, to this historical moment. Today I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “Yes, we did!!”