What an amazing night... or early morning for us over here in Europe. One of M's fellow students (who's also from Seattle) organized an election night party
at a bar here in Brussels. About 40 students came from all different countries. Some were really interested, some slightly interested, and some just liked the idea of a midweek party in the middle of the night.
I worked until just after midnight and then we walked about a 1/2 hour to the bar. Our thought was just to stay an hour or two as we were tired. Well, a couple beers each, Obama wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania seeming to cinch it, and 4 hours later we headed home to catch the final call (CNN World played the same all day coverage as CNN USA). Coincidentally, as we walked home on the empty streets at 4am, we ran into someone else from M's school who was coming back from her own election party. She said "is this real? did they just call Ohio for him? We've won, haven't we? Its just so surreal!" (the surrealness was helped by running into another american in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of Europe with everyone else asleep). Twenty minutes later we were home. Virginia went to Obama 5 minutes before 5am (8pm Pacific) and I turned to M and said "oh my god, they are about to call it, CA, OR and WA are sure things so the minute those polls close, they're going to make the call!!". And sure enough... 
Of course it was nothing compared to Grant Park (watch this to get chills all over again), but one very happy (and tired) apartment in Brussels. Calls home to our families ensued. Excitement all around. I watched as my friends Facebook status's all started to change ("... is speechless", "... is so excited", "... is so proud of America") We
ended up watching McCain's concession speech but we both fell asleep in front of the TV before Obama's acceptance speech. 6am. 24 hours since we had last slept.No worries, a quick 4 hours sleep, a lot of coffee and some aspirin and we were awake again with CNN on the TV and The Daily Show's coverage streaming on our computer. It still hasn't all worn off.
More pictures from that night...
Posts
1 comment:
You capture the emotions and the feelings of the night so well. Thank you!! This really is a watershed moment for all of us no matter what your politics. I saw Obama's press conference yesterday and still it was unreal, I wanted to keep asking "is this real? it is real and I will never forget this moment. Thanks for capturing it!
Post a Comment