Like many other Americans, I have never been very interested and actually sitting down and watching a presidential inauguration but this election and new president has bought a breath of fresh air to everything having to do with American politics. Tuesday I went to Aleg (a large city about an hour north of Boghe) to visit my friend Amanda (another girls’ education PC volunteer). Although we didn’t have cable to watch the inauguration, we watched it across the street from her house with a local family on the French news channel ‘24’. Their cable did have English CNN but if we watched that the Mauritanian family wouldn’t be able to understand it so we watched the inaugural proceedings dubbed in French (if you concentrated real hard you could zone out the French and hear just the English). It was an amazing moment watching Barack Obama take his oath and literally feeling hope for our country and the worlds future coming back to me. There were a few tear jerkers, quickly followed by cheering all around when Bush boarded his helicopter to Texas.
After watching the live inauguration we went over to the regional house and started downloading all the inauguration stuff we could find and watch it all over again in English on a projector with all the other volunteers in her region (followed by watching a lot of this seasons ‘Office’ episodes that we downloaded!) It was nice to spend just a few days hanging out, making great (attempts) at American food and seeing Amanda, her GMC and Aleg.
On a side note, I am extremely pleased with some of Barack’s first few moves, including the closing of what I have always considered one of Americans biggest moral faults, Guantanamo Bay. I have hope in the future and it feels good...
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I am so glad you were able to see some of the inauguration events -- what an exciting day!! In case you didn't get enough coverage, we recorded several hours and have send the DVDs to Ryan. Enjoy!!
Take care!
Vicki
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