Barack Hussein Obama: 44th President of the United States, My Journey

So as you all know, this day is far from over, although it has been two, technically three days for me. It's easy to say that I'm exhausted after the biggest journey possible today.

1. Discover your now best friend in the whole world has been holding a ticket for you for the Inauguration!
2. Pick up that ticket, attend the gala, and arrive back at hotel around 1:00am
3. Change and stay overnight at the metro station, only to not be let in until 4:15
4. Rush the station, and catch the first train out; arriving at the capitol at 4:30am
5. Depart from cousin and his friend, to find own seating for over 2 and a half hours
6. Instead of being first in line like you would have been if the guards knew what they were doing, you end up squeezing between the halfway point, pretending to have always been there.
7. Due to no sleep and lack of food proceed to get sick
8. Attempt to leave to go to Union station only to be blocked in
9. Rejoin the throng of people where you are even closer than before, where you also find out that the reason you are not getting in is because the Silver people have breached security! Great....
10. Be stuck in the throng, unable to get out, when they allow only purple ticket people in; that's you!
11. Get pushed and shoved to a point that you are no longer in control of your own feet, but are actually being pulled by people through the gates.
12. Rush through the "intensive" security, due to being on capitol grounds and run as you get ready to hear the speech.
13. Fight with people but alas, get a spot in order to hear the Inauguration speech, 2 minutes before it starts. Then leave promptly to avoid traffic, ha!
14. Having lost batter to both cell phones, proceed to use verizon phones from their store until a now extremely pissed cousin finds you.
15. Get on numerous trains in order to get back to your metro spot, then take the car all the way back to the hotel, pick up McDonald's and do homework.
16. Don't attend any of the balls because by this time you are dead.

This is a run through of having to wait for over 7 hours in freezing cold weather to go inside the gates, but in the end it was definitely all worth it, although it doesn't show from here.

17. When you've come back from your initial exhaustion, actually celebrate the fact that you have a new president. The first amazing, black, cool, awesome, fantastic, 44th president, who has a brilliant wife; Barack Hussein Obama!

After all of this I'm definitely going to be out of it for a while, but it was all worth it. Every second. To hear the people screaming when he accepted the title and then his speech...It was just unbelievable, and before you knew it most of us were hugging and giving out high-fives all around. It was like the day he had won the election, accept only better; because plenty of us had been holding our breaths till this point. There were no threats and overall it went smoothly for him. Now he is the President of the United States and all I have to say at this moment is to give him time! He can do it with our help but only with us working as one!

Anyhow, that's an overall, and it was amazing. I'll bring back pictures, videos and the actual ticket that I was given to go in. I got to meet Oprah and Jessie Jackson on the way, talk about awesome! I was able to ride the metro with Wyclef Jean! And now I'm back in my hotel room, packing up for an early flight back to school, attempting to do the homework I haven't had a moment for, and looking forward to sleep on the plane. Alright, see you guys next week and night night.

Some Thoughts, By Eric Kane

Hello all it's your classmate and peer, Eric Kane just here to talk a bit see what's the going ons of the time. There was that plane crash where a flock of seagull caused an engine to fail, I was surprised and delighted to see that the pilot was trained enough to maneuver the plane through the City into the Hudson Bay. Hearing that made me a much more comfortable flyer, not that I ever had problem flying, but now there's proof that the Pilots, well, at least that one, is very competent.

Also did I forget to mention OBAMA'S INAUGURATION! Regardless if you were or were not a fan of Bush, I was not, no one can argue that we're in for a world change. I don't say this because of his cheesy slogan, I say this because with our economic crisis, and all the turmoil in so many places in the world regardless of whether or not Obama coined the catchphrase "change" it would still come.

So, those are just two of the many things going on right now, just thought I'd share my thoughts with the class, if anyone would like to add something or comment, please feel free.

We Are ONE....Freezing in the Cold

The alarm did not go off, and so when we awoke we were off like organized chaos. Breakfast half eaten and our stuff half packed as a flurry of limbs walked the cold three to four miles to the nearest train station.
So when we arrived to discover that the train we needed did not run, and received our tickets for another train, only to be deterred in this as well, I had become quite agitated. In the end we ended back up at the hotel and left with both cousin and his friend, who had extra sleep and much more rested than we.

Now, for the biggie! Yes, the concert, featuring tons of artists to come speak and sing for the Inaugural to come. We had to walk for over 2 hours, to finally succumb to our exhaustion with pushing through the crowd and being situated with not over several hundred thousand as the media had stated, but over a million people.

This was definitely a time to remember, as the quick two hour production had various speakers talk about Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr; Rosa Parks and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The speeches were captivating, and left us breathless and cheerful despite the cold. The theme throughout all of the speeches was the idea that "we are one." One united people, one collective group, one America. It was a lot like Christmas in this sense, where everyone smiled and was rather polite to one another, knowing that we were all down there for the same reason.

However, there always has to be a dark cloud shining in the brightest of days, and this for the particular event (besides not getting a hug from Obama), was due to the random people around the area protesting against him. A group of people of a variety of races held papers and magazines out that they had written, screaming things such as, "We now have a black man on the seat of white power."

In the end, we just had to laugh as everyone pushed by, not wanting to hear it because we had all come there for Obama. More people than imaginable had shown up today, and I found myself engaged in conversation with people who had traveled from Russia and France in order to see Obama.

If this means anything at all, then it represents the faith we have in this man, and the belief that with his help he can begin to guide us out of the issues we face today. Years and years it will take, but we can do it. But not only does America have faith in him but other countries as well. We stand not only as one America, but one united world, and for once, it looks like change is going to come.