Good Luck, Obama.

Although the moment has clearly passed, I kind of feel bad I haven't said my part about the whole Obama inaugeration. It's really neat to experience these kinds of things abroad, because you get to, well,...experience what a whole 'nother group of people are thinking about something. It's kind of like being behind one of those mirrored windows when someone is talking about you on the other side.

One thing that has really made an impression on me is just how much of an...impression Obama has made on the world. I mean, here we are in little bitty New Zealand, an ocean away, and Obama is ALL the news. People here are excited, they're hopeful, they're inspired. I knew that the rest of the world liked Obama as much as they hated Bush (and if you think Americans didn't like Bush toward the end, ask a European, or well, any other nationality), but I didn't realize that Obama had actually touched people around the globe as he has in the U.S. People in NZ actually feel that now famous "hope" that our new President has seemed to almost have patented. There were celebrations here and all the newspapers were plastered with giant, colorful photos of Obama's stoic face.

We were supposed to have gotten up at 5:30am to watch the inaugeration. At some point during the night I had moved to the bed in the other room to escape Beau's earth-shattering snoring, and so didn't hear the alarm go off. Beau did, but decided that perhaps one more hour of sleep DURING THE INAUGERATION was okay.

Okay, so I'm still a little annoyed about that.

Anyway, we made it up by 6:30am, just in time to catch the end, and then a whole bunch of Kiwi commentary on it all, including shots from the American embassy where random American ex-pats would claim some sort of link to Obama ("I used to sit near his mom in grad school!"). I really enjoyed seeing the swearing-whoops-in! I thought Michelle was going to burst out laughing. That would have been the most awesome oath of office ever if she had.

And hey, it was my birthday too (my birthday here, a day earlier in the U.S.), so it kind of helped make it all jut a tad more special. It all feels pretty good. I mean, it feels real good. I know he has an enormous river or shit to wade through, but here's hoping he comes out on the other side. We don't need a hero, but we certainly need a good President, a good man.

Good luck, Obama.

P.S. For those of you on Facebook, I thought this was pretty damn awesome: A fan club for Aretha's hat!