WE HAVE A PRESIDENT!

I am so tired. 2 days after the election, I still haven't caught up on sleep. Tuesday night we got all dolled up in our blue (and for the moderates - red and blue) outfits and went to a party thrown by NYU in Ghana. It was at a restaurant near the American-y part of town and they set up a huge projection screen playing CNN and there was a modicum of free food and drink. Watching CNN was really fun and when it got boring we delegated different political campaign jobs to people in our group. I was fundraising, obviously.

However, after a while it became apparent that the NYU thing was meant to be very educational in nature. There were a lot of speakers who, when they got up to talk about the electoral college or the different parties, turned the volume off of CNN so they could talk. Which, when you are trying to WATCH CNN... makes you kind of mad. We left a little before 1 AM so we could get home in time to watch the east coast 8 PM polls roll in.

Back at ISH there was a pretty sizable group in the TV room watching Al Jazeera. (BBC World wasn't even showing election stuff! What the heck!!) Our other option was SkyNews which, for the better part of 30 minutes was interviewing Eddie Izzard about his thoughts on the election. It's really no wonder why people think America is dumb. They are getting their information about the US election from Eddie Izzard.

Anyway, so I sat there through the whole thing. I watch the results come in. I watched McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech. I have to say, Obama gives me the goosebumps. The man can speak - no doubt about it. Now I wish/hope/want/pray that those speeches can actually change things and that this isn't just the same old, same old.

But after all the excitement died down, it was almost 6 AM and the sun was rising. I had a class in 5 hours and still had to do an "assignment" for it. (If you don't understand my use of quotations, go back and read everything I've written about the state of education in Ghana). So I got a little over 3 hours of sleep. GAH. I should never sleep that little, ever. I'm not fun.

Add that to the walk Annie and I did yesterday that ended up being 5 hours long (Campus to Osu, Osu to 37 for all of you that know what I'm talking about) in the blazing heat of dry season. This heat is almost unbearable. I only say almost because I am, indeed, surviving it. So I have to be bearing it somehow. But I perspire more than humanly possible. It's not a pretty sight. But I'm used to it enough that I know I'm not going to adjust well to the freezing cold of New England winter very well.

Alas, once you get used to one thing... you have to leave.