Yes we can! Yes we did!

For once in a long time, I was excited to vote today. And for once I was optimistic, and I felt happy to be an American.

I voted for the first time as a New York resident, and even though the volunteer at the voting station was a bit rude, distracted, and could barely figure out the alphabet to look up addresses properly, I was happy to get in that voting booth.



As an extra treat, they had this crazy contraption with switches and a giant red lever, unlike the quiet little computerized voting booth I used back in Palo Alto.

Sadly, after voting, I was cooped up at school all day until after 9pm. And sadly, our storybook teacher got upset with us. She even spoke to our computer rendering teacher about it, and he said he had never seen our storybook teacher so upset before. It appears she is suddenly upset that we are behind on our big storybook project.

We are confused by it, because we all work hard all day on schoolwork until late at night, every day, (except for maybe Sundays when we finally get to clean our clothes, homes, and ourselves. Even on Sundays, half my class still goes to school). Maybe we worked too much on our other toy design projects, but really, we have too much to do, in a realistic sense.

It feels wrong that she would be so upset at us over this. So, sadly, I couldn't go out to the election parties or bars to share the joy of this historic day with the rest of New York. I couldn't even join my cousins uptown to just watch it on tv. Instead, I went home to catch up on schoolwork. With the tv on, of course!

But this is such a historic day. This is bigger than a cranky teacher or my grades in a storybook class. I can't let that ruin this happy, historic moment. We are part of a country that can not only accept, but even choose, with enthusiasm, an interracial president! We will have a president that we can be proud of. Even in a sinking economy, have hope and enthusiasm! Obama has a big job ahead of him, but for once we have someone we believe in.

And an extra shout-out to Jennifer Lau, who isn't even an American citizen yet, who left all her loving friends in San Francisco to work on the Obama/Biden campaign as a field organizer in battleground states. Yay! Thanks to everyone who voted! You are the best!