An Interesting Day

I think this line from the New York Times is appropriate:

"An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States."

Obama is an example of hard work and intelligence paying off. No doubt his story will become an essential fabric of the American Dream for a very long time. Whatever your beliefs, he achieved something that most people with uncountable advantages could only dream of.

I stayed up last night until 5 AM here (when Obama had 200 electoral votes without the West Coast) and slept for an hour and half to watch the declaration and the first part of the acceptance speech. I have to say that I never thought I would witness something like this in my lifetime. There are many things that make this election exceptional beyond the obvious. Obama is the first non-Southern Democrat elected since JFK. He carried several traditionally Republican states, and won San Diego County. The most telling fact I heard today was that the voters who said race matters in this election voted the same as voters who said it did not. I think this is evidence that our country has come a lot further regarding race than I ever would have guessed.

I have also realized how important our politics are to the rest of the world. Israelis genuinely cared about who was President because it affects them. Everyone I met today asked me about the election.

On another note, I went to a city called Ashkelon today where I am living beginning in January. We toured the place I am living and the city as a whole. Ashkelon is about 10 km from the Gaza Strip. The Strip, controlled by Hamas, is the origin of the rockets that hit Southern Israel, and occassionaly Ashkelon. About 10 minutes after we got there this morning I was buying a banana when the air raid siren went off. The people in the store hustled us outside (away from the windows) to an area of cover where we waited about 20 seconds and the siren went off. About 5 seconds later I heard/felt an explosion, which was probably about a mile away from where I was. 10 seconds later everyone went back to business as usual. You would not have noticed anything unusual if you arrived a minute after the rocket. It was the first rocket to hit Ashkelon since March, and fortunately it hit an open park with no one around.

This was not nearly as scary as it sounds. The fact that everyone around me was so calm, and acted as if it was nothing was very comforting. It really is not such a big deal, so long as you are not in the open. I was startled and surprised, mostly because it was an unusual experience, but not scared. Feeling the explosion did make it hit home, though. In fact, in the immediate aftermath I was very angry that I had to experience that. I wanted to see some form of retaliation. These feelings subsided as I realized that to everyone around me it was no big deal.

Most of the people I talked to about it brushed the attack off. There reactions ranged from believing that the situation was in God's hands, to pointing out that you are more likely to be in a car accident. In either event, this one rocket did not interrupt life there. It was literally a 1 minute ordeal. This is a result of the Israelis having past experience with the rockets. They know that while the thought of it is terrifying the reality is that the rockets are generally harmless. They choose to not let themselves be unjustifiably terrified.