Cake for Obama just doesn't roll off the tongue....

This is the cake we bought when I was in India during the last presidential elections: Cake for Kerry! We were convinced that buying a pastry and having a sleep over would win the democrats the White House again. With the time difference, the election returns came in in the morning so we talked our instructors into letting us out of class to watch the results. Subsequently, we all wandered into class late, sad, dejected, and saying we wouldn't go home to four more years of George W. Bush.

So here it is, four years later and I've managed to be out of the country again, largely missing the craziness and annoyances of campaign commercials, up to the minute poll results of who's ahead and who's behind, and words like Swing State. But whether it was India in 2004 or Nicaragua in 2008, I'm impressed and amazed at how the entire world watches the politics of America in a way that so few Americans will ever pay attention to the elections in even one other country.

In India, we were out in a rural area on a field trip literally driving around on dirt roads, at one stop a man approached the vehicles yelling “Bush or Kerry?! Bush or Kerry!?” Undoubtedly this man spoke no English and probably had a little jerry-rigged TV set in his earthen house, but he knew and cared about the presidential elections taking place on the other side of the world.

Now Nicaragua's not nearly as far away as India and the people here are much more intimately connected with the States, the majority of the people I talk to have family or at least friends who live or lived in the U.S. And their ability to get a visa to visit those family and friends, or to move themselves one day may depend on who calls 1600 Pennsylvania Ave home next year. I've met a lot of Obama supporters here and a few for McCain, but regardless of who they support it seems that most people think McCain will win. I sent my absentee ballot at the beginning of October and I think most of you can guess which name got my little black dot.

Here I am with my absentee ballot, ever so proud:




For lack of a television and intermittent internet access, it's pretty easy for me to forget about the elections. But I have my preparations made, my friend Maria has cable (you have to pronounce it in Spanish when you read that though, so it's more like cah-blay) and she said I can come over and watch returns on CNN en Espanol on the 4th.

And just as a friendly reminder, the opinions expressed in this blog are mine (MINE! MINE! MINE! - 20 points if you get the ultra-obscure Scrubs reference) and have absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. Peace Corps or anyone else for that matter. So there.