Four Years Ago

Four years ago the sun was coming up over some small coral island in the Bahamas. Flying fish sailed through the air and we sailed through the waters on a three-masted schooner. A more beautiful picture couldn’t be painted until you looked closer at a crew who only fought, bitched and bickered about nothing but bad moods. Bush had just been re-elected.

We had been a pretty great crew up until that moment and that morning was a nice look into what half a nation was thinking and how we all might be acting for the next four years. I wanted nothing to do with it. Four hours later our watch was over and we sat at breakfast, tired, depressed, gloomy. “I’m leaving” I said. It wasn’t something I had pondered or planned, just a rash statement that I kept to.

I left in December for Slovakia and stayed a year and a half. From there I ventured to Central America, in rural Honduras and the beaches of Nicaragua. Finally, I turned my sights to Asia for a year in Korea and now a planned 5 month trip across to India. For most of this time, when people asked where I was from, I apologized that I was American. I have had conversations form Egypt to Mongolia with people asking me WHY Americans did what we did – and I couldn’t answer. Overwhelmingly, though, I heard it’s not your people we don’t like, it’s your government. That’s nice, but still not a thought that makes one swell with pride.

So, this afternoon I had my class watch Obama’s acceptance speech and we read along. We talked about the dust bowl and Martin Luther King and other changes in the last 106 years. I told them it had been a long time since I was glad to be an American, but today was a new day. Who knows if Obama will be all we are hoping, but I do agree with what the press is saying – in one day, the image of America abroad has been changed. I can already see it just outside my door. It’s a good day.