Preface: My political opinions differ from the opinions of many people that I deeply love and respect. I was delighted by the election results. If you weren’t, perhaps it is best to move on to the next entry. I usually avoid discussing politics, but this day was too enthralling, too historic for equivocation and a straight face. Tomorrow I can be Switzerland, but today I must celebrate.

Our dormitory is usually locked around midnight, so shortly before that most of the Americans and I met in the lobby and set out for Starlite Diner Oktyabrskaya. For some reason, I ended up organizing our expedition, which meant that we walked five miles instead of taking a fifteen minute metro ride (the others had been adequately warned. My logic was that if polls on the east coast wouldn’t even close until two or three am, there was no reason to rush).

It was a beautiful walk. We strolled down Tverskaya and skirted the edge of Red Square before crossing the Moskva River and weaving through side-streets to the other side of down town. Almost no one was about. There was enough moisture in the air that the streets shone and our laughter trailed behind us.

The first few hours we enjoyed tea, coffee, and American-style apple pie. We nearly trembled with giddiness, waiting expectantly, though we hardly dared hope no matter what the forecasts said. Not after the last two presidential elections.

When the results began coming in, we began to make plans. A Kitchen Sink (a note to Elginites: it may not be served in an actual sink and it may not come with a bumper sticker, but this sundae puts Colonial to shame—12 scoops of ice cream!) to celebrate if we win or a Kitchen Sink to commiserate if we lose. We were excited, but hesitant lest our excitement prove unfounded. We made jokes about the coverage to ease the tension (CNN made that easy, though. A hologram? Really, now, if you want the reporter in the studio, there’s a simpler solution: don’t send them to Grant Park in the first place). Each time a state went blue, the whole diner cheered. There was a kind of camaraderie I’ve never felt with strangers in Moscow before. We even got into a “food fight” with a neighboring table, ordering things like buffalo wings for each other.

We all cheered and hugged each other when Ohio was called and gradually, studying the numbers, realized that there was no way McCain could take it. The networks just couldn’t call anything until the West Coast polls closed, but we began to see it on their faces and hear it in their voices. It was almost over.

A little before six am the room began to fill with camera men, and somehow the presence of so many reporters made the surreal environment of the diner that I described in the previous entry seem more natural. As though the acknowledgement that the atmosphere was artificial was all I needed to dismiss my doubts.

John McCain’s concession speech was moving and the atmosphere was properly sombre as the whole diner listened to him. He stepped down so gracefully that I think, at least as far as the expatriate community in Moscow is concerned, he earned back quite a bit of well-deserved respect that the brutal process of campaigning had robbed him of.

But, oh, the acceptance speech! Never have I felt such an acute homesickness as when the cameras swept over the crowd at Grant Park. A desire to be in Chicago that very moment pulsed through me. The first light of dawn tinted the windows pink as Obama stepped to the podium. Everyone at our table, and at the tables around us, had found someone to hold on to, a friend’s shoulder to grip so that the bliss could be both believed in and savored. When he finished, amidst the applause that filled the room, our table chanted “Yes, we can” in Russian.

We left the diner in a daze. Two years of campaigning, and in the end the candidate I’d been backing more than two years before he even announced a bid had won. That doesn’t happen, does it? We stopped by Red Square on the way back to take in the sunrise and toast the morning. That doesn’t happen either. At the university entrance we were congratulated. Just because we were Americans and it was a proud day for our country. That surely does not happen outside of movies. And yet it was the first of many congratulations just based on our citizenship.

Rationally, I know that an Obama presidency can never live up to all the hope and the hype and that even some basic expectations will be shattered. Even knowing that, I am excited for the next four years. Hope isn’t a rational thing, but the majority of people in my country stood together yesterday and decided that hope, and the change that it makes possible, is exactly what our country needs.

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