Bama Bashes

I hope President Obama (how nice does that sound??) doesn't develop a God complex. That said, He collaborated with other heavenly energies and transcended land and sea to make this one of my best days so far in Spain.

At 5:15 I arrived at an uber-posh hotel in the tourist region of Barcelona. Two days earlier, I'd purchased a ticket for 15 euro to watch the inauguration on some big screens with a free drink and tapas. Sponsored by the American Consulate, Democrats Abroad, and The American Society of Barcelona and others, there were--SURPRISE!--a lot of Americans. But for the first time since I've been here, that was just perfect. And I did not regret the price--also a rare event. Waving goodbye to George W. Bush would not have been the same in a bar full of Spanish people.

(Above: people watching Obama and dripping in hope)

That does not mean Spaniards were absent from the celebration--my friend's homestay mom excitedly kissed my cheeks after Obama's address, repeating how exciting it all was. Several others whispered in Spanish that they thought Cheney was faking his back ailment. And for the record, Rick Warren's creepy utterance of the name of Obama's daughter, "Sasha" is disturbing in all languages. (See 4:07 in YouTube link.)

Indeed, the coverage of Obama's inauguration in Spanish media has been incredible--and this is coming from someone acutely aware of the immense change in foreign policy this transition (hopefully) will inspire. For the past week, every Spanish newspaper I've seen has had Obama somewhere on its front page, and those I've actually read have several or many more articles inside. I can only imagine the saturation of Obamamania in the U.S. Tangentially, the Spanish media's coverage of events like the war in Gaza is very interesting. I'll post on that later.

So yeah, that was pretty exciting--hearing Obama referred to as President for the first time at 12 p.m. EST. But then things just got better. My friend and I went to a supermarket to buy more minutes for our cell phones, only to hear the teller say that Vodafone, our service provider, is not currently working in the greater Barcelona area. As we walked La Rambla afterward, dejected, the man who'd been in line behind us tapped me on the shoulder. He'd liked my Spanish pronunciation of zero ("th-ero") and we'd struck up a "conversation"--i.e., with him speaking really fast and us nodding at the few words we understood.

Now he was speaking rapidly again, this time saying something to the effect that the teller was a big liar and to follow him. Apparently, some workers, like the teller at the supermarket, just really don't like credit card transactions and will lie to get out of it. And we did follow him, being naive, trusting lambs desperate to resuscitate our means of communication. He brought us to the store front of a rival service provider, telling the employee we needed minutes ASAP to call our home country. Not really true, but whatevs, because she did as he said. Afterward, the man gave us his unopened can of orange juice, which was was the only thing he'd bought from the market.

Either he was an angel or we looked pathetically distraught. Probably a mixture of both.

Afterward, I ate a really good falafel gyro, greek salad, and baklava, so that was cool too.


I'll close this post with the vapors of a song that's occupied a lot of space in my brain today, as I remembered that Bush was never near me, to comfort and cheer me and that he caused most of my sad tears, falling (baby) from my eyes.

Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey-ey goodbye

(Above: another pretty good singer)

Finally, Reverend Joseph Lowery's hope for the world that a time will come:

When black will not be asked to get in back; When brown can stick around, When yellow will be mellow, When the red man can get ahead, man,
White would embrace the right
*last line: and when white will embrace what is right. difficult to color code--perhaps symbolic of some greater structural problems in his classification schema, however catchy it may be?