President Obama

The interminable campaign season, together with the appointments, 3 a.m. phone calls, confirmations, and exit interviews that followed, all played a part in so diluting the Barack Obama elixir that I completely overlooked the significance of yesterday's inauguration. Almost subconsciously I thought of it as just another formality in the long series of Obamania - and in a way it was, the difference being that we have a new president.

"I wish I were in DC," some study abroad friends would lament. Or at least in the United States. Instead we spent the days leading up to Jan. 20 wondering where we would watch the inauguration, fearing that we'd end up at a bar that screened the ceremony with a Hungarian voiceover. But we joined maybe 100 other CEU students in the school's auditorium, so aside from a time lag and tech glitches ("We the people... we the people... we the people..."), it worked out. When you think about it, it wasn't too different than the States in that we'd still be sitting around a CNN broadcast. Or I could be wrong. The excitement certainly came nowhere near what we would have experienced back home: clapping was intermittent, the streets were almost imperceptibly more crowded than usual, and few revelers hit the bars and clubs.

I never know how much of my observations represent things as they are in Hungary, especially in this CEU bubble of international students. But my friends and I sat there as some of the only people in the audience with a new president, and I think we felt what Obama represents. We watched side by side with citizens from a dozen countries, read from pamphlets about Obama's stance on Americans abroad, shared drinks with an Australian... among us, collectively tied to Jews, Indians, Hungarians, Vietnamese, Canadians, and of course, Americans, we felt diversity.