I got my birthday wish: Obama was elected President

How often do you get to turn 21 years old on the day of a historic Presidential Election, which happens to be the first time you can vote for President? Once in a lifetime, so I decided to make the best of it. And I had a seriously epic November 4.

The day started out pretty calm. I wore a new sweater, skirt, and tights to school where I gave a presentation in my literature class. Then I went out to lunch with this girl from the program that I am getting to know. We went to a café connected to this gourmet chocolate shop, so we got chocolate desserts of course. And then I bought myself a box of chocolates filled with liquors as a personal birthday present.

I had invited a group of my European friends over for dinner, so on the way home I stopped and bought soda and Mahou Cinco Estrellas, which is the favorite beer of Svante, our Swedish friend. There was an obligatory meeting that I thought was at 6 but then at 5:30 we checked on Jane’s email and it said the meeting was at 5. So, having accidentally missed the mid-semester meeting I didn’t really want to go to anyway, I went instead to a wine shop and bought four bottles of pretty good wine. Mostly I asked the lady behind the counter of recommendations and she helped me pick out one white, one red, and two bubbly. The Spanish equivalent to Champagne is called Cava.

Svante was the first friend to arrive. He cooked a pasta sauce loaded with cream, Justine (my French flatmate and friend) cooked Spanish tortilla, and I made a salad with vinaigrette. We sat down to eat at about 9:30, with some of the people from my apartment and Vincienzo, the Italian guy. They decided to sing “Happy Birthday” to me, starting in Spanish and then each person sang in their native language, so I ended up getting sung “Happy Birthday” in eight different languages: Spanish, English, Chinese, German, Greek, French, Swedish, Italian, and Ana tried to sing to me in Catalan, but forgot half the words.

Shortly afterward three of the other guys showed up, turned out the lights, and brought in a birthday cake in from the kitchen with lit candles. The cake was pretty odd, one layer with a concave surface and a hard, kind of transparent icing, but they had made it themselves. They had tried to write “Feliz Cumplianos Miriam” in the middle, although the icing ran and pretty much all that was readable was “Feliz.” It was probably the cutest birthday present I had ever received. They sang “Happy Birthday” to me in Spanish, again. To my complete surprise I also got other birthday presents: dessert wine, a bottle of sidra, candles, birthday cards, and a large box of chocolates. Between the wine I had bought, the sidra we opened, and then the shot of rice liquor that Yao, our Chinese flatmate, insisted we drink to my health, I was nicely tipsy. While the other washed the dishes and dealt with the plugged up sink (something that we have to call in a plumber to fix, Joe are you avaliable?) I ended up in a conversation with Jane, my American flatmate about our live, our love lives, and our families. We opened my box of chocolates and between us and everyone else finished off about half before we realized we were eating too much of already full stomachs and cut ourselves off.

People trickled out and at about 1 AM, Jane and I left for the Democrats Abroad Party in the Circulo de Bellas Artes, a prestigious building in central Madrid, not fifteen minutes walk from my piso. It was good that we didn’t go before because we met up with people who had been waiting in line for an hour and a half. Apparently the Democrats had over sold the tickets, but they opened another floor of the building and so after about forty minutes wait, in which Jane and another girl got a bottle of wine and then were interviewed (with the wine) by a Spanish news station. When we finally got inside it was totally crowded, but we made our way up to the top floor and spent hours standing around, watching CNN on giant screams, screaming for every projected Democratic win, and drinking. At one point I went to the bar for a rum and Lemon Fanta with Ana, this girl who is super friendly but I haven’t really talked to, and we had an hour long conversation about politics and then art, her drunk and me tipsy.

Finally, at about 5 or 5:30 in the morning, we counted down to the closing of the West Coast polls (represent Oregon!) and then when we reached zero and CNN flashed up the words “Barak Obama Elected President” everyone went freaking insane. Everyone was screaming, jumping up and down, hugging and kissing each other, and (in my case) tearing up and saying “Oh my god!” over and over. It felt so surreal and yet so amazing. We watched McCain’s concession speech, which was a little hard because a number of people were drunk enough that they wouldn’t be respectful and shut up so we could listen. At the end of the speech they belted out the goodbye song from “Remember the Titans.” Then we waited around until Obama’s acceptance speech, which was a long wait because my feet were hurting. At 6 AM Spain time, Obama walked onto the stage with his family, and I have to admit that I teared up again. We lost about 4 minutes of the audio of his speech due to technical malfunction, but we heard the beginning and then end. That man is one hell of a speaker. I hope he becomes one hell of a President.

At 6:30 in the morning I walked home along the streets of Madrid. The fruit store below my piso, which doesn’t seem to have a set schedule, was open. At home I got out my computer and called my family. I finally went to bed at about 7:40 when it was getting light outside.

So yes, my birthday was freaking epic.