Our "New" President

Its hard for me to remember where I left off with the blog. The details escape me alot easier and the weeks are all beginning to blur together.

After Agra and the wedding the school week rushed by. Christine and I were trying frantically to arrange our winter break trip to Kerala, Goa and Mumbai. Over Christmas and New Year's is when all the other Indians travel, so you are competing with one billion other people for train tickets and plane seats. We have everything pretty much settled, so all the scrambling was worth it.

Last Friday night a group of us headed out to Jaisalmer to go on a camel safari and explore a little of the Thar desert. It was a long, long train ride with a few bumps along the way, like the jerk-Indian guy who wouldn't turn off the light above my head while I was trying to sleep! One of the girls, Alicia, her host mom works for the Rajashtan tourism department, so our weekend was planned to the hilt and they were trying very hard to make sure that all of our needs were taken care of. It was nice and for the most part was a very enjoyable weekend.

We got back to Jaipur in time to watch the results from the election come in. I have had very interesting reactions to all of it. I have to start by saying that more recently I have definetly become more homesick. I miss home, want to go home, and have been idealizing home and home life. Part of missing home is, naturally, missing America and the people I know there, and what my life is there. I esentially was idealizing America as well. While I was becoming homesick I was largely missing and imagining a country that really doesn't exist. Watching the election woke me up to that. The home that I miss and what our country as a whole represents and stands for are two very different things.

I am here in India learning about development, about how I can do my part to enhance the lives of the poor, of women, of social outcasts, of all those who society and government here has essentially abandoned, forgotten or taken advantage of. Watching our country vote for the marginalization of all that I am working for and learning here has created a huge crisis for me. I suddenly feel with the reelection of Bush that all those things I am working for here should be abandoned, to ensure that this new administration does not marginalize further the poor, women, uneducated and non-white people of our country. It breaks my heart that so many of my friends are now discouraged and disillusioned about their futures (both personal and the country's)and feel like there is nothing they can do about it. All of the students at my school were told that if we came out and voted for Kerry that we had the power to get Bush out of our White House. But it didn't work that way, and I just hope that people my age will still continue to vote and believe that their vote makes a difference.

The headline in one of the Indian papers here on election day said, "Decision Day in the Divided States of America". It can't be more true. In my lifetime at least, I do not think this country has ever been so sharply divided in half. Bush may have gotten 51% of the vote, but the liberal candidates got 49%. Half and Half in my opinion, and I bet the country will continue to be divided in half about what American stands for, where America is going, and who America should fight for for at least the next 4 years.

It makes me sad to think of the great divide. I feel so hopeless about what I know is going to happen and how I feel it will undermine people Bush has already hurt in office. But for better or worse he is the President. My ONLY confidence comes from the belief that God will always take care of me and my family, and that He is in control of this situation.