Expectations

Today has been possibly the most frustrating, yet exhilarating day. Nothing could have prepared me for this. The crowds were OK up until the very end...then the hostility broke loose. The thing that was awful was how disorganized everything was. To sum things up, I stood in line for 3 hours only to be told that I, along with hundreds of other people, were not even IN line to get into the inauguration. There were no police officers around to direct people where to go or to answer questions, much less to do any kind of crowd control. I almost didn't make it inside for the ceremony. Not to mention my feet were so frozen that I almost couldn't walk, my fingers refused to curl around the pen to write, and I was shivering uncontrollably.

After battling all of this and making it in for Obama's speech, I had to take a moment to realize that I was living a dream. Despite the 3 unnecessary hours in line, the bitter cold, and the claustrophobic-inducing crowds, the moment, this moment where suddenly none of that mattered, was everything I imagined it to be.

More later.

--Sommer