I saw the man but Sean shook his hand.


You remember Sean, my verbally enthusiastic and married site mate from training. He is the one who did a lesson plan on Energy sources. Well, if you don't remember Sean, he is a veritable encylopedia, random facts and figures stream out of him twenty-four, seven (need I say more than energy sources, who the hell know about energy sources?!) So if you can imagine Sean is all excited about seeing history in action ( which I have to admit I was as well), and after waiting about seven hours in the rain to see Dubbya, nothing was going to come between Sean and the President's hand. Screaming "He's my damn president!" bunicas went flying as Sean parted the sea of people to front. And sure enough he stuck out that hand, and like he later repeated to me "looked into his eyes for a good five seconds." "Thank you Mr. President. Peace Corps Romania, Thank You." That was all he could get out of his mouth. And like that he was sucked back into the crowd.
Faced with the same type of encounter I am not sure I would have thanked the President. Good Old Dubbya did a typical eight minute speech stretched out to 16 minutes with translation..."Blah, blah blah, freedom, blah, blah, blah terror" It was an eerily quiet rally. Maybe due to the seven hours of waiting. The crowd apathetically chanted Bush. But the funniest part of the whole event came when they played the rocky theme song as Bush decended from Air Force One to Romania. It was at that point that I felt the most assinine (however you spell it). In another one of my attempts to be a part of history, to experience something first hand, I couldn't be farther away from it. Not even 13 years ago Ceausescu stood is the same spot and conducted his last rally. Rally this, rally that. I wasn't inspired, I wasn't experiencing any transformation, I wasn't creating history, I was just wet.
more to come soon....