Laura’s abroad in Amman, Jordan until Dec. 19.

Since I arrived in Jordan, almost everyone I met, taxi drivers and lecturers alike, asked me who I would vote for in the U.S. presidential elections. I always said “Obama, of course!” and they would reward me with a big smile. But many of the people I met didn’t even know John McCain’s name. And very few had ever heard of Sarah Palin. Most don’t know much about Obama or his platform. Many people I spoke with referred to him as “al-uswad,” or “the black one.” One newspaper headline the day before the election read in Arabic, “Obama ‘The Black,’ will he be Mr. ‘White House’?” People I’ve spoken with seem fascinated, like the rest of America I suppose, with his skin color and whether he would fail because of it. When I asked about why they like Obama, some said simply that he’s not George W. Bush. Others said he was more like them, or that he would be the president for the world, not just for America. It seems that for them, Obama’s victory simply signals that America may be on their side. His victory affirms that George W. Bush was wrong and that the American people do care about the rest of the world.

I asked my host brothers and program directors about election parties in Amman, but apparently the city would be relatively quiet as usual. So, on the night of the election, I joined a group of 10 students in a hotel room to watch CNN and Al-Jazeera. Due to the time change, we didn’t start getting results until after 3 a.m., right when the exhaustion was starting to kick in. Surprisingly, Al-Jazeera was calling states for Obama or McCain about 5 to 10 minutes before CNN did, perhaps because the American stations were exercising more caution after last election’s debacle. One by one, we watched the states turn blue. Around 4 a.m., I passed out cold, and was awoken later by my friend shouting, “We have a new president! We have a new president!” We all piled on the couches to watch McCain’s concession speech, followed by Obama’s victory speech.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as homesick as when I watched the crowd cheering in Grant Park. I wanted so badly to be there with my sister and all of my friends, some of whom had press passes. I called my sister to vicariously experience the excitement of the crowd. She hung up after a minute or two, though, to get Obama’s rising sun symbol painted on her cheek. On television, Chicago seemed more alive than I’ve ever seen it, and I longed to join in the fun. Instead, I was half-asleep on a couch, half-a-world away. The streets of Amman were depressingly silent, and we were all too tired to break open the champagne. We feel asleep again around 8 a.m., and I slept until my parents called to tell me that my father had won the city council election in my hometown. A double victory for my family! Homesickness hit me hard that morning, and I drifted back to sleep feeling sad that I couldn’t celebrate with my family in California nor with the rest of Chicago.

On Wednesday, Obama’s name buzzed on the radio and on all the television stations. When I was walking down the street with a few American friends, a few people driving by rolled down their window to shout, “Mubruk!” (congratulations). My host family shared in my excitement and we all had a huge feast of fish in the afternoon. Together we watched Obama’s victory speech replayed and had an interesting talk about race-relations in the U.S. I spent the evening checking some of my favorite Jordanian blogs and browsing Global Voices for other Middle Eastern blogs to see what they had to say about the elections. Here is a sample, The Black Iris of Jordan, 7iber.com (see an article form Obama’s visit to Amman), 360 East, a round-up of Egyptian blogs, and a Syrian blog.

Read Laura’s previous post l Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers