Ahem. Yesterdayyy. Ok, well, I showed up downtown around 1:30, and I sat in traffic for about thirty minutes. I finally got a parking space in a lot where some homeless guy was making people pay him to park there, but I didn't really care. I had about a twenty minute walk, so I jogged half. I bought a tee-shirt and put it on. Then all the sudden some fat po-po was like, "They've closed the park, turn back." I turned to the tattooed guy who I'd been chatting up next to me (rather cute, though probably like, ten years older than me, hahah) and I was like, "I'm not turning back." He agreed, so we continued walking, as did most of the people. Sure enough, the gates to the park were closed, so everyone grabbed seats outside the park. I was right up against the fence, right in front of a speaker, so I could hear perfectly. But there was NO way we would be able to see Obama, because there's this hill between the fence and the huge park that he would be speaking in front of (the only hill in Florida, of course). So that kind of sucked. We all sat around, listened to bad campaign music and the various bigwigs of Florida, and just...waited. There was all this tension in the air. I was looking around at the people around me; teenagers like myself, old men and women who could barely stand up but were, young kids whose parents wanted them to be there, husbands and wives, holding hands, black, white, Hispanic, Asian - it was pretty amazing. There was this lady standing next to me who was like, "I haven't voted since Bill." And I was like, "I still can't vote." She laughed. We both agreed we would probably start crying when Barack came on. Ok. I didn't think I'd be too overly affected, which sucked, because I couldn't actually SEE him. But when the person who introduced him said, "And here he is - my future president - Barack Obama!" and he was like, "Hello, everyone!" I just started crying! I could not control myself! It was actually quite comical - I didn't stop crying the entire time. Nothing he said was something I hadn't heard him say before, but just hearing him and knowing he was so close was so amazing. He was actually quite funny, more so than I'd remembered. But it was so awe-inspiring to be surrounded by people who were so moved, people who haven't wanted to vote in years, of all different ages and races. People around me were crying, and laughing, and clapping - and we couldn't even see him. But let me drive this point home. The park he was speaking at can hold thirty-five thousand people. 35,000, and IT WAS FULL. Not only that, but there were eight thousand people OUTSIDE the park! That's 43,000 people! Afterwards me and the tattooed guy were talking again, and he likened it to Woodstock, in the regard later on people would ask, "Where you there?" I'm not sure it's quite the same thing, because Woodstock was just one occasion, and Obama gives a lot of speeches. But he said, "No, no, I mean...people are going to ask US, where you there when you couldn't even fit inside the venue for one of Obama's speeches?" And he's right. I can't think of many people who can draw enough people to fill the venue, and then be so enigmatic that people will stand outside the venue to hear him speak. I fully believe it was a historical moment. And I was there!