Election Night!

All of the Naval Academy grads were invited to the Embassy in London for election night. Will and I left early on the train on Tuesday morning to make the most of our day in London. Originally, we had planned to meet up with 3 others when we arrived, but one called in sick and one wimped out so we ended up just meeting Sarah - an Academy grad studying at Oxford.

My first train ride!

When we arrived we took "the tube" (subway) to the location of where we would be staying for the night. I had no idea what I was doing, but thank goodness Will was with me because he is an old pro. He instructed me to buy an oyster card (prepaid card) and it made the tube trip really easy. We ended up having two 2 bedroom apartments, which were both really nice - living room, kitchen, stereo, tv, 2 bathrooms. Will made the arrangements through the Embassy so it was pretty cheap too. After we were settled, Will and I spent the day walking around London and enjoying the wonderful ethnic food. We had Pakistani for Lunch and Kurdish for dinner. Both were delicious! Will is very experienced with Middle Eastern cuisine and knew just what to order.

At 9pm we reported to the Embassy. Security was pretty tight and our names weren't on the list so it took us awhile to get through security.

The Embassy all lit up for election night!

For our job for the evening, we found out we would be herding the visitors through the security checkpoints. It was a pretty easy, but exciting job. We were the first people everyone saw when they arrived. After about two hours, we were released from our duties to go join the party. I knew it was going to be a long night at that point because it was 11pm and no results were in yet.

The Embassy was packed! There was an entrance hall with cocktails and places to pick up McCain or Obama pins, a media room (reporters, tv screens, cardboard cutouts of the candidates), and a downstairs party room complete with a band and free food catered by Subway and Burger King and more drinks of course.

The entrance hall

The media room

Will, Obama, Sarah, Sarah P., and I

Will giving Sarah a big kiss!

The band

Sarah and I downstairs with Burger King in the background

I met a lot of interesting people. I'd say the Embassy was mostly full of American military and high ranking officials, many important British people (politicians mostly), and Americans who have been living outside the US for at least a decade and have no intention of ever moving back. It was a long night because of the time difference, but there was a lot of cheering when the results came in. The Embassy didn't start to clear until 3am. Then Sarah, Will, and I headed back to the apartment.

Sarah and I posing in front of a department store all lit up for Xmas

I decided there was no point in trying to sleep. We wanted to watch the acceptance speech and then I was going to try to catch a train by myself to Cambridge at 8 am. The original plan was to make it back for class at 11am, but I found out I had a University soccer game (away) and we were meeting the bus at 11. I barely made it back in time and hopped on the soccer bus. We drove two hours to play a match, which we lost, but we played well. I didn't end up getting back to my room until 8 pm Wed night where I crashed. I couldn't sleep too long though because we were catching a plane to Athens Thursday morning.