Well, after only living in the D.C. area, Mark and I are Washingtonians. Since the population here is so transient and few are really from here, they embrace transplants quickly. Consequently, we looked at the week’s festivities with the eyes of natives, watching the tourists.
We ventured into the craziness and bone-chilling temperatures on Sunday to go to the Inaugural Concert. The line-up was amazing. We were excited to see Stevie Wonder, U2, Garth Brooks, and Springsteen. Garth Brooks was the best performance of the day. Stevie was amazing. U2, sadly, sounded just OK. Bono couldn’t hit a note to save his life. It was fun, nonetheless and while we only heard the concert, it was amazing to stand at the end of the reflecting pool and watch history happen.
While Mark worked on Tuesday, I went to Bush’s farewell speech in a hangar at Andrews on Tuesday. He didn’t say anything surprising. I was somewhat surprised at the enthusiasm for George HW Bush and Dick Cheney, though. The crowd was pushy and was definitely not very pro-Obama. As a journalism teacher, I chuckled a bit when someone in the crowd near me commented on how he was glad it was FOX news and not CNN. I think I learned a lot about American politics this week, and I can’t say any of it really excited me that much. Hopefully, life here were start to get routine again and the hype over the election and inauguration will calm down. 
