ex-pats and televisions

So, the good news is that we got to watch the elections on a real live television. It was mainly a collection of teachers and parents at the two bilingual schools and a few of the other ex-pats in the community. When there was a part in one of the speeches about people abroad listening to the returns on the radio, I was pretty glad not to be one of them. It was amazing to see the crowds in Chicago and the group outside of the White House and I'm glad to have a visual memory of this event to go along with the emotional one. There were many things about this election season that concern me - taking away rights by popular vote without the support of the legislature and against the will of the supreme court of CA is of course the one at the top of the list. I'm left wondering if there were any similar things that happened in the transition period when interracial marriage was becoming legal. I guess I'm still frustrated because ultimately, I don't think that marriage should be something controlled by the government anyway, but rather by the people who want to be in unions with each other. Oh well.

I don't think I ever wrote about our experiences getting finger printed for our visas. When it came time for the are you single or married question I was slightly flustered, in part due to the spanish nature of my interview. In MA, I'm married. According to the US government, I'm single. So I told them I'm married to jordan and then when she was fingerprinted, they asked her if she knows me (but not if we're married, which was weird) and of course she said yes. When the lady who was processing me brought me over to the guy to do the finger printing she felt it was necessary to pull him aside and whisper about (presumably) my confusing status as a girl who is married to another girl (though they didn't ask jordan's gender during my questioning). Anyway, I know it's a Catholic country and all, but I thought they knew that those crazy gringos up in the states occasionally have same-sex partners that they're committed to. And some of them even get government (state government, anyway) approved papers in support of their committment. That's an aside, but ultimately, I guess, I'm pretty happy that I don't have to stay down here for 4 years, and can still come back after 2, though I'm betting I'll still have to figure out that whole war tax resisting thing. Too bad there's not a quaker opting out box on the tax forms...I'll happily pay for schools and health care and roads (though I'd prefer to pay for bike trails and renewable energy investments). Ramblerambleramble.