Inauguration Day 2009

Yesterday was undoubtedly a historic day. Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States and the first African American President; change is coming (if you don't think so, you should stop reading). So to commemorate this special day, MIT decided to set up lecture halls all around campus for the viewing of the Inauguration ceremony. They even gave all employees 11:30-1:00 off so that they wouldn't have to skip a bit of work to view it (though skipping work for this occasion is totally worthy it imo).

The problem was that I had PE Volleyball until 11:50 on Tuesdays, and Obama gets sworn in at noon. So I had to immediately run to the locker room and changed like a madman. Didn't even have time to shower :(. And subsequently made my way to 10-250.

10-250 was the second largest lecture on campus and seats about 450 students. When I sneaked in through a side door, all sweatly and out of breath, I saw this:


The entire place was packed; people were sitting on the aisle everywhere.

Luckily I got there a couple of minutes early and managed to catch Joe Biden getting sworn in:


and then Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and Gabriela Montero performed an amazing rendition of Air and Simple Gifts arranged by John Williams (:D):


It was pretty funny watching Obama and Justice Roberts stumble across the swear of oath, which is like 2 sentences long. And then the man himself spoke:


Everyone was dead silent as they tentatively listened to President Obama give his hopeful but also solemn speech. It was as inspiring as some of his previous speeches, but it definitely spent shivers down my spine and gave the goosebumps. All in all, the Inauguration was a pretty awesome event to witness with others from my academic community.

Where and how did you guys watch the Inauguration? What was it like for you? If you were actually there, post up a blog asap!

Bonus: Flashback to 11/4/08