For the past year I’ve been getting myself pumped up for the election. I mean how often does something this big come around? Since I knew that I would still be in Japan during Election Day, I even started strategizing for how I would obtain an absentee ballot to make sure I wouldn’t miss out. Strangely though things didn’t quite work the way I had imagined them to.

My first plan was to grab an absentee ballot form from the Kent county office while I was back this summer, but since I only spent a total of two hours in Grand Rapids that week I wasn’t able to. Back in Japan I checked the Kent County website for advice. They told me that in order to obtain an absentee ballot I would need to send in the request form (the one I had intended to pick up while I was back), but didn’t offer any way to actually obtain said form. PDF files apparently being too new a technology still. After this point I started asking around for advice, and received reliable intel that I would be able to get an actual absentee ballot form simply by heading down to the US embassy in Tokyo. This was of course easier said than done as they’re only open on weekdays, but I happened to have a day off of school coming up, so I decided to head down then to get myself a ballot. Despite the reports I had gotten from other people though, when I got there they wouldn’t actually give me a Michigan ballot. Instead they gave me the original form that I had tried to get in the beginning; meaning I had to fill that out, send it back to the Kent County office, after which they would then send me the actual absentee ballot, which I would then need to send them again. Not having any other option, I sent it in and waited. And waited. And yeah, Kent County never got around to sending me my ballot. By the time I realized it wasn’t coming, it was too late, and all I could do was sit back and watch as events unfolded half a world away.

I think that this experience has been the most disconnected I’ve ever felt from America. I could see all the excitement and drive and craziness through windows like the media, and blogs and such, but when I looked around me it was eerily silent. There was no support rallies to go to, no petitions to sign, televised debates to watch with family and friends, no discussions. Despite checking news sources as often as I could, I found myself uninformed about a lot of what was going on. I was reading a report on the outcome of the election, and it was citing that both candidates had gone in pretty even, but once the economy went south in September McCain never had a chance. I had had no idea that it had been that close, or that the troubling economy was the deciding factor—and a last minute factor at that. I felt like I was in bizarre world.

Though it was sad to not be directly connected with what was going on, it was still a meaningful learning experience for me. I could appreciate the process, and my desire to be a part of it confirmed for me that despite my current address, my heart still beats on EST. And as I wrap up my last year in Japan, it’s good to have those callings back home. There’s a deep sense of wanting to be a part of a process that produces change, and after three years in a place where I’ve had a minimal amount of influence, I’m looking with no small amount of anticipation to returning to a place where my voice can more clearly be heard—and even understood for that matter. Yes, anticipation indeed!