Today on the National Mall (despite my fear of cold weather)

I'm from Florida and moved to DC (from LA) about two years ago. I have no involvement in politics, and honestly, until now, very little interest in it. I actually work for a PR company. I'm Caucasian and wasn't even in the country on Nov. 4th to vote (my absentee ballot didn't arrive before I left). But today, in ridiculously cold weather, I walked down Connecticut Ave, got on the metro, and walked up the mall to the Capitol Building.

On the metro I overheard a woman from Houston complaining about what a rough weekend she'd had. After people found out where she was from, they did nothing but give her a hard time about outgoing President Bush.

Exiting up through the Smithsonian metro station onto the mall proved more chaotic than we anticipated. As we reached the top of the escalators, the crowd in front of us was not moving forward. Smashing up against wall of bodies in front of me, I dared not push back for fear of falling back down the stairs. I pulled out my camera as the police officer to my right called down to a metro operator below to halt the traffic. And this wasn't even the day of Inauguration!

As I scurried down the mall, trying to absorb the few remaining minutes of daylight, I heard children asking their parents questions like do other countries have black presidents? And a group of African American girls reciting every American President they could remember -- not necessarily in chronological order.

And, on the way home, somewhere around the Dupont metro stop, a group of men with expensive video and Nikon cameras were interviewing two young women in front of me. They donned formal gowns, bravely sporting cute black heels -- many local articles have warned against such endeavors. The man said he was interviewing them as part of the Emancipation Project. At least, that's what it sounded like from the back of a crowded train. The girls were on their way to a ball, as I will be tomorrow. What I remembered most about them was how they gave a "holla" out to someone else from LA standing next to them and how they commented about the number of people smiling as they entered the trains. I didn't have the heart to tell them those people were from out of town. Locals usually don't smile here weekdays between 9 am and 5 pm.

I've been down to the National Mall many times since I moved here -- visiting museums, running for exercise, and I was proposed to at the very spot where CNN now televises from. But today's memory of being on the mall made me a part of something bigger than myself. Is that why we all were there? Drawn in by curiosity, will we all stick around for optimism? If I base my answer on the short two years of living here and contrast it against what I saw today, the answer seems to be a resounding yes.