Being on the Caribbean island of Grenada during the recent US presidential election was interesting. There was much talk about potential results in the days leading up to voting day, but when Grenadians would learn my nationality they proceeded cautiously trying to determine whose name I’d be filling in on Nov. 6 with my black ink pen. A local bar had a hermit crab racing night earlier in the week, and the Americans among us couldn’t bear the thought of dubbing the crustacean contenders Mitt and Barack for fear of jinxing the election or buzz killing the chill bar scene with US politics stress. All the Grenadians I spoke to during my stay supported Obama, and most of them seemed just as nervous as people back home were about how things might turn out. What impacts the US impacts them, they said. And when shortly before midnight the cheers erupted from a bar on Grand Anse Beach full of locals of the expat and Grenadian variety, I imagined for a second the same scene playing out in front of countless TVs in thousands of cities and villages in hundreds of countries around the world. Places I’d been, faces I remembered. I’m used to the questions, compliments and complaints that comes with being an American abroad. Ours isn’t exactly a nationality that conjures feelings of neutrality. But on this particular day it felt as good as it did four years ago to be from the USA.