The election party at the US embassy might have been canceled due to recent events, but that didn't keep people Damascus from celebrating on their own.

My housemates and I had a small party on the night of the elections. Less than 10 people showed up. We would have had more guests, but there were so many competing parties all over Damascus that evening.

My friends and I flipped back and forth between BCC and Al Jazeera, anxious to see any sort of results.

At about 1 a.m., we finally gave up, our guests went home, without even knowing if there was anything to celebrate.

My American friend, Rachel, slept over so that she could go straight to her Arabic classes the next morning.

Shortly after we woke up, Rachel turned on the TV. I could hear her from the living room exclaim, "Holy cow!"

I asked, "What's the matter?"

"It looks like Obama won by a landslide!" she yelled.

I jumped out of bed, and joined her in front of the TV.

We were sitting there with an unopened bottle of champagne on the coffee table from the previous night.

It was just 8 a.m., and I asked her, "Do you think it's too early to have champagne?"

"No," she said without hesitation.

After she left, I took the champagne bottle, and brought it to the internet cafe where one of our guests from the previous night works. A Syrian Muslim, he said, " This is my first time having champagne. It's pretty good."

More celebrating...

Last night, I was walking down the street, I ran into a Syrian TV/movie star, whom I know from interviewing him several times for news articles.

As it turned out, we were on our way to the same restaurant (which I use for its wifi).

I joined the actor and a group of his artist friends at a table of about ten people.

This time, the drinks were Lebanese wine and Syrian Arak. We kept on raising our glasses, "to health."

And finally, we all raised our glasses high, and clinked them together, the best reason to say cheers in 8 years: "To Obama!"