Amid screams of "Obama!" "Yes We Can!" and "Wow!", 18-year-old Questen Benjamin stood in amazement as she witnessed the inauguration of the first African American president of the United States of America.

Benjamin, who is of Jamaican parentage, is a political science major at Ithaca College in New York.

The freshman was invited to witness the historic occasion along with 5,000 other youth leaders from around the globe based on her outstanding academic performance and her exceptional participation at the National Young Leaders Conference.

"It's an event I'll never be able to witness again. No other presidential inauguration will ever be the same or will be able to match this one," Benjamin told The Gleaner by telephone from her home in New York, hours after she returned from Washington, DC.

"All I was thinking was, wow!" she said. "I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it was finally happening."

Packed in the midst of the more than two million who turned out for the event on Tuesday, Benjamin said she was unable to catch a glimpse of Presi-dent Barack Obama while he took his oath of office.

"But that didn't take anything away from the experience," she was quick to point out. "It felt incredible just to be there in Washington on that day," she added.

Benjamin was, however, able to see the president as he made the walk from the Capitol down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.