President Barack Obama explored his Irish roots on his mother's side today during a trip to Ireland.
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Thousands of well-wishers who waited in pounding rain and hail for as long as three hours, shouts of "Welcome home, Mr. President!" and a pint of Guinness greeted President Obama in his ancestral home of Moneygall this afternoon.Obama and first lady Michelle Obama set down in the tiny hamlet (pop. 296) in County Offaly to greet residents of the town where Obama's great-great-great grandfather was born."I"m so nervous I can't talk," said John Donovan, a shopkeeper, funeral director and farmer who owns Obama's ancestral home (scroll down to the bottom to see Obama's family tree). "We have the place spic-and-span" for the president's visit.Asked if he would serve tea, Donovan told reporters traveling with Obama, "I think he's more interested in a pint."
Indeed, the president and the first lady did lift a pint of Guinness in a Moneygall pub, surrounded by smiling distant kin and other locals. See the raw video above, from the Associated Press.
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Sheryl Huggins Salomon is senior editor-at-large of The Root and a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based editorial consultant. Follow her on Twitter.
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