U.S. Senator Barack Obama made it official a few weeks ago that he is running for the presidency in 2008.
But he declared his goal of becoming president when he was in grade school in Indonesia more than 35 years ago.
In an interview with VOA's Indonesian Service, Obama's third-grade teacher said he wrote in a class assignment that he wanted to be president. The assignment was called, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Obama, an Illinois senator, is part of a crowded field of Democrats that are already running or have signaled their intention to seek the presidency in 2008.
A conservative U.S. news magazine recently ran a report saying Obama was educated at a madrassa in Indonesia in his youth.
Obama's office issued a statement saying he is a Christian who attended Catholic school in Jakarta, and termed the report "ludicrous."
