First post from Russia

Well, I would have had another post by Saturday had I had access to the internet. As I didn't, I'm going to backlog my entries to avoid overwhelming.

So, now I'm in Russia. My trip was quite chaotic, maybe to make up for the past when I've been pretty fortunate with air travel. I can only remember two incidents. One was when my parents and I missed a domestic flight to Danang because their flight was late, and then the later flight was delayed for hours because of the biggest storm in years. This was only a bit inconvenient and deprived us of some sleep (well, we might have paid for new flights but they were relatively cheap and domestic). The second was when I missed my flight from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City and there were no more flights that day. That was a lot more nerve-wracking because I had nowhere to go, no one I knew, responsibilities for the next day, and low financial reserves. But the worst of this was basically two or three hours of this panicked state.

This time, my troubles began in New York. Although I saw my flight on the board, it wasn't displaying the gate. For nearly three hours I sweated over this troubling fact, but the same thing happened to me at Heathrow so I wasn't desperately worried. Finally at 20 minutes before boarding I asked someone where it was and they told me that I was in the wrong terminal, since the flight was by British Airways and I was in the American Airlines terminal. Okay, then why did they show the flight on the board when all the other flights there were in the American Airlines terminal?

So I ran off and caught a bus. The bus took me somewhere and I just followed a crowd to a familiar sight--the airtrain (I've used it every time I've come to JFK). Apparently the airtrain was out of order, hence the use of buses. I found the bus to take me to the British Airways terminal. Arriving there about 7:35, 25 minutes after my flight left, I went to ticketing and explained my dilemma. The agent understood my trouble as being a result of the airtrain being out of order. She put me on a flight 2.5 hours later than my original, both to London and to Moscow. I wasn't charged. I even got to state my preference of a window seat and was given one in both flights.

But that's not to say that I didn't learn a lesson. As a result of this adventure, I have decided that whenever I make an important decision that I haven't made before, I will carefully examine all the assumptions that I'm making, check for areas of doubt, and make sure I've made every effort to give these assumptions solid basis. That's my goal, anyway.

In New York I knew that I needed to send word to the people in Russia as soon as possible. After going through security again and finding my gate, I only had about thirty minutes before my flight was to board. It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to get internet, which required me to pay for a hotspot. I then filled out a form again for when I was to be picked up, with the later time, and sent it with a brief message noting that I would be a few hours later due to difficulties. I was thrilled from being spared the dreadful fate of paying for another flight, and when I got on board the plane, one of the (male) attendants looked at my ticket and said “Woo, window seat!” I made a similar response, and felt this was a good sign.

In London, as I started going through security I was informed that my flight was delayed. This was quite fortunate because my flight was supposed to stop boarding 75 minutes after I had arrived in London, and it took me about 80 minutes to get through security. Heathrow has 45 minutes of free wireless so I sent another email saying I would be about 90 minutes later.

After a nice flight to Moscow, I had no problem going through immigration. The officer was a cute young woman and when I presented my passport to her, she asked, “is it you?” I nodded and then she asked me to smile (because in my passport I'm smiling). I didn't understand her at first, but then I did, and she thought it was quite funny I guess. Somehow it made me feel good.

I couldn't find anyone waiting for me at the airport, but the flight had landed quite early so I waited around for ten minutes, telling the various taxi drivers who approached that I was waiting for a friend. After about ten minutes one of them came back and asked me questions like “do you have a phone number? Do you have an address? Can you stay in a hotel?” All in Russian, and I was able to answer well enough. After a total waiting time of 30 minutes, I had a cluster of cab drivers around me trying to figure out what they could do to help me. At this point I decided that it might be a good idea to call the school's central office (the only phone number I had). I asked the taxi drivers where I could find a pay phone, but one of them called the number for me. We reached my contact fairly quickly.

Quick background: I've been studying Russian quite intensively for the past month. In Russian, four of the weekdays' names come from numbers. Tuesday is a variation of the word for “second” and Thursday is a variation of the word for “fourth.” This had given me trouble before, because this October the first of the month was actually Tuesday, “second” in Russian. When I sent an updated form to the office in Russia from New York, I had said that I would arrive on the fourth. This was not Thursday, as I probably thought in my frazzled mental state in NY, but Friday. Thus, no one had come to pick me up from the airport.

After some waiting, it was arranged that I would take the offer of one of the taxi drivers to ride to Podol'sk. At long last, I arrived at the teaching center around 9 PM. I met the teachers and administrators who were there and after a while I was taken to my flat. After sleeping for about three hours and trying to sleep for two, I unpacked and cleaned for the next six hours. Then I went to the teaching center again for orientation and observations, which took up my entire afternoon and evening. Friday night I made a short grocery shop, had a little snack, then went to bed. That was my first 24 hours or so in Russia.