To Phoenix via Pittsburgh

Today is my daughter’s birthday. She turns 9 today. Out of her 10 birthdays, this is the first one I have missed. I called her yesterday, at 11.30 pm DC time, and it was 8.30 am in Yekat. The time difference is 9 hours. As for jet lag and all, I wasn’t very uncomfortable, really. The secret is to stay awake until the local night comes and then sleep like a log until local morning. I heard that some people can sleep with their eyes open. Very practical!

Now we are at the International Ronald Reagan Airport. Instead of flying to Phoenix, Arizona, we are going to fly to… Pittsburgh. The direct flight was canceled for one reason or other. Ok, we’ll see another American city, or, rather, another American airport. (In fact, we did see Pittsburgh skyscrapers from the plane. What we missed, though, was the famous Pittsburgh incline.) And yes, I have to set my watch 3 hours forward. Now the time difference between me and Yekat is exactly 12 hours.

Security is tough at American airports. Every foreigner is checked twice. Unshaven men, even if they forgot to shave their armpits in the morning, are checked thrice. This is payment for safety. But every time I undress I feel like a striptease dancer at a work place.

Anyway, our interpreter-facilitator-coordinator Michael asked me about my surprises in America, if there were any. Here you are. Surprises include:

1. No easy access to the Internet. I resent the speculative price of $5 per 15 minutes that we were offered at the hotel.

2. I haven’t discovered good coffee here yet. Most of what I have tasted is run-of-the-mill, to say the least. Starbucks coffee is better, and yet, being a cofee junkee, I expected and still expect more. (Coffee in Arizona is much better, I must say!)

3. Absence of cell phone in your pocket means you will have trouble trying to reach your far-away friends and relations. Pay booths are scarce. Selecting a phone card out of scores of options that you are faced with is a rocket science! There are cards that deduce $1 for each connection, there are others that charge, say, 69 cents for each attempt to be connected, still others have specific surcharges in different cities and states. There are charges for the first day of use, for the last day of use, for calling other countries, for not calling other countries, for speaking Russian… Ahhh!!! At times I think they deduce a few cents every time I just think of making a call. The best thing you can do in case you don’t have a cell phone in the US is either to call more rarely but speak longer or to preliminary eliminate all the friends and relatives.