7 Sivan/20 May, 2010

I listened to some music on the plane, read “Time,” watched a couple of Russian cartoons. They gave us breakfast in the middle of what is a NY night – but I’m adjusting my thinking to adopt to seven hour time change and eating helps, I hope, with jetlag. Or maybe it is the opposite. The landing was a bit rough (my ears hurt), but finally we landed 1:40 local time in Moscow – one hour late. That left two hours to make our connection. The connection was in a different section of the airport about 15 minute-ride away and we had to pick up our luggage first too. So two hours was not a lot of time. And if we missed this connection we would have to wait for many, many hours. This was an adventure. We thought for sure we wouldn’t make it.

But as we got to passport control, a woman called everyone for connection to Minsk to come forward in the line. We got hope that they would wait for us since it appeared there we many people in our situation.

But then waiting for baggage took forever. There was some sort of technical difficulty and again we weren’t sure if we’d make it. The woman was waiting, anxiously, for 10 people, she said. Finally, the bags came and we made our way to a transit bus waiting for us to take us to Terminal B. By that point there were seven of us traveling together. My parents, myself, my Mom’s friend and three others,

We rushed through security five minutes before the plane was supposed to leave (and we got bit of a pat down and questions about what was in the bags to our frustration) and found that the flight was indeed held for us. The drove us on a little shuttle bus into the field and we boarded the plane. We even waited in the plane a bit before taking off around 4pm local time.

When you fly, it feels like forever. I’m so much in the present moment. It is a weird sensation. At least it was a normal one hour flight (and with one hour time difference we arrived in Minsk at the same time we left Moscow).

The grass in Moscow airports was such a Russian grass – my heart was filled with gladness about it. I’m very much American now but a piece of my soul, if I can resort to such a cliché, is still Russian.

Short customs and fast luggage collection and then we were hugging Aunt Vera and Uncle Tolya who picked us up in a van. Driving on the highway into the city I kept looking at our flat Belarusian land with many trees.

First impressions: A lot of new construction with buildings painted in bright colors. I forgot how spacious the streets are. I didn’t recognize a lot because of all new buildings.

Sasha was at home and it was great to see him. (He is Aunt Vera’s and Uncle Tolya’s younger child, and he is six month older than me. We grew up together. Aunt Vera is my Mom’s sister.) We had some food. Mama unpacked and gave everyone their presents.

Since there isn’t hot water at my Aunt’s apartment right now (periodically the city shuts down hot water for maybe two weeks to test the pipes, which threw us right into ‘nostalgia’ phase), Sasha drove us to the apartment he is staying in for the next two weeks – he lives with my Aunt and Uncle but my parents are in that room now, I’m in the living room on a new foldable couch (my relatives have nice new furniture and new renovations on their apartment, it looks really nice) – so that we could take a nice hot shower after the plane. It was a great shower.

When Sasha drove us back, he drove us to our old apartment building – no renovations there yet, they are just beginning, it looks really old and run down.







I was trying to call Sveta all day – no luck at her house phone.

Called Bear on Skype, checked email and went to sleep at ten or so.