Arrival

My sec­ond trip to the chil­dren began on May 28, 2015. The chil­dren asked me to fly over dur­ing the sum­mer hol­i­days so that they would have some­one to leave the child with while they were at work.

My flight went well. I was very wor­ried that I had short time inter­vals between flights and was afraid that some plane would be delayed, and I would be late for a trans­fer. The plane depart­ed from Ros­tov to Moscow at 6:50 am, fly­ing for 2 hours. My friend accom­pa­nied me in the car. In Moscow, I quick­ly passed pass­port con­trol, cus­toms con­trol, and at 12 noon the plane left Moscow for Los Ange­les. By the way, I did­n’t get my bag­gage in Moscow, since I flew with the same com­pa­ny — Aeroflot, then my bag­gage was checked out in Ros­tov direct­ly to Los Ange­les. The flight last­ed 12 hours and 20 min­utes, and the dis­tance was 11,000 km. Dur­ing the flight I watched two films. All seat­backs are equipped with TVs, where you can choose a movie or pro­gram, or fol­low the flight map. Twice fed, it should be not­ed that Aeroflot feeds well. Between din­ners they offer drinks, water, and at lunch they even offer wine for those who want.

I will write what struck me on the trip — this is the atti­tude of Amer­i­cans to luggage.

We arrived in LA Moscow time at 12:20 at night, but giv­en the ten-hour time dif­fer­ence, Cal­i­for­nia time, we arrived at 14:20 in the after­noon. In Rus­sia, it has already begun on May 24, and here it was still Sat­ur­day the 23^rd. I went through pass­port con­trol again, got my lug­gage and went out to the “out­side”, where my son-in-law had already met me. Three hours lat­er we had the next plane to Phoenix. This flight was the short­est in time — only one hour. Hav­ing received the lug­gage, we went to the park­ing lot where the car was parked and after a while we were at home at the place, where we were met by my daugh­ter and grand­son and a fes­tive din­ner with a cake. My grand­son was very hap­py with my arrival, it seemed to me much more than last time. On my first vis­it, he was more restrained at first and was a lit­tle embar­rassed, but this time he did not leave me a sin­gle step and was ready to replay all the games on the very first day.

I will write what struck me dur­ing the trip — this is the atti­tude of Amer­i­cans to lug­gage. In Ros­tov, suit­cas­es with­out locks are packed in poly­eth­yl­ene; at check-in, a tag with a num­ber is attached to them, which is ver­i­fied by an air­port employ­ee upon receipt of lug­gage. I have nev­er seen a sin­gle packed suit­case in Amer­i­ca. When check­ing in for a flight to Phoenix, they took our suit­case from us, marked it on our com­put­er and did not give us any paper. Upon arrival in Phoenix, we came to the bag­gage claim hall, there were about ten carousels on which the suit­cas­es were spin­ning. Peo­ple approached the carousel where their flight num­ber was on the board, found their suit­cas­es and left. A sim­i­lar pic­ture was when receiv­ing lug­gage in Los Ange­les. The only thing is that my chil­dren warned me, and I attached a spe­cial tag to my suit­case, on which their address was writ­ten, when I flew home last time — they wrote my address.

On the lake.

I arrived on Sat­ur­day, May 23, and on Mon­day, May 25, there was Memo­r­i­al Day in the USA. It is a nation­al day of remem­brance, which is observed every year on the last Mon­day of May. This hol­i­day com­mem­o­rates all those who died in all wars. There­fore, the day was non-work­ing, and it was planned to spend it with friends in nature. After about one hour by car, we found our­selves on the lake, which is locat­ed among the moun­tains with cac­ti. Before enter­ing the lake, you had to buy a pass, i.e. tick­et for $6 per car. There are car parks by the lake, rotun­das with tables, bench­es and a grill where you can fry meat are locat­ed near the shore. We were five fam­i­lies. Each fam­i­ly arrived with store-bought char­coal, meat, oth­er gro­ceries, and extra fold­ing chairs. The men roast­ed the meat, the women set the table, the chil­dren swam in the lake. The weath­er was very good, about 30 – 32 degrees, but every­one warned me that it was not hot yet, and in a week it would be up to 40 degrees and more.

Well, it’s been a week now. It has become much hot­ter, 37 in the shade, but it seems to me that we, peo­ple accus­tomed to the Ros­tov heat, can live.