My fourth trip to visit my children

Arrival

The plane from Moscow to Los Ange­les took off at 11:30. In gen­er­al, it flew well and was not very tir­ing, the only thing that struck me was the Amer­i­can customs.

When the plane land­ed, we all lined up in the aisles, and start­ed to get out, sud­den­ly they announced, that we take our places for cus­toms con­trol (this has nev­er hap­pened). Two offi­cers entered and brought out a young man of non-Slav­ic appear­ance. Then we were told to go out and present our pass­ports for ver­i­fi­ca­tion right in the sleeve of the plane. Two more of the same peo­ple were tak­en out, and then all the remain­ing pas­sen­gers left with­out pre­sent­ing documents.

…and I under­stood what this let­ter “A” meant

After that there was the usu­al pass­port con­trol with fin­ger­prints, eye scans. For some rea­son, at this con­trol, the cus­toms offi­cer looked at me so intent­ly, scrolled through the entire pass­port, looked at it under a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, began to ask what I was tak­ing, but since I could not real­ly tell, he put a visa in my pass­port with the date of stay, and on my dec­la­ra­tion the let­ter “A” and released. When I got my lug­gage and start­ed to leave, I was turned in for an addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty check, and I under­stood what that “A” meant. Things went through the xray and they let me go out in peace. But there was also a check­point “B” where some peo­ple were forced to open their luggage.

Usu­al­ly, Levy met me at the LA air­port and then we flew togeth­er, but this time we agreed that I would fly to Phoenix myself. I loaded my things onto a cart and drove to anoth­er South­west Air­lines ter­mi­nal. Every­thing has gone like clock­work here. They helped me very kind­ly to check in my lug­gage, loaded it, I went through the pre-flight inspec­tion and stayed to wait for the plane.

Domes­tic air­lines in Amer­i­ca work like our inter­ci­ty bus­es: 20 min­utes before depar­ture, the plane approached, 10 min­utes before every­one board­ed, exact­ly at the appoint­ed time the plane took off and land­ed at the appoint­ed time. More­over, on South­west Air­lines, the seat num­bers on the plane are not indi­cat­ed, but they enter and sit in the seats they want, but the entrance is car­ried out strict­ly by the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber, which starts 24 hours before via the Inter­net. Before enter­ing the plane, every­one lines up near the coun­ters with the cor­re­spond­ing check-in number.

In a word, I got there, met, every­thing is fine. The weath­er is great, 12 degrees in the morn­ing, and 23 – 25 in the after­noon, every­one wears T‑shirts. True, the grand­son fell ill and did not go to school for three days (a virus going around at school). His tem­per­a­ture was over 38 degrees, but his par­ents read that lots of flu­ids and some time are the same if not bet­ter at low­er­ing a fever. After three days every­thing was gone. And from March 5, they have holidays.