Back in the U.S.S.R. -- almost ;)

I had a ticket on a flight that was to leave Richmond, Va., at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan 19. Supposedly, it would get to JFK in New York around 3:30 -- giving me plenty of time to find the gate for the 5:20 direct flight to Kiev. According to the schedule, the JFK flight would land shortly after 10 a.m. at the Borispol airport just outside Ukraine's capital.

My itinerary assumed that the planes would be on time. However, the flight out of Richmond was delayed 90 minutes. We sat on the runway because the plane had too much fuel, and thus too much weight, and there weren't any empty fuel trucks that could offload the excess fuel. Eventually, a thirsty plane arrived, relieving us of enough fuel that we could take off.

I didn't arrived at JFK until 4:55. I could hear the "last boarding" announcement for the flight to Kiev, which was at a gate on the other side of the airport. I ran through the hallways, barely made my flight and prayed that my luggage caught up with me (it did).

The flight out of JFK left right on time and arrived an hour earlier than scheduled in Kiev -- at about 9:30 on Saturday morning. I cleared passport control, got my luggage, then got through customs, then met up with Aleksey, who was standing outside the arrival gauntlet:



I've got more pictures posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffrey.south

Unfortunately, nowhere on the plane or at the Kiev airport did I see Selma. Turns out she had much worse luck than I did. Her flight from Boston was delayed, so she missed the JFK-Kiev flight. Aleksey and I (and Aleksey's friend, Misha) hung around the airport, figuring Selma would arrive on a later flight. She did, at around 3 p.m., on a plane from Paris.

The wait give me a chance to study Ukrainian culture. Some observations: I think the smoking rules here were written by Philip Morris. The cafe in the airport was a cloud of tar and nicotine; you were smoking whether you wanted to or not. Another observation: The temperature was just a few degrees above zero, but that doesn't stop Ukrainians from enjoying ... ice cream. The airport's Tastee Freeze stand was doing brisk business, as we were, uh, cooling our heels (chilling out?) waiting for Selma's plane.

We did take a break -- retreating to Aleksey's car for sandwiches. While I sat in the back seat, I took the opportunity to practice random sentences from my Russian phrasebook, such as:

Min-ya tash-nit -- "I'm going to throw up!"

Ya pi-ri-a-di-va-yus -- "I'm not decent!"

And: Ru-ki ko-rat-ki -- which literally means "Your hands are too short" but which the book curiously says is an idiom for "You've got no hope in hell!" I'm not quite sure how short hands translate into eternal damnation. But Misha found this somewhat amusing.