« Classes done, bags packed |
Back to the States
Whew, what a day. The last two days I've had virtually no sleep. The institute's bus picked me up at 12:30 a.m to take me to the institute. There we picked up the first group of departing students and headed to the airport. At the airport everything went smoothly, and we all headed to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. Decent food.
The flight to Istanbul was fine. Sitting in the seat, I contemplated the screen in front of me (on the back of the seat in front of me) which showed our upcoming flight. Hm. It indicated that we would fly right over the eastern portion of the Ukraine on a Great Circle flight that would take us neatly between Luhansk and Donetsk, i.e. right over the area of conflict that resulted in the destruction of a Malaysian aircraft. Charming. Still, decent food.
But when push came to shove, we headed south before we reached the border of the Ukraine, then diagonally SW across the Black Sea, eventually to Istanbul, avoiding the contested regions.
In Istanbul I transferred to a flight to Frankfurt. In F I had two Pferdeapfel and potato salad. Very tasty. Then I transferred to United/Lufthansa to Dulles. Good flight. When Lufthansa is responsible for a flight, it's a hell of a lot nicer than United.
At Dulles I transferred to a Phoenix flight. That went well, too.
In Phoenix I met four of our returning Batumi students. Damn, they were all incredibly positive toward the program there, even though the program itself was a result of last minute changes. I attribute this to several things:
- The professionalism of our teachers, brought in from Kiev from Nova Mova, a company I would recommend to anyone for language study.
- The professionalism of our resident directors, Ryan and Lila, who did a great job overseeing things.
- The professionalism of our ASU CLI director, Kathleen, who back in April made all athe necessary changes in the program to meet last minute changes required by our sponsors.
Y'know, in life sometimes one encounters complete incompetents who can't do a damn thing to make things work right. I have to say, I'm privileged to know dozens of people who do not apply to that class. Kathleen has always been one of those, Ryan and Lila have proven themselves to be of the same ilk, and we already knew that the Nova Mova folk were of that class.
I finally arrived in Phoenix. I had left my apartment in Kazan at 12:30 am. on the 16th, and I arrived at my mother's place at 9:30 p.m. on the same date. By the clock that is 21 hours, but you have to consider that there is an 11 hour time difference, so the real time is 32 hours of travel. I was freakin' exhausted,
At my mother's home aunt Steph was visiting. She is one of my favority people on the planet. We both overnighted with my mother. We chatted up a storm both evening and morning. Awesome. Steph has mad people skills, so I always learn something from her.
Bed time. Znxxxx.
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