From Las Cruces to Vladimir

Mom said, “Isn’t it easier to go to Russia from Korea without returning to the States? The route I took to Russia was odd. I did some work in Korea, and then I had to return to the US to meet with a group of folks in the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, and then I would go back to Miami, just for two days before heading to Russia to conduct a workshop.

On my way from Korea to the Navajo Nation, I stopped in Las Cruces, New Mexico to see my parents. I spent four days there recuperating from the negotiations of doing a self-propelled project in Seoul and other parts of Korea, as well as jet lag. Dad had arranged for me to use his pick up truck to drive to the Navajo Nation, where I was to have meetings for a task force I’m on for my professional organization, International TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). In my travel planning, I intended to meet fellow task force member Natalie in Albuquerque with the pick up and drive to Acoma Pueblo and enjoy the unique artwork the people there are so famous for before heading on to Chinle, Arizona, where our meetings were going to be held.

When I arrived in Las Cruces to see my folks, there wasn’t a pick up in the garage. Rather, there was a 1990 Toyota. A car! And it was one similar to the 1990 Toyota I drive in Miami. Dad, for some reason, was sick of his pick up. In a conversation with one of his golfing buddies in Las Cruces, he and the friend discovered something interesting. Dad was sick of his pick up and wanted a good old Toyota similar to the one I have been having such success with. His golfing buddy was sick of his Toyota and expressed that he would just love to have a pick up—not anything fancy but something that he could more easily carry stuff in. So, they did a blue book value check on the internet and found that the vehicles were worth just about the same amount of money. As a result, they said to one another, “Wanna trade?” It would be simple, right? All they’d have to do would be to sign the titles over to one another. Mom didn’t think this was such a good idea. She thought the pick up was a perfectly good vehicle. They’d never had any trouble with it. But Dad was sick of it, it was his car, and he wanted to trade, so that’s what happened.

The Tuesday before I was to drive to the Navajo Nation, Dad asked Mom and me if we wanted to take the Toyota for a spin. Dad had always asked me to do a test drive of such vehicles before long drives just so I could get the hang of it. He also wanted to show me some new neighborhoods in Las Cruces. Actually, I usually hate going to the new neighborhoods to see the new houses, but this time, it seemed like a fun thing to do. The sun was bright, it was breezy, and I wanted to have an outing with folks, regardless of whether it was to a coffee shop, out hiking, or on a drive to new neighborhoods. So Dad gave me the keys and off we went.

We saw a new golf course and daydreamed about the contour of the desert as we contemplated where it would be fun to build a house with a nice view of the mountains. It seemed with the rolling nature of the desert in the mountain foothills that the possibilities for a nice place to build were endless. I wanted to see the construction on the new freeway and interstate intersection that was being done, much to my mother’s groaning. Dad thought it was a good idea, so we drove to the north part of the city. As I drove under and underpass, Dad said that the air conditioning seemed to be getting hotter. He then played with air conditioning controls. When he turned the air conditioner off, the car also turned off, and we were stuck at a red light in a major intersection. The car would not restart. The hazard lights wouldn’t even come on. So, Dad and I got out of the car, turned the steering wheel to the right, and started pushing the car up a hill. Mom sat expressionless in the back seat. It was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside, so it wasn’t exactly comfortable push the car up the hill weather. We finally saw a parking lot at a grocery store on the left, but pushing the car that direction would entail letting it roll across four lanes of traffic. I was against it, but Dad said it wouldn’t be bad. He was right. No cars came at all, and he successfully parked the car at the grocery store. Dad went and called his friends Barbara and Carroll. Barbara was in fact my first grade teacher. Mom and I went through the grocery store and bought drinks while we waited for Barbara and Carroll to show up. They did, wearing sheets of white paper safety-pinned to their fronts. The paper said, “AAA” (referring to the American Auto Association). They also brought beer.

Carroll successfully started the car, and we drove to an auto parts store down the street where we could test the battery. Carroll, being the trusty elegant Texan man that he is, had a barrel full of tools, so extracting the battery was no problem. However, after battery testing, Carroll and Dad returned puzzled since the auto parts people said that the battery was fine. As a result, we replaced it, and sure enough, the car started on its own. Dad invited Barbara and Carroll over for a gin and tonic, and they accepted. They followed us toward the house, but 100 yards from home, the car died again. Barbara, Mom, and I walked back to the house while Dad and Carroll re-jump-started the car.

Dad and I took the car into a repair shop the next morning. It was one that his golfing partner had suggested, principally since it was the same guy who had worked on the car before. Dad and I both felt skeptical about going to a new mechanic, but our fears were somewhat alleviated by the signs, “Please don’t swear in the shop,” and the set of bible verse cassettes next to cash register. We laughed that our own lack of religion didn’t stop us from feeling better about that.

The mechanic worked on the car and said it was good to go to Arizona. Dad took it out on the road. Two hours later, Dad walked into the house, sweating and gasping for air. He had walked back two miles in the desert heat because the car had quit again. Dad felt bad and said he would pay for a rental car for me to drive to the Navajo Nation. Mom gloated. I said, “Mom, don’t give him a hard time. He feels bad.” I even told Dad that he didn’t have to pay for the rental car because that was my initial plan anyway. Still, he insisted. But Mom continued to stick her tongue out and say, “I told him this would happen, so he deserves it.” Mom asked if Dad was going to tell his golfing partner, and he said he wasn’t going to. A deal is a deal, and the car would have died all the same if his partner had it that Tuesday, he explained.

But Carroll told the golfing partner! So the next morning, Dad went to play golf, and the partner and his wife were there. The wife put her arms around Dad, giving him a great big hug, and said, “I hope we’re still friends. What on Earth shall we do?” Dad said, “Nothing! That’s how this works!”

So I went to the Navajo Nation, not in a Toyota, but in a Hyundai—a Korean car.

When I returned to Las Cruces, Dad had a 1999 Nissan in the garage. The mechanic said that the wiring was a labyrinth he had never seen before, and he wasn’t sure what was attached to what. One thing was for sure! It seemed that the motor was connected to the air conditioner. According to the mechanic, however long it worked, it was an absolute miracle. Dad decided to take the loss and just buy a new car.

In the Navajo Nation, I met with the task force I enjoy so much. I have been working these two years on a task force designed by International TESOL, my professional organization, on a set of standards that university programs can follow in order to help student teachers achieve a quality background as they embark on careers in teaching English to children. It’s the best work I do. I love working with the best people in the field in understanding what the science says about teaching language, and how we can best help people to acquire skills so that they teach well. To share that conversation for six to ten hours a day with the best is to experience the highest of highs in my profession. It appeals to the complete nerd side of my persona, the reason I got a PhD in the this field as opposed to something else, the reason I love my job when I wake up in the morning, the reason I feel like I’m doing something productive and positive with my life. And to share this conversation with the other people on this task force, people who I would die for, makes my life complete. At a lunch with my mother and her friends in Las Cruces, just a couple of days ahead of these meetings, one woman called Mary Lou asked me if I could be doing anything in the world, what I would choose. The answer is this: working on this task force!

First, the set of people like to do fun things and talk about teaching language at the same time. I met Natalie, a professor at San Diego State in Albuquerque. From there we drove to Dairy Queen after Dairy Queen in search of the perfect root beer freeze. However, root beer freezes were secondary to the need to find the perfect Acoma pot. We drove south off Interstate highway 40, the old US 66, to a sandstone mesa dotted with laurel colored agave and sage. We signed up for a tour of the pueblo and talked to some of the people. The man who gave us our tour, Orlando, was one of the thirty people who live in and maintain Acoma. He was proud of his town. As bilingual educators, we were delighted to find out that Orlando was a teacher of the public school for Acoma; in fact, he taught history. He taught it bilingually, in English and Acoma, and taught Acoma in the oral traditions of his culture. It’s an oral tradition, not one to be written down, and one in which the time of the year in which it’s told is important. Natalie had had similar experience in teaching a bicultural course at the University of Arizona on Papago history, and she insisted on non-book learning and only stories that could be told between September and December, as that was when the course was being taught. I marvel to this day at oral literacy for I understand it to be a skill I have very little of. I have depended on the transfer of information based on written materials for my entire life. To achieve a skill or attention to and then exact retelling of history in an oral-cerebral manner is to work in a model with which I don’t understand but highly respect. The practice involved in developing oral literacy must be as deep and difficult, if not more so, than reading. I wonder to what extent majority US children would benefit from our introducing such recounting of history, using oral literacy. I imagine it would hone their memorization and critical thinking skills.

On Acoma mesa, we met an artist. She was of Acoma descent, but had grown up in Idaho Falls, Idaho and received a Master’s degree in ceramics at UCLA. She didn’t grow up in Acoma, but she felt such pride and enjoyment by the style and history of Acoma. She seemed pleased with her place in the town. It’s interesting to think of a woman who has seen so much of the US and has been so educated who would be willing to give up electricity and running water to move to the town of her heritage and be an active participant in its art and history, to be shared happily with anyone who is willing to listen some. Natalie and I were certainly willing to listen. The tour with Orlando left us behind as we chatted with the woman.

Natalie and I drove to Chinle where we were to meet with the other TESOLers. We eventually linked up at a hotel at 9:00 pm. It’s quite a long day’s travel for anyone to get to Chinle for it’s at least a four-hour drive from the airport. There, we met with the rest of the crew, all people happy to have made the trip to such a unique place in the world. Our hostess was one of the task force members. Beth and her husband have been teaching on the Navajo Nation for 25 years, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. The town has a population of about 2500, and borders the outer limits of Canyon de Chelly National Monument. The monument is in fact a surprise 1000-foot deep ditch that cracks the high desert. Russian olive trees and a small creek mark the bottom of the canyon. One afternoon, one task force member Keith and I made the trek to the bottom—a hike of about an hour or so each way. The dark red sandstone and the sunset make for a cherishable area of Anistasi history. Canyon de Chelly is one of great sites of Anistasi history which pepper the US Southwest. If you’re into the anthropological history of the western North America, it’s worth the hard driving involved in getting to any of these places: Bandelier, Chaco Canyon, and the Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico, Mesa Verde in Colorado, Hovenweep in Utah, Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, and Nuevas Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, Mexico.

We worked hard at Chinle Elementary School, going from 9 to 5 each of three days. We played hard after work. We drove to Monument Valley in Utah one night, including a big dinner. I had green chile stew. We also stopped in the Burger King in the town of Kayenta so we could look at the owner’s tribute display in honor of the Navajo Code Writers from World War II. It’s by far the most interesting Burger King in the world. One other night, we drove to a friend of Beth’s to have Navajo dinner and listen to Navajo oral history. We ate three different kinds of corn bread and a pudding of pinon pine and other forest flavors. We listened for several hours in a Navajo hogan to the anecdotes of this fine man—his life in this small town in Arizona, his teaching of Navajo to his son, his education in Santa Fe and the East Coast, his willingness to have two parallel belief systems between Navajo and majority US culture while acknowledging the benefits and drawbacks to each. He was a true bilingual advocate and educator, and in my mind he had a firm grasp of why bilingualism and biculturalism works—being able to marvel and work with the best of both worlds and give appropriate attention to the positive aspects of any culture he meets. I marveled at this story-telling ability, as all of us were transfixed to him as a center of attention for three hours. He told us of how he learned the name others in his community gave to him. Apparently, many Navajo people have a name they never know in addition to the one they are called by their families and the one that represents their clan. His name meant that foreigners were drawn to him. Considering there were eight TESOLers in his hogan that evening, I see why he received that name. But he himself was a TESOLer, too, since he taught in a bilingual school on the reservation. What a colleague! I would never have traded these experiences.

And to share this part of the world with these fine educators: I consider that one of the greatest honors I’ve ever known, to share my spiritual center with some of the people I most respect and enjoy. The people on this task force are the people I was thinking of when I was studying for my PhD. They want to travel, they want to learn words, they want to laugh, and they want to meet every kind of person imaginable. As I work with them, I learn ways to work effectively with other people. They are severe critics, but in two years work with them, I have never felt put down during any disagreement. They have confidence in their intelligence and their abilities, but they would never tell you so.

The people on this task force stand in stark contrast to many people I work with at my university. Don’t get me wrong! I enjoy my work there, and I really like just about everyone. But with the task force, we get things done, and we have a good time getting things done. At the university, it’s a case of too many PhDs spoil the broth. At large university meetings, each of 60 doctors has an opinion and the expression of that opinion is buttered with the pride of the intelligence and critical thinking behind that opinion, to the extent that the expression of that pride seems even more important to the speaker than the opinion or idea itself. All of this is fine, so long as things get done, and in many cases, things end up argued to death, meetings last an eternity, and no solutions are agreed upon. With the task force, I work with people who have equal confidence and critical thinking, but it has as its foundation a sense of humility. With the task force, people have no fear of saying, “Oh, I see your point,” or “Oh, I have to rethink that.” At my university, I have been warned, “Don’t be so fast to admit your mistakes.” I love the people on the task force, and now I was sharing the core of my life with them, and it made me cry to know that they wanted to know about it.

It is in this region of the world where I feel most at home: northern New Mexico, southern Utah, northeastern Arizona. If I drive up a large hill, perhaps to find a view at a top of a sandstone mesa, to look out over pastel rainbow colors designed by desert, small washes, sagebrush, quail and coyotes, to enjoy the taste of green chile, to feel the fresh cool wind race through my hair and chap my ears, to have the sun go down and glow butter yellow and shadow Fanta grape purple, to look at indigo mountains over 100 miles away, to see a storm brush its rainstreaks at a distance and have its lightning reflect orange rather than white because the sundown echoes its drama, to have the sand crumble under my shoes as I walk to the vista, and to know that I can be the only person for a 40-mile radius, that is God for me. I say “that is God for me” in the name of Marcel, the guide who took me to the glacier at 16,000 feet on Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador. As we walked on the snow and ice during my 1997 visit, and as I looked at a 45-degree angle to the valley floor 4000 feet below and the 20-foot long stalactite icicles above me, Marcel said, “Para mi, este es Dios porque yo puedo mover y yo puedo caer, y no me importa porque estoy con Dios.” For me, this is God because I can move and I can fall, and it doesn’t matter because I’m with God. As I walked along the glacier, I stopped because I was scared, and Marcel said, “Eric, si tienes miedo, te vas a caer. Si no tienes miedo, no te vas a caer.” Eric if you’re scared, you will fall. If you’re not scared, you won’t fall. And suddenly, I felt calm and I walked up and down the glacier as Marcel showed me. And then he told me that Mount Cotopaxi for him was God. And I understand. For Marcel, it is on the slanting ice of Cotopaxi where life and death draw their lines and to approach those lines is OK. For me, it is the desert of the Intermountain West where I feel home and feel the spirit of the Earth. I suppose I was a bit jealous of the artist on top of Acoma Pueblo. She went back to her roots and has made it a permanence, and I live in an urban art deco neighborhood on a flat palm treed peninsula. I don’t feel roots in my family or in my inner city apartment. My family can reside anywhere, and I will follow them. Palm trees and warm weather in the wintertime do nothing for me, at least as far as experiencing connection to heaven. But my soul? I feel my soul in dry land and in higher altitude. And for me, that is God; that is spirituality; that is link to art and language; that is my home; that is where the line separating life and death is at its most pleasant. Oh, I need to be living in Florida these days; it’s a good job, and it’s a necessary job that someone like me needs to do. It’s correct for me to be there. But once a year or so, I need to climb a mountain or a mesa in New Mexico. And should I die, that’s where I need to be.

My plane out of Miami was scheduled to leave at 5:30 pm, so I started packing around 9:00. Most of it was done already since I hadn’t really changed my suitcase since my trip to Korea, New Mexico, and the Navajo Nation. I had to check my plane tickets. They were there. Then I checked the inside lapel pocket of my suitcase for my passport. It wasn’t there. I was astonished, and I started feeling up and down the stretches of my suitcoat. I was absolutely positive that I had put it there. I even used it in the El Paso airport as my ID. Then I had used it to get through security there at that airport. In my mind, I thought I put it back in my suit pocket. I even remember feeling it when I rechecking my things in Dallas, but I didn’t physically put my fingers in the pocket and pull out a passport. In other words, it could have just been my envelope of plane tickets, and not the passport, and I just thought it was the passport.

The feeling of panic I felt was like none I’d ever felt before. I thought I couldn’t make the trip. I suddenly felt like months of planning had been vanquished in one instant. I felt like God had told me that I wasn’t supposed to go to Russia or even any little part of the trip at all. I felt that I would be trapped in Miami for the summer with no place to go. I felt I would endure the heat and the allergies of July I had planned to escape. I felt stupid. How could I lose such an important piece of the puzzle? I even followed my father’s advice and placed the passport in the one place I would remember it, in the place he advocates and the place he always tells me to put it. I even wore the suitcoat for that very reason. And I placed it in that place that is so well-known in the conversations of my family—so I thought. And now it was gone, and so was the trip.

Well, the needles of initial reaction are gruesome, but they do subside, especially with the help of friends and kind people. An Ecuadorian lad called Angelo was taking care of my apartment for the three month period. He had been in my place since the beginning of my trip to Korea. He was lying on a futon, trying not to say anything. He actually succeeded. He said nothing. Instead, he got up, made a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, and he handed it to me. He said, “Have breakfast!” Somehow, I felt it the perfect thing. I didn’t have an appetite, but I knew that I wouldn’t make it through the day without some food.

I called the airports across the country—in El Paso, in Dallas, and in Miami. I searched my suitcases and turned the apartment upside down. I continually returned to the suitcoat where I thought it was. I felt so vexed that it wasn’t there. In my mind, if it wasn’t there, it wasn’t anywhere. After spending two hours on the phone and going back and forth from suitcoat to suitcase, I decided to lick my wounds and call the passport office. I only got recordings, but I was relieved to find that there was indeed a passport office in Miami. What a stroke of luck! I also had a copy of my old passport paper clipped to my Russian visa in my closet. Since I didn’t have my birth certificate, that would be my only means for proving my citizenship.

I went down to the passport office in hopes that they could do something for me that moment. The line wasn’t long, but I was told I couldn’t get anything completed until Monday and that I could only make an appointment for working the new passport on Friday. As a result, I had to miss my plane. I then drove to the airport to contact Air France. Usually it pays to go directly to the airport, but in this case, the Air France official asked me to call the toll free number to make the arrangements. I would be able to leave on the following Wednesday.

I sent an email and fax to Nina, and I tried to call the American Home in Russia. Somebody answered the phone, but they didn’t say “Amerikansky Dom.” I heard mumbling. I asked for Nina, but I just heard mumbling. Finally, after about a minute, I decided to hang up.

I called Pat, and we decided to meet for breakfast the next morning. When I woke up, I immediately checked my email. It was 8:30 Miami time, just the time I was to arrive in Moscow. However, when I checked my email, I hadn’t received any message from Nina at all. I panicked again. Did she and her cohorts drive all the way to Moscow to retrieve me? I couldn’t tell. I called Air France in Moscow to leave a message. Then I wrote another email. I CCed it to Nina and other colleagues there in hopes that they’d get the message. There was nothing else to do. I decided to go swimming at the FIU pool.

In some way, I was relieved by all this. Sure, I didn’t want to spend the penalty money, but as I did my work at the office on the Wednesday before my scheduled flight, I continued to say to myself, “Gosh, if I only had three more days, I would really love to delay this trip.” Well, God, or perhaps my suitcoat, did it for me. (Maybe God is my suitcoat!) Now I had time to do a good job on my report about Korea. I had time to buy another electric adapter from Radio Shack. Life all of the sudden seemed simpler. More expensive, but simpler! I could drink more coffee at Joffrey’s, my favorite hang out coffee shop on Lincoln Road on Miami Beach. I could buy the appropriate gifts I hadn’t yet bought for the people hosting me in Russia. I could give deeper thought to what I was going to do for my workshop in Russia.

And in one way, I didn’t want to go to Russia at all. I wanted to stay home and watch the French Open Tennis championship on TV. I wanted to write. I wanted to work out and get into the shape I lost in Korea and the Navajo Nation from eating all the Korean sweets and the Navajo fry bread. And quite simply, I did not want to go to Russia. One person told me I would lose 20 pounds from not eating. Another person told me the food would make me sick. Another person told me to take a flashlight through Serementyevo Airport because it would be so dark. My uncle told me to remember that the Russians had ruined the world for 50 years. Others said it sounded bleak and sad. Others said the poverty would be devastating. When I told Pat that I was worried that my passport would have a new number on it, one different from the one printed on my Russian visa, she said, “Oh, fuck!” She said I should call the Russian embassy in Washington, but I decided against it. I knew what the answer would be. They’d want me to get a whole new visa in split second time. The first one cost me $375 through Perry International in Chicago (don’t go through them ever!), and I decided that plan B was not to avoid going to Russia but to get to Moscow and then have Air France or Olympic Airways get me to another place if the officials wouldn’t let me in. I decided they would just have to deal with me, simply because I knew that doing so was not going to cost me another $400. At worst, it would cost me a new on-the-spot visa in Moscow, maybe as much as $250 or a change in my ticket to Athens which might be $75. So, I decided to just get on the plane.

It’s weird because I had never listened to such schlock before my travels, but I was listening this time. Somehow, since it wasn’t Africa, Asia, or Latin America, going to Russia sounded just so evil. I started remembering how in junior high school we had field trips to our fallout shelters where there were old barrels of water and stale boxes of crackers deep in the dregs of the junior high, all for fear of nuclear war with the Soviets. In my mind, I told myself that this was all irrelevant, just as such conversation about other countries had been in the past—just as I scoffed at my friends who disapprovingly said of my trip to Tanzania, “Oh, American’s vacation-land!” I simply do not believe that today’s 10-year-olds have anything to do with the sadnesses of the past, or even that many of the kind adults that directly experienced that history do, either. The world is intrinsically kind, I have come to find out in 20 years of travel over five continents, but many people simply do not know this, or they refuse to acknowledge it, perhaps because it always makes their own home look better. I angrily refused to sign a petition in Seoul, stating that the Japanese government had to apologize to Korea yet again for the atrocities of the first half of the 20^th century, simply because all my friends in Japan, and I do mean all, say they think their government was wrong to do so and that such should be taught to their children. Additionally, Japan has apologized and apologized for its ancestors to the point of its being sickeningly sweet. What more do the Koreans want? And the same can be said for any people who understand its own historical misdeeds. Two years ago, on a plane from Bangladesh to Nepal, Alice and I had to defend Texas as a decent place to live to an Austrian woman who considered all of Texas evil because of the dragging death of a black man. Somehow, according to the Austrian woman, we were all responsible. And I know of no US citizen who believes that what European-Americans did to American Indians in the 19^th century was correct. It is, in my opinion, appropriately described as a horror committed against humanity by ancestors—a crime that has taken more than 100 years to cool. So, I simply did not think that the people I would be meeting in Vladimir, Russia, namely children and other English teachers had a whole hell of a lot to do with gulags or military policy. They simply lived with it, regardless of their opinions, simply because they were born there.

And still I was scared.

Getting the passport was easy. The people at the passport office were nice, though it was somewhat eerie to pick up the passport at the Federal Building on the day that Timothy McVeigh was executed. There were police officers everywhere. Blockades were set up in front of the Miami Federal Building for blocks and blocks. No one was allowed to drive in front of the building and no one was allowed to park within several blocks of the building. I had about a six-block journey from my parking place, and when I entered the building and went through the x-ray, the officers told me that I had a disposable camera in my bag that would not be permitted in the building. They asked me to return to it my car, and I said I would be glad to do so. I returned without the bag, stood in line, and I had my passport in 15 minutes. The number on it was different, but there was a statement that it was a replacement for a lost passport on the back cover. I went to Kinko’s and made a copy of it straight away.

I received an email from Nina, saying that she received my message on their mobile phone as they arrived at Sherementyevo. I felt bad.

So the day came that I was to fly to Moscow. I had booked a seat at the last minute, so I didn’t have my usual choice of aisle or window, and I was placed in the middle of a packed plane to Paris. Fortunately, the woman in the aisle was very short, and she volunteered to give me her seat. She slept comfortably the whole flight. I worked on my articles and graded a student’s exam. The flight to Moscow was nice. I had a seat next to me that was empty, and the plane was barely half full. It was only a little more than three hours from Paris to Moscow, and I watched Europe float by me from the window.

We arrived in Sherementyevo about a half hour late, and I walked through the hallways of the airport to a dimly lit stairway. At the bottom of the stairway were herds of people waiting to have their passport checked. Many people were smoking. Female Russian guards in drab green skirts, light mustard blouses, black neckties and black work shoes walked back and forth through the crowd. There was a Chinese contingent of tourists ahead of us, and they took some time. I continually counted the number of people in front of me. I started on the right side of the room, but somehow, through the labyrinth of waiting, I ended up on the left side. Each person in front of me took over a minute, sometimes as long as five minutes to get by each passport control officer. Occasionally, someone would be asked to step to the side and one of the green-clad female officers would escort them to a little concrete room on the right side of the hall. I saw a number of travelers waiting outside the room. I kept wondering if the differing numbers on my passport and visa would have me outside that room myself.

I arrived at the desk after nearly 90 minutes of waiting. The woman checked and rechecked my passport and visa. Then she motioned me to the side of the booth instead of waving me through as she had done with 98 percent of the other travelers. Then she pushed a big yellow button on the under side of her desk. She then proceeded to deal with the other travelers and I waited and watched them go by me. No one came, and ten minutes passed. She looked over at me and pressed the yellow button again. Finally, an officer in a green skirt came and said, “Follow!” I followed her to the room on the right side of the hall. I thought she wanted me to come in, but she asked me to wait outside. She made a phone call and then came out. She said, “Airline?” and I said, “Air France.” She walked up the stairs I initially had descended, and I waited another 10 minutes. The officer returned and asked me to sit in a series of chairs on the far side of the hall. I sat and dodged the cigarette smoke from those still waiting to get through passport control. I was wondering what was going to happen. I wondered if I would be spending the night in Paris or Athens or some other place. I kept thinking, Derek and/or Nina and their driver are on the other side of this wall, maybe no further than 30 feet away, and I may never get to see them at all. I kept thinking, my luggage is on the other side of the fence, and I may not get to see that at all, either. Still, there was nothing I could do, so I sat. Finally, a woman in a blue Air France suitcoat walked swiftly up to me. She pointed at me and said in English, “You speak French or you speak Russian!” I said, “I speak English.” She said, “NO! You speak French or you speak Russian!” I said, “Je parle francais.”

The Air France official did speak French to me, but she spoke slowly and clearly, and I was able to converse back to her. I was very proud of myself that all that high school and university French had come to some use. We had absolutely no trouble communicating. She explained to me that the entire process was indeed reparable and that it would just take some time and a fine of about $20. I felt somewhat relieved, though I wasn’t on the other side of passport control yet. I followed her up some stairs. She asked me for my passport, and she went into a room where a man made a copy of my page. Then I followed her through a restaurant, through a set of security x-rays up some stairs and down some stairs. She found a man, and she had the copy signed. Then we went back through security, down the stairs to passport control and I sat down. I explained to her that some people were waiting for me and I was concerned that they would leave. She said she would look for them. A second green-skirted officer then said, “Follow!” By this time, a French man who had been on my plane was a part of the party. He had the exact same problem. He had lost his passport a few days previously, and his visa and passport numbers didn’t match. Together we went through customs. I kept thinking, “My God! Derek and the others could actually see me by now.” I was actually in Russia. I kept thinking, “I’ve actually reached my destination, but the police are going to accompany me back to the DMZ.” I gave $20 for a 500-ruble fine and got change in rubles. I got two receipts, one of which was swiftly taken by the officer. She then said, “Follow!” and together with the French businessman, we went back through security and into the passport control hall where we were asked to sit down. There we waited for 30 minutes. Every now a then, an officer would walk from the right side of the hall to the left side or from the left side to the right side, and I could see my blue US passport in their hands. For half an hour, I saw my passport ping-ponging from hall side to hall side. Finally, I looked at passport control, and there were no passengers going through. Only the French man and I were left. Booth officials closed their offices, and turned out some lights. Then an officer came to me and said, “Here is your passport and visa.” I looked at the visa. There was only one change to it. The dot-matrix typed number from my first passport had been crossed out with a blue ball-point pen and the new number was written above it. That was it, and it only cost me two and half hours, $18, and a myocardial infarction.

A sixth green-skirted officer accompanied me through to the baggage claim. No planes were arriving, so I had to hunt for my bag. Finally, I saw an area where left bags seemed to be clumping. There I saw my two bags. I declared the money I brought, and they sent me through. I turned one corner, then made a U-turn around a glass hall to walk into a corridor. Finally there was an opening on the right side of the corridor. I turned right, and there was Derek. I was through!

I gave him a hug, and he explained to me that the director of the American Home was waiting for me. Galya was a bright eyed woman of about 40 years old with a big smile. She greeted me and said, “Welcome!” She had gone upstairs and the Air France officials had told her of my troubles. She even kissed me hello. We walked outside, and an Opel was waiting for me at the front door. They drove me to McDonald’s where they ordered me a Big Mac, French fries, a 20-ounce Coke, and 3-ruble ketchup. We drove on the MDAC, the Moscow equivalent of a city loop or periferique. We turned left on the M-7, known as the Moscow-Ufa highway. Upon getting on that highway, it was literally a straight shot to Vladmir. In fact, there were no curves. Occasionally, I would look behind the car. I could see hills, and the road was perfectly straight going up and down the hills. To the side of the road were dachas, the little summer homes where Russians go to work on their gardens when they’re not in their city apartments. The dachas looked like something out of a fairy tale—more of a dollhouse than a house. Many of them looked old. The windows and the doors weren’t necessarily square. The angles were probably at 88 and 91 degrees, just off enough to be detectable. I found the skewedness of the windows and doors amidst the lace-painted decorations just below the roof to be enchanting, like something from an old fable. I kept thinking, “Gosh, a contractor would come in here, use a level, and screw up all this artwork.” Then again, I also thought a few houses looked like they were about to crumble to their demise.

As we were driving, I suddenly got the hiccups. I guess I had eaten a lot of bread on the Air France flights, and then I had the hamburger and soda upon arrival. The gluten had upset my stomach, and I had loud obnoxious hiccups. I thought I could stop them by holding my breath and swallowing, but I would end up erping a loud hiccup, each of which would send Derek into a tizzy of laughter. Though Galya found it funny too, she seemed sympathetic that they were hurting. She then handed me a large bottle of Aqua Minerale, a gaseous mineral water popular in Russia. I took a big swig, and I could hear my stomach rumble as the gas made its way through my system. I think Derek and Galya could hear it too. The hiccups stopped, and Galya turned around to say, “Wow, it looks like they’re gone.” I said, “Yes, I do believe . . .” when all of the sudden I let out the biggest burp of my life. I think the energy blew Galya’s hair out of place, it was so violent. And the vibrations from my throat could have started an avalanche. I was so embarrassed. I wanted to hide under the seat, but Derek and Galya found it even funnier than the hiccups.

As we approached Vladimir, the 20 ounces of soda and all the hiccup curing Aqua Minerale sneaked up on me, and I needed to stop. I asked Galya if I could stop, and she said yes. The driver stopped immediately. I was a little surprised, but she told me that in Russia it’s the custom to use the trees. She even said that on bus trips, the bus driver will occasionally stop the bus and say, “All women to the right side of the road, and all men to the left side of the road.” I said, “Gosh, Galya, I’m certainly making a strong first impression. I lose my passport. I’m late. I get the hiccups. I burp. And now I pee. You must think me just the biggest pig in the whole world.” Galya turned from her front seat, smiled, and said, “Yes, I do, but I’m glad you’re here.”

As we drove into Vladimir, a rainbow appeared over the city.

We drove to the American Home, my destination where I would be conducting the workshop. Though it was 9:00 pm, it was sunny and bright out, as it is in mid June at 57 degrees north. I walked in and found Ron Pope, the founder of the home, and saw Nina. Nina gave me a hug. She had just finished her class, so we went to her place to have dinner. There I had my first beet, carrot, and cilantro salad in her wonderful kitchen. Beet, carrot, and cilantro salad: my first reward for all this adventure, and I was more than pleased to have it.

I couldn’t stay long, though. The last trolley bus to my hotel left just after 11:30. Derek and Nina also needed to make certain they could get me to my hotel and return home before the trolley buses stopped running. So, we left shy of 11:00. It took the full half hour to get to my hotel, a colonial style building that looked more like an office building than a hotel. I even looked for the word gastinistiya, for hotel, but I couldn’t make it out on the sign. I just had to look for the solitary building with a picture of a Russian flag making up the sign. That would be my clue that I was home for the next couple of weeks. I checked in, and said goodbye to Nina and Derek. I arrived to a nice room, private bath, refrigerator, single bed with pillows, a blanket, a heater, a TV, and a window looking out to the street. It was midnight by the time I decided to go to sleep. Albeit June, it was cold. I unplugged the TV and replaced it with the heater. I put the blanket on my bed and crawled under it as fast as I could. I even pulled the blanket over my head, not only to keep the heat in my body, but to block out the midnight sun shining in my eyes. I decided to take a couple of sleeping pills to help me out. I was far too excited, and the day had been way too much for me to fall asleep to.

At 10:00 the next morning, there was a knock at my door. It was Galya and her husband Alexei. I was dressed and ready, but I missed my breakfast. They picked up my backpack and said, “Let’s go.” Alexei’s English was beautiful. I later found out that he had a PhD in English Teaching and was my colleague at the local university, where he trained teachers to teach English in the public schools. They took me to a place to get blinis. I had a blini with strawberry jam and orange juice. We sat and enjoyed the food before heading to the American Home. As we entered the American Home, Galya gasped and said, “Oh my God! I’m following your example,” and rushed out of the building, running down the street. Alexei followed her. I looked at the others in the American Home, and we just looked at each other puzzled. Half an hour later, Galya and Alexei returned. Galya had left her purse in the blini shop. The person behind the counter saw the purse and kept it hidden until Galya went back. Galya was fortunate because two of her friends’ Russian passports, complete with new US visas, were inside the bag along with a handsome set of their money. All was there, and Galya smiled and said, “Now, I understand how you feel.”

A conversation ensued among the people around the home about how it feels to lose documents and how it feels to forget small items that count so much. I couldn’t make it out, really, since it was in Russian, but most seemed to commiserate with Galya. However, one secretary called Tonia, looked at me and said, “I don’t understand how anyone can just lose their passport. That’s really stupid.”

I didn’t know what to make of Tonia’s comment. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t really offended, either. Somehow, I thought maybe passports were more important to her than they were to me. I would later find out that to be true as passports are used inside Russia by Russians in many instances. Anyway, I had to think about the workshop I was to give the following Tuesday. So, I just looked out the front window at the green mowed lawn of the American Home, the ever so slightly skewed window designs of the house across the street, and the swirling cottonwood puffs, known as topol, that the wind was blowing throughout the city. I went downstairs and started to do some brainstorming, looking at the books kept on the American Home shelves and the layout of the classrooms.

At around 2:00 pm, as I was looking at the books, a sheath of jetlag exhaustion overtook me. I felt like a house had dropped on my head. I had to lie down, and I needed to do it quickly. I went upstairs, where I saw Galya and I lay down on the sofa. Galya said I could use the bed in the back, so I removed myself from the more public sofa and to the more private bedroom. I stacked a couple of pillows under my head and promptly fell asleep.

I awoke to Galya’s voice, asking me if I wanted some tea. She had changed clothes, from a yellow pant suit to an olive green skirt and jacket. I said, “What?” and again she asked me if I wanted some tea. I said that would be nice. Suddenly, I noticed that she had a fold in her stocking, just on the upper half of her right thigh. The fold caught my eye in that it reflected a shimmer from the light of the window behind me. I said, “You have an interesting fold there,” and I reached out to touch it. Galya gasped and jumped back. I drew back myself in utter embarrassment for I was indeed reaching near private territory. I felt like such a dolt. First, I forgot my passport, and I was late. My body made all sorts of rude noises and expulsions the previous day. And now, I made what appeared to be a sexual gesture toward my new friend. I honestly just wanted to smooth the stocking out, but she certainly did not read my action that way at all. She looked at me with a red face, and I looked back at her worried and ready to cry. She turned and walked out of the bedroom. I sat for a minute, wondering if I should do anything. I hadn’t been in Russia for even 24 hours, and I had already committed such a horrible faux pas that I wondered if it was going to ruin my trip altogether. What on Earth could I have been thinking? I could have let the fold go and not mention it. I could have ignored it completely. In fact, that’s what I normally would have done. This was completely out of character for me. But no! This time, not only did I have to acknowledge it, I had to touch it myself. Had I ever done anything so unbelievably stupid in my whole life? At the very least, I needed to apologize. She wouldn’t have to accept it. I could leave the apology on her doorstep and she could do with it as she pleased, but I would have at the very least made the attempt to reconcile my error. From there, I would just have to keep a low profile and leave her alone, perhaps avoiding the times in the American Home when she would be there.

I took a deep breath and went to the sofa where I had watched the topol puffs. Galya was sitting there. I looked at her, but she didn’t want to look at me. I said softly, and I could feel the gulp in my throat, “Galya, I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you, and I’m not interested in hurting you. I really was only interested in ironing out the fold, and there really is nothing, nothing more than that. I hope you understand.”

Galya looked at me. She kept her mouth straight. She looked to the left, took a deep breath, said, “OK,” and then got up to walk to the kitchen. I still felt terrible, and it looked like there wouldn’t be a clean solution to this mistake I had made, so I sat down on the sofa and looked out the window.

I don’t deal well when I hurt people like that, and I’m not certain I had ever hurt someone, particularly a new friend, ever in my life to such a dreadful degree. It was going to take a long time before I was able to let go of this event from my mind. Many people I know can say something wrong, apologize for it, and seemingly move on, unscathed. They behave like world-class athletes who can put forth all their effort in a championship race, let the lactic acid burn in their muscles, and recover to a resting heart rate within seconds, perhaps even bouncing on their feet as if they’re ready to race again. These friends make their mistakes, pump their fist, maybe even slap their heads in self-amazement, but then let go, leaving the event totally behind and their body in tact to move on to the next happy event, knowing that such an event could happen within seconds. But me, I’m not like that. My body takes so long to recover. I feel the worms crawl from my arms to my stomach, and I feel the heat in my face for several hours, if not a couple of days. I spend time and energy, concentrating on the subject, trying to understand what else I could have done. I’m not quick at releasing the pain of embarrassment, even if I know it would be better to. And even if I’ve decided to release the event from my mind, it seems to stay anyway, and I have to walk it off, like a bad sprain. I’ve tried drinking root beer, and I’ve tried crying. I’ve tried calling my parents, too. Dad usually suggests pizza as a cure-all. Still, when such things happen, the only emotion I can muster is regret, and this was a regret that was never going to leave my life. I was just going to have to let the time heal it in due course, and even then it would remain a brutally painful memory forever. I stretched myself out on the sofa, and I watched the window frame across the street, and I watched the topol fly from side to side.

Suddenly, I heard Galya’s voice. “Eric, I’m sorry, but we need to ask you a question right now. Would you like a first class seat on the train to Saint Petersburg this Friday night?” I was puzzled. Galya was smiling at me. I said, “Huh?”

“Would you like a first class seat on the train to Saint Petersburg this Friday night?” Then I noticed that Galya was wearing the yellow outfit from that morning, and not the green one. I just stared at her.

“Eric?”

I was confused. I felt like time had stopped. I looked around me, and I realized that I was no longer in the living room, looking out the window at topol. I was still in the bedroom. In fact, I was lying down with a stack of pillows under my head. I rubbed my eyes and felt the crusts of having just slept. I had dreamt it all.

“Eric, are you OK?”

“I’m not sure. Are you and I OK?”

“Yes, why shouldn’t we be?”

Oh my God! It was a dream—a dream to end all dreams—a dream so vivid that I accepted it as reality and life—a dream so intricate in detail that I believed it to be real, especially since it had all the curves and colors of the American Home that I had acquired in only a couple of hours, especially since it was so filled with thought and reflection.

“We need to figure out how much money you need to pay for the train to Saint Petersburg, and the agent is here, so I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I needed to wake you up.”

“OK! Just give me a second here. I’ll be right out.”

“Oh, and Eric! Would you like some tea?”