I got on the plane and got to know it takes almost 10 hours to get to New York from Moscow. “Wonderful, I am gonna die” – I thought. But it’s worth it anyway.
A bit of advertising – that was the most well-organized flight in my life. Bless you, Delta Air Lines. Constant water supply, latest seasons and movies for free and even some 
Baskin Robin’s ice cream.
Fears
We’re all afraid of going through custom’s control. Is that a part of the Russian mentality? “Beware. That’s almost impossible to get a visa to the USA” “Make sure you think over an answer to any question possible in advance before the border control”.
Well, the only unexpected question today was “Nice nails! Are those yours?” on the security control by a guy.
Just a remark – I am studying in Germany and now am an exchange in the USA. Never had a single problem with visa issuing etc.
JFK*
Finally, got to the airport. Have a connection flight, so trying to figure out how to kill 8 hours, I started looking around.
I don’t really know what was more surprising. IPads everywhere at the airport with free Internet access. Just-one-swipe-to-pay card machines – no PIN needed ever. VAT not included in prices. Or the fact that I’ve forgotten that I can’t plug in any charger of mine due to different standards. The good thing was, they have built-in USB chargers, so I could charge at least the phone.
So you get to a cafe – maybe I am a small town girl after all (was so amazed by this simple technological trick) – you have an iPad on the table. You go online, you order food, you swipe your card at a built-in machine in the middle of the table and here you go. You get the food in 15 minutes. It is not any cheap here. But that’s my 19th hour “on the road” so it didn’t really matter.
Cultural gap. Reality lived up to my expectations
Just before leaving I asked a friend of mine:
“Am I gonna experience some kind of a cultural shock?”
He was like:
“No, not really…Oh wait.. You will be surprised by people being way too open. A stranger gets to be a “dude” in a minute and …”
Well, I’ve just had a conversation with a random woman of about my mom’s age who was coming back from her first trip to Europe. She’s all so open, ready to share and telling me how much he misses her 14-year-old kid and that he got a lot more mature in the 2 weeks she’s been away. She’s never been anywhere which is quite a stereotype we usually have about American people.
But we believe they simply don’t care what is going on in the different parts of the world. That’s nothing like that. When I got to know quite a lot of students over here, I finally got it why they are not travelling. By the time you graduate you get such an amount of debts that you simply cannot afford to get anywhere. You just work in order to repay and I must say they work really hard.
So stereotype #1:
“Americans have never been anywhere because they are not interested in other cultures”
False.
I am finally here and have couple of months more to see what this country is actually all about.
Take care,
Elisabeth