Narita Swan Song

In the swan song tradition of my prior entry, I just got back from what will probably be one of my last Japan trips before the impending work rule changes.  I was going out in style though as I was flying with my good friend Gail.  We have been friends since I transferred to Dallas in 2001 and she has been a mentor of sorts for me, work wise, thru the years.  She is a strong union advocate and has instilled that in me and I admire her integrity.  We had just spent the day together on the picket line for the Valentine's Day picketing.

This picture below was right before departure for Japan.  We took the honor of renaming the airplane after ourselves (but just for the picture)....

The weather in Japan was very cold but we were prepared, and I had my Iceland attire to keep me warm.  It was sunny outside, just very very cold.  The Japanese are big on their gadgets and I came close to purchasing an electric fly swatter.  Maybe next time.

Gail had never been to the Jet Lag Club, so we went there first.  I wanted her to see all the airline memorabilia on the wall.  We tagged along with a gal named Diane that Gail knew from domestic who is now JFK based.  She was with her friend Dan.  We enjoyed a few rounds of beers and the free popcorn and enjoyed a good banter about company and union politics.

Next stop was the Ramen Bayashi Noodle shop for dinner.  Luckily I had enough Yen this time, so I wan't in the Lost In Translation moment like last year with my friend Alane!

We rounded out the evening with a bottle of wine I had brought from home.  There were two earthquakes right after we arrived, but luckily this evening was earthquake free, so I slept well enough.  I got up in the middle of the night and skype called Ladyfriend and my pal Bobby and then went right back to sleep.

And we arrived home on time!

London Swan Song?

After a hiatus of several months I was able to get a London trip.  Kind of bittersweet because with the changes coming down the pipeline at work, I probably won't be getting back there as often as I used to.

I was flying with a pretty "senior" crew but they were nice enough and there wasn't really any drama on the way over.  We were very light, which made it an easy trip.

Once we finally made it to the hotel (the Hammersmith flyover is under construction making the ride in a bit longer), I made my way over to Sainsbury's to stock up on a bunch of my UK products I can't possibly live with out (since who knows when I am going back).  Ladyfriend is also a fan so I bought several bottles of shower gel and got a few cans of shaving cream.

I tried to get some Paracetemol with Codeine for my friend Bruce, but apparently now you can't buy it over the counter anymore.  The damned addicts ruin everything!!!!

I was torn about what I wanted to do on my layover.  I was thinking of taking the train out to see my college friends Amanda and Aaron and their wonderful dog Wolfie, but snow was expected in the evening and I was worried about making it back into town.

I decided to stay in the city, and when I woke up from my nap, I headed over to St. Paul's for their 5pm Evensong service.  I just love the "high church" experience and the building is so wonderfully designed for the music from the choir.  I hadn't been to St. Paul's since the whole "Occupy" movement started.  The last time I was there, the movement has just begun and all the protestors camped out around the cathedral had caused quit a controversy.  Several of the clergy resigned over the issue.  This had settled down a bit.  I would say that the size of the group is now about half as big as it used to be.  I am sure the temperatures have not helped.  The weather was brutally cold.

One thing that I noticed this time was that Paternoster Square, the area adjacent to St. Paul's, is now blocked off and you can only enter and leave thru designated alleys.  I guess the stores around the area were afraid of potential disruptions from protestors.

After the service, I made my way over to Yo! Sushi for some dinner.  Since I have the new iPhone 4S, I can shoot video, so I got a little shot of the conveyor belt with all the dishes going around.

I had been toying with the idea of seeing Backbeat, a new musical that just opened about the Beatles and their early years in Germany as a cover band.  But part of me still wanted to see Warhorse, the Tony-award winning play about a boy and his horse in WWI.  I had tried numerous times to try and get a seat for the play, but it's perpetually sold out.  For some reason, I was feeling lucky, so I blew off Backbeat and made my way over to the National Theatre in Covent Garden to see if I could get in.  I waited about 30 minutes (in the falling snow nonetheless) and they started clearing the line with return seats.  I was next to go and the gentleman came out and I was sure he was going to tell me that I had a seat, but instead he told me that they had no more returns and the theatre was full.

I hung my heard in sadness and started to make my way back to the hotel.  It was cold, but I was well covered with my P-coat, gloves, and my woolen cap from Iceland.  I ended up walking the entire way back to the hotel and enjoyed the falling snow.

I ended up running into my friend Kathy, who is Raleigh based, in the crew room, and enjoyed chatting with her for a bit before turning in for the night.

The flight home was full, but people were surprisingly friendly.  We flew a very northern route coming home and we ended up passing just south of Akureyri in Northern Iceland.  It made me think of my wonderful vacation there in October.

До побачення!

This is how you say Goodbye in Ukrainian! (I have not the slightest idea how to pronounce it) but I thought it would be an appropriate title for this post.  Last month I brought 87 children to the United States from Kiev, Ukraine to spend Christmas with host families in America.  Now it was time for these sweet orphans to head home.

Initially they had planned to send me all the way back to Kiev, but we realized it was going to be a lot less expensive if I just took the three girls that I brought to Dallas back to New York, where they would reunite with the rest of the kids and their chaperones before continuing their journey.

I met the Franklin and Atchley families at the Delta counter an hour and a half before our departure.  We were able to check their bags all the way to Kiev, so we would not have to mess with it in New York.  The Delta agent also gave gate passes to everyone so that we could all go to the departure lounge and visit a little longer before boarding the plane.

It's always a sad time for the kids and the families.  The Atchleys and the Franklins had hosted these same kids previously, so there is already a strong bond!

When they announced the call for final boarding, it was time to say goodbye.  The girls remained strong though and we made our way down to the plane.  It was booked very light, which gave our little regional jet the feeling of being a little bigger.

We had a fast and easy trip up to New York.  They were all fascinated with my Nook e-reader and were pretty good at reading the english, even if they did not always understand!

After we arrived in New York I was supposed to be met by another flight attendant who would take the girls over to Terminal 4 to the Aerosvit ticket counter, but no one was there.  Turns out there was some problems with another group connecting from Charlotte and so they were trying to handle that.  I got them over to Terminal 4 and made the hand off and hauled ass over to Terminal 8 to try and catch a 4pm departure on my airline back to DFW.

I made it just in time and settled into my seat, thinking I could relax and enjoy my 50% discount off wireless internet, but got an email that one of the escorts returning to Dallas with me had forgotten to hand over the passport for the child she escorted.  Thank goodness we had wifi onboard.  After working thru various scenarios, we figured out we could ship the passport via my airline's cargo division and get it back to New York the next morning.  The child and her Ukrainian chaperone would travel the next afternoon, so it all worked out in the end!

Catching up.....

I found myself pretty busy thru most of December so now that I am sitting reserve in January, I thought I would try to catch up on my mundane existence.

Some of the highlights from December included a rather "different" looking woman we had in First Class coming home from Maui.  This was a once in a lifetime passenger for sure, and I made sure to only capture her back to preserve her anonymity.  It's not every day someone wears curlers on the airplane!  This photo was quite the hit on Facebook!

I also tried Loco Moco for the first time at the Kihei Cafe down the street from our hotel.  It's a weird breakfast item, with a beef patty, eggs, rice, and brown gravy.  It was wonderful!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day found me in Panama City.  It's a quick trip, with a short layover, but we tried to make the best of it.  We all planned to bring food, so the day of the trip we had turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, and dessert!  I went above and beyond and also put together little gift boxes for my crew (even the pilots!... what can I say, it was the holidays and I was feeling generous!).

Our take off out of Panama on Christmas Day had us flying from one end of the country to another and we got some pretty neat views of the Panama Canal as we climbed out!

January 1st marks the beginning of my reserve month.  Not a fun time, but it goes with the punches.  So far, I've only flown one trip.  I got called out for Madrid.  I had all these wonderful plans to go to the Observation Tower at the main post office on Castellana and then hit the museums, but we had a man who brought his own portable oxygen concentrator and about three hours into the flight it malfunctioned.  We had to divert to JFK because the man could not be off of oxygen for more than a few minutes without going into distress.  By the time we took off again, we were several hours behind schedule and ended up landing in Madrid around 1pm and after nap time it was going to be too late to do anything.

Surprisingly, not one of the passengers complained to me about the delay.  The majority of the passengers were students going over to study for the semester.  It made me feel a bit old because I realized that it was about 15 years ago that I was in their shoes, going to Spain to study abroad!  It's a good thing I color my hair because these "moments" that remind me of my age are probably causing more and more gray!

My friend Catherine was on the trip, so we met up around 8pm and walked down to Puerta de Sol and the Plaza Mayor trying to look for a restaurant that a couple on the plane had told me about, but we never could find it.  We did walk several miles though, which was my only source of exercise for the day.  We never could find a place that really jumped out at us for dinner, so we ended up taking the metro over to Principe Pio so we could eat at Casa Mingo, a Cider house with great Asturian cuisine.  I first ate there when I studied abroad and you can't go wrong with their food!

The only pictures I snapped were the next morning from the back door of our plane.  The airport was pretty quiet that day because Iberia pilots had gone on strike.  It was a pretty day as you can see... not a cloud in the sky!

Ukrainian Orphan Airlift

This past week I had an opportunity to participate in another Orphan Airlift for New Horizons For Children (NHFC).  In June I participated in their summer airlift and brought a group of Latvian children from Riga to the United States.  This time around I would be escorting 87 children and 11 Ukrainian chaperones from Kyiv (Kiev) to JFK Airport in New York.  From there, the groups would fly on to different cities around the country, and I would take three girls from JFK on to DFW.

I left the states on Sunday afternoon and flew to Chicago and then on to Paris.  I had an A-12, my airline's version of a confirmed seat for employees, and was able to upgrade on both flights, which was nice.  We arrived into Paris right on time and the only hiccup was a terminal closing due to a bomb threat, so I took a shuttle bus around the entire airport to get over to 2B and my departure on Ukrainian International Airlines.  The flight from Paris to Kyiv was about 3 hours, but I slept thru most of it.

I arrived into Kyiv around 2:30pm and had a driver pick me up at the airport and take me into the city.  NHFC booked me into an apartment, which was nice, although a little more than I needed for a one night stay.  It was fully furnished and even had a collection of Ukrainian Playboy Magazines!

 

The location was great, just off of Maidan Nezalezhosti, or Independence Square, the sight of protests during the Orange Revolution in 2004.  After meeting the manager at the apartment, I had to go across town and pay for it since he didn't have a credit card reader on him.   The traffic was terrible so by the time I got back to the flat it was dark, but I still went out in the blustery cold weather and walked around the Square.  I "think" I was propositioned by a Ukrainian prostitute, because she was dressed provocatively in spikey high heel boots and a tight skirt, but after thinking about it, most of the women there are into heels, so she could have just been asking me if I had seen her lost cat.

I was getting pretty hungry, so I wandered around the corner from my flat to a place called Walter's that I passed on the ride into the city.  I had a spinach and ricotta cheese pizza and a big ice cold glass of Ukrainian beer.  I have no idea what it was called.

By this point, I was brain dead and tired, so I made it back to the flat and went to bed.  I woke up in the middle of the night wide awake and never really did go back to sleep.

I checked my email and learned that 5 children were denied travel because the government official who authorizes the trip was out sick.  Additionally, 10 kids were denied a VISA into the US, so they were going to make a last ditch effort the next morning to see if they could get them issued in time.

By 6am I was starving again, so I showered up and got packed and then walked down to the McDonald's at Independence Square, however, they don't open until 8:00am!  I think it's the only Mickey D's that isn't open early for breakfast.  I went back at 8 and gobbled down an Egg McMuffin and hash browns!  Whereas it was cold and dry the day before, it was now cold and wet.

At 8:30, I was picked up by Natasha and Tetiana (Tanya) and we made our way to the airport.  They are translators with the Ukrainian charity that partners with NHFC.  Tanya would be coming on the flight as a chaperone and also one of the three who would speak English.

The children started arriving in groups shortly after we made it to the airport.  Some had come all night via train.  

We were traveling on Aerosvit, a Ukrainian airline.  We asked for assistance in checking in the kids, and at first they were reluctant.  Once they saw how big our group was and that we would be half the airplane, they worked with us and started checking us in for the flight in groups.

For many of the kids, this would be their first airplane ride!

I sat across from these two kids: Mariya and Andrii, ages 7 and 13.  They are brother and sister and live together in an orphanage.  I was really touched by how protective Andrii was of his sister.  It hit me that they were all they had in this world and that at 13, Andrii was head of their little family.  What a hard reality to face at that age!

The kids were very excited and I have to give credit to the cabin crew for doing a great job of helping them all find their seats.  And we were very happy to see the final 10 children board at the last minute.  A U.S. congressman made a call to the embassy in Kiev and had the VISA's issued.  A courier rushed them over to the airport and the kids made check in with 5 minutes to spare!  Talk about answered prayers!

Unfortunately, Aerosvit is not set up to provide movies or music, so the kids really had no entertainment on our 10 and a half hour flight to New York.  They handled it pretty well for the most part.  I thought they would eventually fall asleep, but every child took black coffee when the crew came by with after dinner drinks, so they were wired the whole time.  The girls sitting in front of me kept reading me phrases from the Ukrainian/English phrase book!  It was published during the old Soviet Union days and had funny sayings like "The Soviets are show the world how to use the atom for peace"!

I sat next to Tanya, our translator.  We had to complete a customs form and an I-94 immigration form for each child and chaperone, about 100 in total.  We started after the first meal service (if you could call it a meal) and it took us about seven and a half hours to fill all the forms out.  I had nothing else to do, so it helped pass the time.  My hand was pretty cramped by the end of the trip.

Our arrival into JFK was pretty chaotic.  We had some kids with tight connections and some issues with luggage not being checked all the way thru.  Everyone made their connections except for two groups going to Charlotte and Cincinnati.  They just did not have enough time.  Once my Dallas group was ready, we headed over to the Delta terminal.  I had three girls, two sisters, Olena and Kateryna, and another girl, Mariya (or Masha).  I also had the Washington group with me, and helped them get thru security.  The kids were super excited to ride the Airtrans from Terminal 4 to 3!  Tetiana, another of the chaperone's was exhausted and terrified as it was her first time outside Ukraine.  She looks less than thrilled!

We had a minor issue on our flight to Dallas.  Due to headwinds, the plane was going to have to make a fuel stop in Nashville, but we ended up only being about 20 minutes late, arriving around 11:30pm.  I got the girls to pose for one last photo with the host families.

They'll be here for a month and then I will take them back to New York where they will meet up with everyone else and fly home to Ukraine.

Punta Cana

The month of November also took me on a trip to a new city, Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic.  There isn't much there but all-inclusive beach resorts and our layover hotel was one of them.

We arrived just as the restaurants were closing and we quick changed and ran down to try to start enjoy our all inclusive meals, but they shot us down.  We ended up going to the lobby bar and enjoyed a few rounds of drinks until we closed that place down. 

By this time we were starving and the only place we could get food was the all inclusive 24 hour room service.  We grabbed all the complimentary waters and beers in the mini fridges from everyone's room and headed to my room, the in Preferred Club section.  It wasn't any different except for the hot tub on the balcony.

We ordered two of everything from the room service menu and by the time the food arrived we were ravinous. 

We did not leave until the next afternoon so we all met up at the beach and enjoyed some of the nice weather.  I stayed under the covered hut and read my book. 

Not a bad way to spend a layover, for sure!