'The Eagle has landed'

With reference to the title, I guess my airplane could be likened to an eagle and well, I didn't really land on the moon but rather Texas.

You heard right. I'm as of now, standing on American soil. Ok, scrap that. To be technically correct, I'm as of now, lying down on my bed in a hotel which has been built on American soil.

For y'all who know me really well, you'd be thinking: 'OMG. This girl has finally obtained her dream.' Umm, yeah sort of. :)

I reached Dallas, Texas last Sunday. The journey consisted of a total of 19 hours on two different flights and I'm not counting the transit time at Frankfurt. But it was a great trip.

My flight from Bangalore to Frankfurt was pretty uneventful since it was a night flight. The man sitting next to me was a pharmaceutical representative on his way to attend a conference at Frankfurt. It was pretty sweet to see the way he was enthusiastic about everything down to the food served. It was, without a doubt, his first time flying. :)

Frankfurt International Airport is pretty big and I had to take a sky-train to reach my terminal. Even though my transit time was around 3 hours, I couldn't go around the airport much. So I took the opportunity to get online and email my family that I was indeed still alive. Simple task? You wish! You'd think that the numerous computer terminals would slightly resemble our computer keyboards. Not even close. These keyboards have keys for everything. Two for space bar (which don't even say 'space'). Two suspicious looking ones that ended up being the ones for left-click and right-click of a mouse. Letter keys placed totally out of sync.. well, you get the picture. To say in the least, you NEED a certification to use those terminals. And this is coming from a software engineer.

So in the span of four minutes (and EUR 4), I managed to log onto gmail, click compose, select the appropriate email address that belongs to my sister and type out the following email to her:
"i reached frankfurt stop flight leaves in one hour stop tell everybody stop this computer is dumb stop bye"

I spent the next one hour trying to analyse how the others fared at such similar terminals. Not very well, let me assure you. :)

The flight from Frankfurt to Dallas, predictably, consisted predominantly of Americans and Germans. I took my place next to an Israeli man, Rafi, and an American woman, Rhonda.

"It's my lucky day", said Rafi, "I never got to sit in the middle. Now that I did, I'm sitting between two women."

This man, fellow ladies, was ONE charmer. :)

It took me very lil time to get comfortable with Rafi and find out about his interesting background. Being a software engineer himself, Rafi too could empathise with the strain of being one and declared that he would stick around in the field for only 2-3 more years before he called it quits and get a job that he really liked.

I've always been fascinated by people who are a product of different cultures and race. Give me a person who's quarter Irish, native American, Thai and Mexican and has spent half of his life travelling around Asia, and I think I'd marry him for it. :D

Rafi was an Israeli, whose father was a Muslim and mother a Christian and who had studied for five years in Cape Town, South Africa. And let's not mention his foreign trips. Ladies and gentlemen, I was in heaven. :D

I asked a lot about his culture and was surprised to hear that his own was a bit conservative as well. They actually practise arranged marriages and dowry! But it's practised a bit differently from mine. The groom, it seems, provides the house, gold and money for the bride. The bride, on the other hand, provides the electronic items necessary for proper functioning of the household. So it's very common to hear mothers-in-law not being happy with what the grooms have given their daughters. Hmm. Interesting twist, don't you think?

Rafi himself had given arranged 'alliance' a try, but couldn't wait to break off his engagement a year later. He said, 'I don't want a woman who can't make her own decisions and whose mother still picks out her clothes. I want someone who's independent and looks beyond money and gold.' Same here, brother, same here. Umm. Except I'd want a man and not a woman, thanks. :D

On Rafi's other side sat Rhonda. Rhonda was a very friendly Texan. Not many people go out of their way to make you comfortable, but she certainly did. 'Is it your first time going to the United States, sweetie?' she asked me. I nodded. 'You must be scared,' she said. 'Now don't you worry. It'll be alright, you hear?'

Rhonda grew up in a small town near Dallas. After a few years of growing up in the States, she went and did what she always wanted to do: live in Europe. So she packed her bags and flew to Italy. Learnt Italian, opened a shop that tailored to her 'big-boned' American clientele and spent 6 years of her life there. After that, she fell in love with an American who worked in a big enterprise in Romania. So they got married and she was on her way to joining him in Romania. 'Now, I get to learn Romanian', Rhonda said. 'It's just one more adventure!'

Sigh. Romantic, don't you think?

Anyway, travelling with these two people was delightful. Ten hours flew by (pun not intended) and we reached Fort Worth, Dallas.

I was a lil scared at the Passport Control. Hundreds and hundreds of tips/advice/do-s and don'ts went by in my head.

"What's the purpose of your visit?" the Immigration officer asked.
"Business", I squeaked.
"How long will you be here?"
"Four to six weeks."
Scrutiny of passport. Fingerprints taken. Stamping on the passport.
"Welcome to the United States, ma'am."

Whew!

A couple of hours later (which included goodbyes to Rhonda & Rafi and a taxi ride), I was brought to the hotel which would be my home for the rest of my stay in Texas.

Folks, I'm IN. :)