To Sing Frogs Chapter 6b

The overhead bins were already stuffed beyond capacity. Our bags didn’t fit under seats. It took a friendly flight attendant to solve the problem. She was quick to find our carry-ons a place in a closet. Two hours later we were checking in at the Seoul Airport Hyatt for a few hours of sleep. We were both exhausted. After quick showers we collapsed on the bed and slept like the dead until 3:00 a.m. That’s when Amy woke me up to see if I could sleep. “Not anymore.”

“I can’t get back to sleep. I guess I’m too excited,” she told me.

“I guess you have jetlag. There’s no sense fighting it.”

Amy spent the next couple of hours practicing Russian phrases and I read my paperback. Then we caught another hour of deep sleep before the ringing of the phone for the wake-up call pasted me to the ceiling.

Several hours later my attention was drawn to the in-flight monitor. It showed our airplane’s position and the intended route between Seoul and Vladivostok highlighted in blood red. We had flown significantly eastward of a direct route to put a very safe distance between North Korea and us. Later, the plane would make a ninety degree westward turn for the last leg of our flight to the Far East Russian airport. My mind was troubled as I recalled KAL Flight 007, shot down over the Sea of Japan in 1983. That was the first time it really sank in with me. We were going to a place far different from anywhere I had ever been before. Like a male praying mantis on the way to his honeymoon, I was excited and nervous but not quite aware of all that might transpire.

Having grown up in mountains where ski runs have moguls as big as hills in some Midwestern states, I knew how to read winter conditions. As we approached for landing it was obvious that the country 5,000 feet below us was frigid. White powder blew in spears upward and off the tips of the mountain peaks below. They extended for miles before ending in points against the blue sky. It takes harsh conditions to make snow do that. No wonder foreigners who invaded Russia had a history of getting spanked and sent home.

Minutes later we were watching out the aircraft window as several people in military dress and traditional Russian fur hats positioned the decades-old stair-truck for us to disembark.

We were loaded onto a bus that barely had room to make a U-turn before spilling us out at the terminal less than 100 feet away from our plane. Maybe it was just as well they hadn’t let us walk even that short distance. The tarmac was icy. We could see the wind as it formed drifts around other parked aircraft and World War II era snow removal equipment. The biting cold was ice-cream-headache bitter.

As we entered the terminal we crowded into the staging area for immigration. It was more like a platform for a Tokyo subway during rush hour.

The weather outside was in stark contrast to the temperature inside the sauna-like terminal. We were soon shedding our coats. The Russians were as attached to theirs as a Siberian Husky is to his.In spite of the fact that there were half a dozen windows to process passengers, there were no lines. Members of the crowd each tried to shuffle and shoulder their way to gain advantage in a tortoise-like race to the border.

I had no idea why the Immigrations Officer looked at me so skeptically when it was finally my turn. It made me nervous even though he didn’t keep me long. He slammed his stamp down on my passport with a smirk and sent me along just before waving Amy up to his window. It was only a few seconds before she was allowed to progress. She caught up to me in the hallway only a short distance from where we could see luggage on a belt circling in and out of the building.

“Vy yoo are heer een Rosha?” a woman in military dress asked us after stepping out of a booth stationed just before the luggage area.

Mrs. Stalin? Now I understood the skepticism. In an effort to save time our adoption coordinators recommended we get tourist visas rather than adoption visas for our first visit. They said it would go much faster and assured us it wouldn’t be any problem. “Adopting parents did it all the time.”