Home sweet home!

St. Petersburg, Russia! It is so satisfying to be home again in the apartment we are living in for the next weeks. As a rule when I travel to unpredictable regions I try not think a great deal about the protection issues until returning to a safer environment. Then it becomes clear. No more do you see the soldiers with machine guns in the streets or at the markets. You do not have as much a sense of being watched or listened too when out and about the town.
Once back in a safe location the airport security is much calmer than in the other area and the security checks needed to get through in order to leave are simpler. However, on Friday afternoon as we prepared to return home by plane I had a brief dilemma.
A paper stating I was registered in a certain city was missing from my passport and the custom officials would not let me through without it. Jill had hers in hand but we could not locate mine. I started to hunt through my briefcase and pockets – it was not there – the guards, two of them, gaze as I searched and searched. As time clicked by – with no luck in finding the essential paper – an additional guard, training in a new person, came over (marvelous - now there are four of them watching!). This latest guard looked at Jill's papers again and in doing so found my papers in with hers. With the paper in hand they released me and we made it through for our flight back. Without that paper I would still be there in a holding cell (what a polite way of saying that) working through the US government.

Whew! After we made it through customs we sat down to rest a moment allowing my heart beat to slow down from the stress of the episode. Moments before we had reached the customs desk Jill over heard one guard say to another, "Have the foreigners come through yet"? So just knowing they were looking for us added a little anxiety to the total event.

So let me just say once again, it feels great to be home!