Arriving in Toledo, OH

Well, this comes after a long lapse. I'd been more than busy over my last days in Iran and couldn't have been able to update my blog.

I've successfully arrived in Toledo. Apart from being jet-lagged and sleepless and having long stops at the airports en-route, I really enjoyed my trip. All my flights had little delay and I landed in Toledo in time. My journey (from Mashhad to Bahrain to London to Chicago to Toledo) took near 32 hours. Quite an odyssey!

I'd been warned a lot about tough security measures at London Heathrow airport. It was not much different than Tehran or other Iranian airports with the exception that we had to have our shoes screened (the same as in Chicago). I can say I had a much rougher experience with security inspection at Mashhad airport.

I enjoyed my London-Chicago flight aboard an American Airlines Boeing 777. Flight attendants (who were mostly on the aged side) did their best to make us feel less bored over that long-haul boring flight. They didn't make a show of it. Their hospitality was warm indeed.

And I didn't face any problems with CBP (Customs & Border Protection) officers at Chicago O'Hare airport. Maybe I was lucky to land in a northern airport. CBP officers at southern ports of entry (e.g. Miami, Atlanta, Memphis or LAX) are rather tough as far as I've heard.

Anyway, these were very friendly and the one handling my case was more than that. When he summoned me to the counter, he told me it would take him 5 minutes to finish my special registration (a procedure for aliens entering the US), but he would do his best to make it in less than that. It could really take long at one of those southern airports.

After he put multiple admitted stamps in my passport and forms in rapid succession, he grew more intimate and loudly made jokes about his colleagues sitting at neighboring counters who happened to be immigrants (like him). He was from Mexico and his adjacent colleagues from China and Pakistan. Immigrants serving as immigration officers.

But when this very amicable CBP officer arrived at his counter to begin his shift, he was extremely heavily armed with all sort of paraphernalia hanging from his waist as if it was a combat zone and not arrival terminal of a civilian airport. This is America!

By sheer luck, I skipped luggage inspection at Chicago which could be the most inconvenient of it all (sometimes causing you miss your connecting flight when combined with a lengthy special registration). I had checked in at Heathrow for both my London-Chicago and Chicago-Toledo flights by AA. And it made American Airlines carry over my luggage to the connecting flight without giving it back to me at O'Hare.

First, I feared my luggage might have been lost at Heathrow (not showing up at O'Hare luggage claim). And AA representative didn't know where it might be. She took me through Customs gate to the other side to find about those presumably lost luggage so that Customs officers could inspect them. I had honestly declared about the food in my luggage and they were keen to have a look.

My luggage could not be found on the other side either and voila: I easily skipped through Customs without even my backpack being inspected! Although, I had nothing illegal whatsoever in there (just my prayer books and a couple of personal stuff). When you trust in God, He would help you in unexpected ways. Well, this was the least of His helps over the course of my endeavor. I've seen more.

There was something really weird about my arrival. I didn't feel excited or such when I successfully landed in the US (actually, I was in the US when I boarded that AA plane at Heathrow). I didn't even feel like being in a foreign country. What made me think otherwise, was numerous flags waving in the wind outside O'Hare terminal 5 when I was inside airport transfer train taking me to terminal 3 to catch my connecting flight. I somehow felt I'm still inside my own country with the mere difference that I had to speak English instead of Persian, and that was no big deal. And when I was aboard Chicago-Toledo plane (a tiny mini-bus like low-flying Embraer-145 jet), I felt as if still flying over my homeland, just like I did when I flew from Tehran to Mashhad aboard those TY-154s (I hated flying those TYs, but that's what you have to endure when you're unfairly embargoed).

You know, people who kill themselves over getting to the US, when finally succeed, feel like being a free man, born again or such just because they've made it to the US. Or when they see a US flag, they feel like having come to their paradise or dream-land (I hate that opening scene in scarface) . But I really didn't have any such feelings of excitement. I simply felt at home as if I was still in Iran. Nowadays, whenever I walk along streets, I need to see flags (which are really abundant here) to remind me where I am.

Well, there exists a big difference here; although Toledo is a rather small city in terms of population (300,000 or so), everything is very large scale: streets, supermarkets, malls, neighborhoods, buildings, etc. But I've never been fascinated with that sort of largeness.

One thing somehow uneasy to me is adapting to Midwestern accent (rather than the East Coast one I'd been trying to learn back in Iran).

And there's also the cold. Thanks God, the weather has been unbelievably mild since I arrived here, better than Tehran I would say. My advisor tells me I've been extremely lucky. It could grow as cold as -10C here at this time of year. Add the windchill coming over Lake Erie and you'd feel much colder than that. Well, for now, I have to enjoy it.

And well, there's something I feel comfortable with here. People are or (at least) appear warm, even in a cold area like OH. Smiling (even if you don't mean it) is part of American culture. It's common for strangers to say hi to each other for no special reason. As somebody hailing from Shiraz, I find it pleasant. Maybe that's one of the reasons I feel at home here.