By some miracle, we were able to get it together enough to leave for JFK Monday night around 6:30 pm rather than waking up at 3 am on Tuesday morning. We spent the night at the Marrott JFK airport hotel- literally, just checked in, put our bags in the room, got some dinner around 9 pm and then slept from 10 ish until the alarm clock abruptly sounded at 5:45 am. As our taxi is dropping us off at JFK airport, we hear loud sirens blaring behind us. Not paying much attention and trying to collect our bags (and children) from the car, I hear some of the airport security guards yelling "MOVE, MOVE, GET OUT OF THE WAY". Paul quickly grabs the boys and rushes them inside the airport. Dazed and completely confused at whats happening, I'm just trying to get our bags while I angrily glare at Paul for "running" inside the airport. As I'm walking inside and trying to drown out all the sirens and yelling, I look behind me and see this massive "bomb" proof vehicle parked directly behind our taxi driver. I then see several men wearing bullet proof vest while holding some type of machine looking gun as they are jump out of "the bomb squad" (as the boys called it). As I'm looking around, still dazed and confused, I find out someone has left unattended luggage outside for quite some time now and the airport security called the FBI bomb team to come deal with it. Fortunately, it was nothing and we just got to watch the bomb squad guys walk around our terminal patrolling with their AK machine gun weapons while we waited for over an hour to check in. As we are standing and watching this, I realize we are in the "middle east' terminal with EXTRA security.
The people currently checking in directly beside us are all flying to Tel Aviv- many are Hasidic jewish folks. I mean, Tel Aviv seems like a great place to visit this time of year? I didn't even realize the US still had flights there, but yes, they do! While we are in line, Finn looks over and sees a very tall, thin man, with black hair wearing a top hat, black suit and a long black beard. Without missing a beat, Finn says "hey mom, Abraham Lincoln is standing over there". He has his grandfather (aka Bob Goldman's) sense of humor.
Once we finally get inside the airport, the international terminal is absolutely beautiful! It really felt like we were already in a different country! Of course the FIRST thing the boys see is a giant LEGO guy pointing and holding a sign that says "Lego store this way". I'm still stumbling around and confused about all the chaos from the morning, but these boys don't miss a beat or a Lego store. Obviously, we HAVE to buy a small lego set before we even leave the airport. Our flight took off around noon (slightly delayed because of the weather this morning) and now its almost 6 am Dubai time and Nash slept maybe an hour while Finn, hasn't even yawned much less fallen asleep on this 12.5 hour flight.
On another (and more positive note) we are flying on the Emirates 380 airplane which is currently the largest airplane in the world (just ask the boys, they've seen the youtube videos about this aircraft). The upstairs portion has a "bar" area, yes I did just say upstairs portion because this plane is a double decker. For the hour that Nash was sleeping, Paul and I walked to the bar area in the back of the plane to just stand and stretch our legs. While we were back there, we met a man flying back home to Zambia. He was born in Zambia but his grandparents immigrated from India to Zambia a long time ago. He told us his last name was Taylor - his grandparents were given that last name in India because his grandfather worked as a taylor. This man now owns several hotels and rental properties in Zambia that his father bought around 40 years ago. We did travel through Zambia last year but we really didn’t meet or get the chance to talk to many locals while we were there.
Mr. Taylor explained to us that Zambia is the fifth poorest country in Africa. In order for Zambia to gain its independence from the European colonization, Zambia must pay (and continue to pay) a sovereign tax to the European Union. During Covid, Zambia defaulted on this tax and its economy has been struggling dramatically. Mr. Taylor also told us that copper is currently being mined in Zambia right now - mostly by the Chinese - while destroying Zambia's natural resources to export the copper back to China. Of course the local people and local economy are not seeing any of this revenue. I didn’t realize that copper was so valuable and Mr. Taylor informed us that copper is "sort" of valuable in the sense that “where there is copper there is sure to be gold”. The gold hasn’t been discovered… yet. At his hotel, he overhears many different groups of people from all over the world discussing their latest locations for mining copper on the quest to find gold. Paul and I look at each other and say at the same time "its like the wild west".
At this point in the conversation, Nash comes stumbling back to the bar area and cuddles up into my arms. I head back to our seats in an attempt to get him to fall back sleep while Paul continues talking to Mr. Taylor. This is my all time favorite thing about traveling - talking to other people, hearing their stories and hopefully learning/teaching the boys some life lessons along the way.
“It's not the destination, it's the journey” Ralph Waldo Emerson
PS Please ignore any grammatical errors: I have only slept about 2 hours in the past 2 days. All the boys are now sleeping in our hotel room in Dubai while I'm typing this at 1:20 pm Dubai time.
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