The doggie limo came early to pick up Sadie and Emma to take them to "camp" and not long after Jeanne came to pick me up to got to LAX. On the way I realized I forgot a few minor, but not critical things, so was set to go. We made good time to the airport, and check in and security went smoothly and quickly. I was sitting next to an Christian Iranian Armenian man from Glendale while waiting to board and learned he and his family are part of a large group heading off to Israel for a tour. His group except for the young children all seemed to have immigrated from Iran. I shared with him a little about Israel, mostly about floating in the Dead Sea and experiencing a Bat Mitzvah on Masada. Turns out he had no idea what a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is, and, to the best of his knowledge, he had never spoken to a Jewish person before. I was curious to see what the itinerary is for his trip, thinking I could share a few tips. It was so amazing to see an itinerary that was 98% Christian focused and includes more church visits than I thought existed in Israel. There was virtually nothing included pre Jesus and nothing addressing contemporary Israel. The group had ½ day free so I suggested they try to go to Masada.

So after I printed out my boarding pass, I realized that KLM had changed my pre-reserved 38J window seat to 62G, mid-section aisle. I mentioned this to the flight attendant who did visit me to see if a change could be made, but when I realized the seat next to me was empty I elected to stay where I was. Flight hit a few bumpy spots, short-lied, but otherwise uneventful. Two meals on that flight, a beef bourgonogne sort of a dish complementary Chilean wine with and a cheese and egg sandwich for breakfast. The worman across the aisle was traveling alone, lives in Porterville, CA, and was headed off to South Africa to do Christian ministry work. So she is involved with the HR Rock Church, current owner of the Amabassador auditiorium with a Korean pastor was sure that I would find the services inspiring. I was able to sleep a bit on the plane and watched the movies, "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Roosevelts at Hyde Park" while I ate.

Layover in Amsterdam which involved walking from one end of the airport to the other, visiting the mini exhibit from the Rikjsmuseum ( airports in other countries have such class), and the requisite restroom stop and refrigerator magnet purchase. Spoke briefly with a 60 year old Romanian woman, former pediatric medical assistant in Romania, off to visit her daughter for some months who lives in Chicago. Then while waiting in line, I was able to engage in a good in-depth conversation about many issues of contemporary Russia with a young woman from Russia, Nadia, married to a Greek airline pilot who lives in Singapore. She is returning to Yaroslavl to visit her family. We have some free time there so perhaps we can connect then. I got my window seat on this flight and was seated next to a man from Moscow who was not the friendliest and made some noise about wanted his seat changed. So there was some seat juggling and I ended up sharing the row (both sides of the aisle) with a Dutch couple and their 2 year old Derrick and 4 year old "Brum" (short for Abraham). Brum was having an acute exacerbation of motion sickness on and off throughout the flight and used up much of the plane's stock of paper bags from the seat pockets. I felt badly for the little guy. He did not share in the chicken curry served for lunch. His dad is a trainer for a Moscow soccer team so lives in Moscow, had returned to Amsterdam, and now they were all going back to Moscow for a few weeks. I was asking them about airport transportation in Moscow and they advised the express train. He said it was about a 10 minute walk to the area where my hotel is.