We were on the road for seven hours, and throughout the entire trip, a little Chinese child was just screaming his lungs out. It would have been fine—who knows, maybe he was in pain—if not for two "buts": the baby's mom, not knowing how to calm him down, chose not the best method, let me tell you. She was desperately shaking him and shouting to the whole bus, "What's wrong with you, baby?" (as if he were carefully hiding it), and another equally stupid question was, "Can you hear me?". No, she's practically screaming into his ear so the whole bus can hear, but he can't hear her. Not getting a coherent answer from her child, she would start shaking him even more, yelling, "Stoooop!!!". This lovely scene of family idyll was interrupted only by a solid dark-skinned lady who was talking just as loudly on the phone with her sister. The thing is, this lady's friend had slept with her husband, and she had caught them and was full of determination to take revenge on him with his own friend. The tone of the conversation was heating up, and my supply of indecent English was no longer enough... A pity, there were so many more details and plans for devastating revenge. So, neither my player, nor my reader, nor my travel pillow were needed.
Closer to night, we arrived in Virginia Beach. Back in Russia, I had met some Russian girls who have been living there for ten years. They agreed to let us stay for the summer for a very reasonable fee and a deposit, which we subsequently managed to lose. We stained the carpet, tried to wash it, and it ended up with pink spots, and the deposit washed away forever. But otherwise, we were very lucky with housing: unlike other students, we lived in a HOUSE, not a dorm, three people in a room, two rooms and a living room, a fully equipped kitchen, a backyard—in short, everything a person dreams of when going to America. Oh yes, and an American flag in the backyard.
I won't describe every day; that threatens to turn into a thick novel, so I'll try to tell you about the most interesting parts and not bore my readers.
