We arrived. America. The first thing that catches your eye when walking toward border control is the cars parked outside. A couple dozen Ford Crown Victoria police cruisers and some new-looking Chevy Caprices, typical American utility trucks, and an ambulance. Man... My I-94 form needed a destination address and a US phone number, but I forgot to write down the hostel address on a piece of paper... Whatever, I wrote down the address of my fake employer and my Russian mobile number) They let me through) After saying goodbye to the new friends I met on the plane, I thought, I really need to call my parents... There was a lady selling calling cards, but man, I'm the smartest guy ever—I thought, why spend so much if I'll just buy a phone later and call home for 10 cents a minute? Anyway, I went to the AirTrain, wandered around a bit, and finally made it to Jamaica Station. I decided to get a monthly MetroCard—oh well, screw it, might as well—and then I started spacing out... Honestly, I spent about 6-7 hours wandering around the city, bumping into things with almost no results—I bought an American power adapter for 12 bucks and a pretty trashy TracFone mobile—I couldn't get the codes to work to call Russia, just a simple Samsung with 450 minutes for 60 bucks. I was clueless, yeah.

So, I'm wandering around Manhattan looking for free Wi-Fi to find the hostel address—naive and fruitless. I walked into the neighborhood where the hostel was supposed to be—and it was a pretty rough part of Harlem, no white people at all... and again, no results. Time is ticking, and you get more and more confused, I had to do something—so I decided to call home at any cost.

My censored TracFone won't call home, and Beeline won't turn on roaming. Damn. I was getting depressed, no place to stay, didn't call my family, and I was dead tired, that's it, I'm sleeping in Central Park. But okay, I pulled out the number of a J-1 acquaintance I met online from my laptop, and he says, listen, go to Chelsea Hostel on 23rd Street and buy a calling card to call home. Well, nothing else to do, I decided to figure out the card first—I found a landline, spent a long time staring at it wondering what to do. I found some Indian guy who sold me a card for calls to Europe. Staring at it again, no idea what to do with it or where to stick it, whether to enter a number or what. I exchanged a couple of bucks for quarters, thinking, okay, now everything will be fine—and still couldn't get through. And then, finally, I was unexpectedly connected to customer service—and that's when all my problems were solved in a minute, because I had my Visa card with me—entered the card number, confirmation, everything, okay, and I finally got through to my family... I'll skip the conversation with the homeland, because it would just be more censored stuff. Anyway, I still had to find Chelsea Hostel, 23rd Street. Okay, I head there and spend another couple of hours wandering around, annoying Americans with my insanely broken English. So, finally found it—a couple of blocks south of 23rd Street, went in, paid for 3 nights upfront, and crashed.

To be continued—housing, Harlem and Morningside, the chaos with SEVIS, SSN, and banks.