Oh So Very Lost, All The Time – 9/27/17

One of the greatest parts of living abroad is experiencing and being immersed into a new culture with a different language. It is also the most challenging part. I am sure you have picked up on that by now! I really want to make my life easier so I signed up to take some Russian classes. Last night I set out to the city center area to start my classes. The language center was on Arbat Street, a historical yet touristy cobblestone street. It was a lovely street.

Unfortunately the language center wasn’t quite on the lovely street. The center sent specific directions and a map. To find their location the instructions said that the entrance was actually behind the building through the back door. I have been having enough problems getting to the fronts of buildings (previous blog post as an example), so I was a bit nervous about finding this place. I got to the intersection and followed the map around the building to look for the “brown door in the left side of the courtyard after going through the black gate”. This is what I encountered:

…a very alley like courtyard with only one door that had no sign, no lights and was locked. There was one window that looked into a kitchen with chefs cooking. I then went in all directions of the intersection. Three of the four directions had black gates ironically. I got especially close to all the doors in the areas in search of a sign or number. I even showed the address to a resturant worker taking out the garbage. She pointed me back to Arbat street. I’m sure she thought I had no sense of direction considering I was walking in alleyways behind buildings with dumpsters, instead of the obvious large street with stores and restaurants.

I spent some more time studying my map and realized I may have been at the wrong intersection altogether. I then ventured on to find the “correct” intersection. There was a black gate right where the map said it would be……but it was padlocked.

…..30 minutes later, I gave up. I am not one to give up easily, but for the life of me I could not figure out where to go or what to do. Oh and my phone wasn’t working to make calls either. This phone business is really another ongoing theme in my new life. Good thing there is WhatsApp.

I really don’t know what my issue is with finding places. I guess the first solution is to stop using google maps, they have now led me astray quite a few times. Maybe my Russian lessons will help……oh wait I couldn’t figure out how to get to them!