Today's adventures - The lost and the kind - Day 5 in Russia

Today's adventures - The lost and the kind - Day 5 in Russia

This rural girl lost her way in the city today. Did not get lost location-wise, but lost the way to her destination on two occasions. I live furthest away of all the Bard-Smolny students from the university. I left my dom at 09:15, a time that was supposed to be early enough for me to have a margin of error. I got to Smolny at nearly 12:00, and we were meant to meet there at 10:45 (even I was not the last arrival!). First I seem to have taken the wrong bus from my street. It came to the end of the line much earlier than expected and then I had to take another that ran for a very, very long time. When I finally reached ploschad' Truda I wandered around confused for something on the order of a half hour, not recalling the path our group took yesterday. I had the correct street but the wrong side of the intersection. A man on the street asked to where I was trying to go when he saw me looking at my piece of paper and at the numbers on the buildings, so I told him and tried to follow his directions but ended up confused again back at the ploschad'. The same thing happened when I approached a man at a gate for help. I had forgotten that the underground crosswalk here goes multiple directions below the entire ploschad', not just underneath one street. This intersection confused other people too. Two separate Russian women asked me for directions. One asked how to get to a building that was not familiar to me and I simply told her that I did not know. The other was in the same situation as me, trying to figure out whether the street in question actually continued on the other side of the intersection and how to get there. I told her that I did not know and also wanted to find out. Yesterday the Program manager told me to expect people to approach me for directions since I blend in with the locals when I am on my own, and it was funny that it happened so soon. I think I would have finally figured out how to cross the street within the next 10 minutes but, to be sure that I did not end up even later, I called the Assistant Program Manager to tell her I was lost. The only problem is that the mobile phone is very quiet and I have always struggled to hear people on the telephone, even more than in person. So she began texting me since I could not hear her. She texted me in English but I had not yet figured out how to text in English, so had to figure out what say in Russian: I see a yellow arch, now I see Galernaya st. building thirty two (I had to also write out the numbers because I did not know how to enter digits). The very first things out of her mouth when I arrived were that everything would be okay and, "Did you cry?" (no, I did not, and she thought that was good). She will look at the phone with me tomorrow and see if they have another one that would be easier to hear on. I hope to buy a SIM card for my own phone soon because it might be easier to use, both for hearing and for writing messages. A drawback is that the cold does cause it to malfunction.

The public bus attendants on the four buses I took today (it should have been only two total today) were all women and were all kind. When my first bus this morning came to the end of the line the attendant told me more than once that this was the end, so I need to get off, but also helped me find the next bus stop where I could pick up another bus line. The second incident today was me getting on a bus on the way home that was not going to either of the stops near my dom. The static signs and digital signs indicating the bus numbers and routes and the route tags on the buses seem to have some disagreement with each other. The attendant looked sad that I had paid for the wrong bus and very diligently did her best as I went several stops on her bus to explain to me which number bus to take and from where I could take it. I disembarked and waited for the correct number bus. This time as I got on the attendant was close enough that I could speak to her right away. I asked if I could get to such-and-such street. She was not sure what it was, so I said the name of the street next to it and she said yes. I remained standing, partly because I was feeling tense, but after a few stops she came and insisted that I sit, so I did. When we got to the stop before mine I was not sure whether mine was next. The attendant came and told me without me asking that the next stop was mine, not this one, something that helped my nerves. As I walked down the street with the bus stops to my street I began to shiver for the first time here. I felt very tired and very hungry. It was already dinnertime when I got back because I walked around longer than expected with some of the group after lunch and then had trouble with the buses.

This morning we had our preliminary Russian placement test. There were some words on it I did not know and others the forms of which I was not sure how to choose from. Others in the group are much more fluent than I am, especially, understandably, the heritage speakers. I am trying to remember when I feel inferior that I am not stupid and that I simply have more to learn. We all had lunch with the Russian as a Second Language instructors and the program managers and we conversed almost entirely in Russian. The academic advisor for Bard-Smolny students thought it was funny when one of us four Bard students in the group said that Bard campus is in the woods and I interjected that Bard was not located in the woods, that if anything I live in the woods but Bard is not in the woods! Tomorrow the two-week language intensive starts. I am nervous. I want to learn as much as possible while I am here.

I will be so tired tomorrow. I meant to go to bed earlier tonight but also meant to be back here several hours earlier. Maybe tomorrow?