Small-Town Girl in a Big City

Between orientation, my parents' knowledge, and friends' knowledge of Russian people, I thought I'd have a pretty good sense of how to behave to at least sometimes blend in around here. I even wore heeled boots today for our scavenger hunt around the city, because I knew Russian women often wear heels and dress nicely.

But I'm not used to being in a big city with so many people and methods of transportation. So essentially: me + St. Pete= a lot of mistakes and misfortunes on my first day out and about. Specifically:

• This morning my host mother rode with me on a trolleybus to our meeting place. At one point the bus started moving when I wasn't holding on to anything and I fell onto the man standing behind me.
• I also gave the woman collecting money for the trolleybus my student ID instead of a cash card.
• Something pooped on my head while I was walking. I don't think it was a bird. Thankfully, it came out but I'm still traumatized.
• We bought tokens for the metro and although all you have to do is slip in the coin and pass through the security bar-thing, I thought you had to hit the machine because other people seemed to be doing that. Instead I just made a fool of myself and a woman yelled at me.
• There was nothing to hold onto on the metro so one of my team mates and I awkwardly held hands and stumbled over each other.
• We almost got hit by a car at least twice*
• I went in the wrong direction twice on my way home. Luckily I had enough of an idea of where I was supposed to be that I realized it.
  
  I heard that the best way to learn your way around a city is to get lost in it, and I'm sure it's true. But hopefully if and when that day comes, I will be with at least one other person and it won't be after a 4 hour scavenger hunt on foot.
  
  *Once was because a politsiya directed us to J-walk across a 3-lane street rather than go to the crosswalk. We were like a row of ducklings that people begrudgingly stopped for.