I’ll admit it, I’ve been a bit of a hermit the past couple of weeks (no worries, this is a proven symptom of culture shock). Sure, I’ve managed the market and even walked a couple of barrios over to get my Visa pics snapped, but I’ve spent the majority of my time indoors, adding pages to the novel, brushing up on my English grammar as I prep for my TEFL course, and let’s be honest, nursing a healthy-sized social media addiction since it’s the easiest, fastest way to both stay in the loop with friends and publishing buzz back home, and this blog seems to be the fastest, easiest way to share my goings-on with all of you. I’ll say right here that it means a great deal to me that you all read this and comment and cheer me on. Thanks to Twitter, I now have even more blogs and websites to visit in the AM, as I’m sure all of you do too, so I appreciate you stopping to check in. It makes those 6,000 miles shrink a bit — and I thank you.

Ok, back to my outdoor adventure. My mission? Scout out two hotels for upcoming visitors – my mom and “big sis” Macey. So, I did what any smart/cell-phone-less person would do. I looked up the locales on a certain online mapping service and wrote out some directions with paper and pencil (see above), and set out! The sun was shining, I bought myself a gelato, the daytime stars were aligning. I was downright owning this new city. Until I got lost. Now, I know there’s much to be discovered from getting lost and all that jazz, but at the moment I was just heading back and forth across the same bridge (which it turned out never required crossing) not once, but twice in an effort to find the first hotel. I mean, this trusty mapping service told me Diego de Velasquez was on the left, so if I just keep crossing this bridge, I know I’ll find it, right? Wrong. I felt like Michael Scott from that episode of The Office when he drives his rental car straight into a pond just because the GPS told him to.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, I was able to get myself back onto 11 de Septiembre and locate the hotel. Success! Until I attempted the second hotel. Sta. Beatriz should just be right off Providencia, right? Well, right, except that that trusty mapping service told me to go left instead of right, so I was pretty much home before I realized my error. I even circled back and still didn’t find it, but tried to at least track down serge protectors and a desk lamp on this leg of the sojourn, also without success, at which point I came home, pretty much owned by this city. 

At home, where I promptly let out a little whimper over my failed mission, my amazing husband reminded me about patience and not being so hard on myself. I just had to chalk this up to being one of the moments when living in a foreign land makes it impossible to check anything off the list. Hotel search? Well, that’s half a point. Desk lamp? Fat chance. Serge protectors? You crazy, girl. Sore throat from the smog? Okay, we’ll throw you that bone. But none of it really mattered in the bigger scheme of things, even if I gained new understanding of what the movie Lost In Translation was really all about. I’m still here on the adventure. I’m not getting off the ride.

To stay focused on the positive, there is something liberating about being phone-less and truly on your own in an unknown place. It will make you approach locals in your choppy Spanish, even if three different folks also don’t know where Sta. Beatriz happens to be. Hey, at least you’re not alone! At least you share a joke with the florist. At least you stop and listen to the music (literally). At least you take some inspiring pics along the way of your new city where one day (hopefully sooner rather than later), you’ll set out down the same path and know exactly where you are and where you’re going.

How do I know this? Because I’m getting a phone today 🙂