12 november

It’s okay if you get lost.

That being said, it’s better not to.

It’s a little easier if you get lost in your own country.

It’s better to try to avoid getting lost on a Friday evening, if you can help it.

If you have to, think about getting lost at a time that’s not going to be dark or chilly.

If you’re going to get lost, it’s better not to get lost on the day of your sister’s birthday, and even if she’s not your actual sister, just your host sister, and even if it’s not the day of her actual birthday, just the day it’s celebrated.

If you’re bound and determined to get lost anyway, though, try to wait until you know a little more than two weeks’ worth of the language of the area in which you are planning to be lost. If the language you are learning is not the primary language of the area in which you plan to be lost, consider extending the timeline.

This is mostly a hypothetical set of suggestions.

This is not a hypothetical suggestion: If you drive a trolley, for example, a number 2 trolley in the city of Chernihiv, Ukraine, consider checking the identifying number card in the top front display panel of your trolley before you go out for your route in the evening to make sure that the entirety of the number card is visible to tired American girls (who have just spent what seems to them to be an excessive amount of time spending what seems to them to be an excessive percentage of their walkaround allowance on flowers for their host sisters’ birthdays and making sure to buy those flowers are sure to be approved according to a recently acquired understanding of cross-cultural convention and superstition in terms of both color and number) looking for a number 9 trolley and not making careful note of whether or not the identifying number card in the top front display panel of your trolley has slipped down at all or whether the stenciled number itself shows an open or closed loop at the top.

This is not a hypothetical suggestion either: If a foreigner suggests to you in very slow and careful Ukrainian that she may be lost, it may not be very helpful to write directions in that foreigner’s notebook in scrawling cursive Russian.

As a note of etiquette, when a strange woman eventually assumes control of you like a mother hen, taking you by the arm and guiding you off of the trolley at the end of the line, clucking into her cell phone to a daughter who’s husband’s someone might speak English, and etc., etc., etc., puts you onto the right trolley and gets you home, it is acceptable to give her one of the three ribbon-wrapped white flowers you intended to give to your host sister for her birthday, even if this messes up your careful display of your newly acquired cross-cultural understanding.

As a note of closing to this clearly hypothetical situation, when you return to the apartment of your host family and find that there are nearly thirty pairs of shoes crowded just inside the doorway and their nearly thirty owners crowded into the living room—one of whom will obviously turn out to be a fellow American, just as surprised to (hypothetically) see you—your host mother will fuss pleasantly and introduce you to everyone, your host sister will thank you for the two flowers without mentioning their potential awkwardness (at least you didn't bring a dozen yellow flowers, but of course she doesn't say this), and you’ll suddenly be plunged into the middle of another unexpected adventure, only this one will be much warmer and seem somehow much closer to home.