So I knew I couldn’t walk to my Turkish class, and would need another plan. I stared at a map and felt some vague hope that if I went to a metro station I knew, I could probably walk the rest of the way to the school. Perhaps. Just in case, I leave 90 minutes early. However, to get in the metro, you need a special card, and I learned I couldn’t buy that card at 7 in the morning. A man at a market assured me that a bus driver would let me pay in cash. So I waited in a long line for a morning bus. I boarded and only then learned that I could not–in fact–pay the driver.

I would have considered it a victory for my Turkish language skills to understand the driver, if he hadn’t been sullenly saying, “If you don’t have a card, don’t get on the bus. Get out.”…