Once I arrived at our home stay, I really didn’t know what to expect. Our surrounding in Ulan Ude were not what I was expecting of Siberia, which seemed – before this trip – to have an ingrained image of snow-caped forests of evergreens and permafrost. As we stepped into our home stay with Ksenia and started to get a hold of our surroundings in their two bedroom apartment Polina, Ksenia’s five year old daughter, poked her head into the room where we were unpacking. She was naturally curious about the three really tall people that had entered her home. After a little bit of skittishness and some pushing by her mother, she introduced herself. After this we played a wonderful fairy tale board game with her, which she won, naturally.
A day later, when we headed to their dacha, Polina grabbed my hand and started leading me away towards the forest just outside their fences. I asked where we were headed, and she said we were going to find a dog. We noticed a older couple moseying along and Polina waved and said hello, and they did the same. However, after wandering around for a while it was fairly clear that we weren’t going to find a dog. To make matters worse, when I asked her if she knew the way back, she said that she had forgotten. Whoops.
See that forest? We were lost in that. I was slightly concerned.
I, being fantastically awful with directions, needed to find our way home to the dacha that I had only seen once in my life for a few fleeting moments. For a second I was terrified, but then realized that we couldn’t have walked that far. After a bit of adventure, running through the forest, and a touch of, “Wait, is this the right way?”, we eventually climbed over the logs just outside the fence of the dacha and dashed back in.
Sometimes, all one needs is a leap of faith to get to know someone, and then there’s a bit of getting lost on the way, but it ends up being a pretty great ride. Getting the chance to do that on a trip to Siberia after a chance meeting in a home stay and then getting lost in the woods was the last thing I was expecting, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
