Today has been a hard day. Nothing particularly weird or bad happened, it was just hard. Welcome to Expatlandia.

Ten weeks ago we arrived in Moscow, and, even if I say so myself, things are going pretty well. The daughter is settled in school (phew), the husband has found enough stuff to do to keep himself employed so far (yay) and I’ve found several places that sell coffee (and relax). I have even rediscovered the joy of walking round a city I live in, a pleasure long forgotten in the heat and the humidity of Asia.

But in Expatlandia, little things can jolt you out of what you think is your new routine. Little things can knock you for six, and remind you that you are a stranger in a strange land, and you shouldn’t get complacent. 

I know it’s only ten weeks, and that I’m doing well so far, but it was a hard day. 

We are still in a hotel, and if you think getting a child up and out of your house is hard enough, try doing it in a hotel. All our clothes are tucked away in suitcases and shelves and drawers and cupboards. Grabbing breakfast on the fly is tricky when you have to be fully dressed and on a different floor to get it. Jumping in the shower takes a few minutes preparation when you remember you need to remove hand-washed undies from the rail first. And that’s just leaving the room.

The school is nowhere near the hotel, so we have a driver to take us there. It’s an expensive necessity and means we have no leeway in time. Moscow traffic is as bad as people warned us it would be and a minute extra in the hotel can mean a ten minute queue later. But we get to school on time, the daughter gets away, and then I battle carsickness as the driver lurches from one lane to the next, unable to decide on whether braking or accelerating will get us through the jam quicker. (The answer is obviously NEITHER JUST CHILL DUDE but I haven’t learned the russian for that yet.)

I discover in the car that the daughter has lost another piece of uniform – I’m sure there must be an inter-class challenge for this – but gained a different, unlabelled, piece. Sigh. I get to my coffee place and order my preferred drink (flat white) and read my favourite website (Lainey Gossip) and regroup a little.

I go to meet a group of women for coffee and that’s when things go down again. Usually I know a couple of women, but the ones I know aren’t there, and suddenly I feel very alone. The coffee is terrible. I’m having the kind of strained small talk conversations that I know I have to go through but don’t feel like I have the patience for. I’m also aware that I turned down a date with some other potential friends and I’m doubting my decision, even though I’m really pleased I’ve got involved with this group.

I make my excuses and leave. I have to buy a couple of costumes for the daughter because it’s international week and book week at her school, and while I have perfectly good costumes for these situations in our shipping container, as we are still in the hotel, I don’t have them. I’ve been recommended a costume shop so I make my way there, thanks to Google maps. The women are in the shop are rude and unhelpful (I ask in Russian, do you speak English? She answers in English, no. Sigh.) and the costumes aren’t anything like what I expected or needed. Faced with a trek to another costume place I decide to hop on the bus, which is one of my favourite things to do in Moscow, and go back to the hotel. That’s when I wish I had a home to go to. 

Usually when I am having a bad/irritating/grumpy kind of a day, I get to go home and do the stuff I like to do to cheer me up. But being in a hotel, even a nice one, makes this hard. I did my best – listened to music, bought some fancy ham from the fancy supermarket to make a fancy sandwich, watched some TV, but I just felt adrift. No friends to really talk to in person, no home comforts – no home! – and just a ton of Russian homework to do. 

There are a few things that really make you feel like an expat. In some places it can be how you look or where you live. Here it is the language, and Russian is hard. I’m trying my best, but it is a slog. After a morning of feeling like everything was hard – getting out of the hotel, making friends, finding things to help my daughter have a good time at school – being reminded of the huge language difficulty was just too much. 

So I did what I felt was right. Cancelled my lesson, cracked open an emergency bar of chocolate, watched a video of Jon Snow (Game of Thrones, not Channel Four) singing for charity. Put on a new pair of boots. Met the daughter with her favourite snack. Messaged my husband to say I was feeling sad. He advised copious amounts of wine and came home with a huge bunch of flowers, and I sat down to write. 

Now I’ve listed all these things, it doesn’t feel like anything particularly bad happened. It’s the pile of little things that cause a bad day in Expatlandia. The language issues. Not knowing people or places. Boring little chores that are made harder and more time-consuming because you don’t know how things work. 

I know tomorrow will be better. I know that when (if!) we ever get out of the hotel I will be able to make our home, which we all need to start feeling like we belong. And I’m really hoping that at some point Russian will feel less like an elaborate joke and actually a way of communicating with the people in this wonderful, big, busy, living city. I know that writing makes me happier, and I should do more of it. And I know the friends will come. For all the benefits, Expatlandia is a strange place to live. Consider this a postcard. Wish you were here?