Whatever Happened to Predictiability?

As we walked through the streets of San Francisco I took an inventory of the consistencies in my life these last 13 days. There's of course that familiar brown and green of the Starbucks we've seen in every city, the 5 dollar foot long advertisements plastered on every billboard, and the weird smells that are constantly inhabiting our bus. I can rely on the hotel being Best Western and that Rueban will wear a black sweat suit with a white stripe and gold necklace. But other than that every day has been a completely different adventure. Someone said to us the other day, "I have to warn you about Salt Lake City, you are gonna be in culture shock" We all looked at each other and Pierce said, "I feel like we are constantly in a state of culture shock!"
Today was no different, we began in the Mission and Castro districts and ended at Fisherman's Warf. Because we did so much walking it was interesting to see how fast the city transitioned from district to district. In literally a block, the scenery between the Mission and Castro districts went from run down to beautiful muraled buildings and the passersbys transformed from pan handlers to trendy and well dressed. We ended up at Fishersman Warf where we were surrounded by Joe's Crab Shacks and Ben and Jerry's and fellow tourists. San Francisco both thrilled and overwhelmed me with its rich history, smooshed together houses, beautiful architecture, and diversity. One of my favorite parts of the day was enjoying some awesome Thai food in an upstairs restaurant and getting to look down over the street through an open window.
For the last couple hours we got to break up and explore San Francisco and experience public transportation. My group made it back safe and on time but we might have left our pride somewhere on the BART. We definitely revealed our tourist identity and felt clueless, but in the end we found our way back and made some great memories. We give Shirah a hard time for having "Shirisms" but tonight she said something quite insightful "you have to get lost in a city a couple times to really get to know it." It got me thinking about this trip and what we are trying to accomplish. Maybe this is trip is about wasting a half day in LA because we didn't account for traffic, getting lost on the Bart, feeling out of place, and experiencing culture shock in our own country. I wonder if getting lost 40 times would be enough to grasp the identity of a whole country? Whatever happened to predictability? It certainly didn't breed discovery. Ahh Ahh Ahh Ahh Chity Chi bob botta...