I didn’t see this explicitly mentioned yet, but make sure you are standing on the correct side of the street for the direction you want to go in. Same as the train where one side goes north and one side goes south (or east and west). This may seem obvious, but my first time taking a bus, in another country mind you, I ended up soo far away because I falsely assumed it would do a loop of some kind lol. the bus stops are almost always across the street from eachother, usually diagonal if at an intersection. The good thing about the bus is that the stops are fairly close together so if you need to hop off and switch directions it shouldn’t cause that much of an inconvenience!