Russian for travellers

Chanced upon this "Russian for travellers" course when I was checking up a workshop recommended by my friend. Price was also very reasonable ($20 for 6 or 7 sessions). I did a double take when I saw the price initially. Most language courses are a couple of hundreds dollars. Thus I signed up for it. Just went for my first session over the weekend. Instructor is a Russian gal, she has a language school apparently that charges a few hundreds for beginner Russian. I think this course may be like a appetitizer for people to sign up her proper beginner course. Russian is indeed a difficult language. Even a simple hello seems hard to pronunce. My class has an informal setting, the instructor will ask us what we want to learn. The first lesson, we learn how to say Hello, Thank You, Excuse me, etc. Not much of teaching materials, you just write them in your own notebook whatever way you want as she pronunce the words we want to learn. She gives us a lot of opportunity to practice with the person next to you and the pace is relatively slow. I guess that is why the price is so reasonable. It suits me since I pick up languages slowly. Also, I just want to learn the basics for travelling. Just to learn the few phrases to hopefully get by in case I encounter situations where there is no English speakers.