Our last meeting went very well. We had 11 visitors. My students have been inviting other students and even family members. It's going well. The discussion was lively. Colonel has been teaching a series of lessons about prayer. This week we looked at Jehoshaphat's story. It caused a lot of laughter as people stumbled over the strange names used in the story. There were so many questions that we strayed a bit off topic, but eventually pulled it back together again. It was also nice to see Katherine again. She's missed the last few meetings because of exams.
Weather
The weather in this city has been super rainy. It seems that it rains at least twice a week. In between the downpours, we've had summer type weather. Suddenly, this week, we had a cold spell. It's been so cold that I'm considering pulling out the winter coats again. I'm truly hoping that the weather evens out soon.
I went on a quest with my students to mail some boxes. We decided that we have too many books to take home in our luggage, so we mailed some things. I sent a large box of home-school and religious materials to my buddy in Jingzhou. She asked me to consider her when we decide to go. I also sent an even larger box to my mom's address that has all of our school books and some other random books we wanted to keep.
I asked 3 students to help me. My first student, QinMengpei, went with me to the school EMS room to see if they could help me. I needed to find boxes that I could use to mail the books. They said that they didn't have boxes, they couldn't mail anything in China, and they couldn't mail anything outside of China. I asked them why they are even located at the school if they can't do anything. Of course, there was no answer.
Then I got 2 other students, ShanJunlin and DuDandan to help me a few days later. We went to a local shop and the owner gave us some free boxes and packing tape. I took these things home and packed up my books. We went to mail the first box which was going to my friend in China. The boy working at the mail company didn't know how to mail the box. He had to find the owner and ask the owner how to do it. When all was said and done, it cost more than 100 RMB to mail it. My friend got the box 2 days later.
The second box was more difficult. We had to take a taxi to the large China Post office near the train station. No one knew how to get there but me, so I had to direct the taxi driver. He dropped us off at the intersection because there was construction. I had to carry this box for about a 10 minute walk to the post office. It was so heavy! I had to stop several times to rest. I also had a cut on my hand and the box rubbed the bandaid off. It caused me a lot of pain. When we got to the street where the post office was, the street was actually gone. We had to cross over through wet cement. Once we got inside, the worker told us that they couldn't accept any mail because the street was gone. So, we had to take the box and walk back out to the intersection to get a new taxi.
My students tried to carry the box on the way out. The two of them tried to carry it together and almost dropped it, so I ended up carrying it again. I was pretty frustrated by the whole situation. On top of that, it started to rain and we were missing lunch. Well, we made it to the taxi and travelled to another China Post office. When we got there, there was no worker. We waited for about 20 minutes and finally a woman sauntered in quite slowly from outside. We took the box over to the counter and she ignored us while she helped every single person in the shop besides us. After she helped everyone, she told us that she would need to check the box. I unpacked the box and she looked through the books. Then she said we had to use one of their boxes. We repacked the books into a new box. This box was huge. It was so big that I was worried about the books flipping around inside of it and getting damaged. The lady solved this problem by ripping the sides of the box down to the level of the books and then folding the sides over and taping them up.
I was quite dismayed at this. The box ended up sort of dome shaped. She taped around the box several times. Then we had to fill out forms using Chinese, Pinyin, and English. It took us about 20 minutes to get all the forms filled out. After all that, we had to wait while the worker called her boss to find out how to mail the box. She chatted on the phone while she typed things into the computer. She weighed the box. It was about 10 kg. Then she checked on the mailing prices. It cost 3000 rmb to do airmail where the box would arrive in 2-3 weeks. There was a second airmail price for 1800 rmb where the box would arrive within 2-3 months. The cheapest option was a slow boat from China (haha), that would allow our box to arrive within 4 months or more. I went for the second option. My hope is that the box will arrive before we leave China. I don't know if it will, but we're hoping for the best.
After that, we left the post office. As we were waiting for another taxi to take us home, my student ShanJunlin made a funny comment. She said that she would remember this day for the rest of her life. She further explained that she'd never mailed anything outside of China before. This explains why she was taking pictures of every single mailing label that we filled out. She said the experience was quite amazing. I could only laugh. It's something so commonplace for Americans. Even if it wasn't, we wouldn't consider it an amazing experience to remember forever. It just goes to show how different we all are.
In the end, I was glad to get it done. It only took me a whole day to figure it out. I'm still not sure that the box will arrive in America. Only time will tell. Now if I could only find someone to buy my ebike. Then my work would be done.