Ladies and Gentlemen....

All good things have to come to an end eventually. Specifically, our time here in China has to come to an end.... and in our case, the end is sooner than we thought! Folks, we have decided to come home early! Get ready to throw us a welcome home party for March 19th! :D Please play the National Anthem upon our arrival :)

USA! USA! USA!

Below, you will find our itinerary for our three week backpacking trip afterwards. So excited can't wait! That's seven flights we just booked today! Eek! :o I got a little excited and did a bit of over planning.

Run in with the PoPo

A while back in the land of camels and Sahara Desert, Brandon and I met a Brazilian couple who quit work and decided to go travel around the world for a year. They have since hit 200 days of travel! Congrats! Anyways, as luck would have it, they were coming to China right when we would be here. Having stayed in contact since Morocco, we decided to go to Xi’an this past weekend because it would correspond to them being there and hence, us being able to have a mini reunion. So the ridiculously overpriced high speed train tickets were purchased and bags were packed! Xi’an here we come!

As a little side story, after having been in China for a month, early last week it was our duty to go submit our passports to the Exit and Entry Office of Zhengzhou where they would hold our passports for a week so they could fasten our residency visas inside. Easy enough right?

Anyways, we made reservations at the coolest hostel in Xi’an and proceeded to head on over there. Upon arrival, since Brandon and I did not have our passports with us, we find out that our photo copies were not enough; they also needed our visas. Ok, easy enough, we had both taken pictures of our visas when we first got them and had them stored on our cameras. Well, after having submitted that, we find out that that was STILL not enough. They wanted to see the stamp that we got upon entry into China. After ten minutes of my trying to explain to them that no one can enter the country without a stamp, so why not go ahead and assume that I have a stamp and just let me check it, I gave in and called our school foreign coordinator, Samantha, to help us out. Thankfully, she had copies of this information in the office and emailed it to us.

Great, so at this point, I have moved past the bitchiness of the woman checking us in and have settled down to enjoy a Qingdao beer while my email containing our visas loaded (world’s slowed internet at this hostel) so I could forward it to the hostel. Thirty minutes go by peacefully as I sip my beer and chitchat with fellow travelers. Then the bomb drops.  The lady at the check in counter states that our visas are expired. This was obviously news to us since we had just turned in all of our paper work to the Chinese Government and had our residency visas processed. After confirming to ourselves by checking the Chinese Consulate Website that the visas were in fact not invalid, but actually 100% legit and ready to go, we started to state our case to this now even bitchier check in lady. After an hour of this and me being on the verge of tears, Brandon over hears the lady talking to someone in Chinese basically admitting to having been wrong, but was "trying to save face" and not backing down from her original stance.

Frustration and fatigue set in and there was nothing to do other than leave the hostel after an adieu containing a few not so nice words to the entire hostel staff. Tired and hungry we went wandering looking for any place that would take in two “illegal” foreigners, as dubbed by stupid check in lady. Now, usually, my navigation skills are on par with gold medal standards, however, due to excessive emotional turmoil, I now can admit, that I lead our tired and angry little threesome in the wrong direction for longer than I want to admit. We ended up wandering down a dark abandoned narrow street on the verge of collapse. All hope of finding our next intended hostel gone, we helplessly walk up to the only people on the street: a bunch of guys sitting around playing poker. They were highly amused by our giant backpacks and giant guidebook and had no problem chatting (aka speaking Chinese to us while we stare back with blank faces repeating over and over Shuyuan Hostel) with us as they passed our guide book around trying to figure out where we were trying to go. At one point, it became obvious to us that they had reached a consensus about something since they stopped randomly saying the three English phrases they knew to us and started saying Shuyuan over and over again. Then out of nowhere, they all get up and walk out of their little poker room and start gesturing to us. Confused, we just kind of stood there and watched one of the men walk up to a car and open the driver’s side door. He waved to us to join him. Now I can say this was a bit of a scary moment; to enter a stranger’s car or not, but after exchanging the “look”, all three of us decided to go for it and hope nothing movie-like happens to us.

Driving with this guy was a whole different adventure, but I’m glad to report that I made it out alive. After being in the car with our driver and watching his turns, it came to me that I had been lost and led us in the totally wrong direction. Feeling better and encouraged that we were finally making progress, I started enjoying the crazy ride this guy was giving us. At one point, our driver stops at a red light and start fiddling with his pockets. We were ultra confused and a bit concerned until he whips out his wallet, or should I say badge! He flashes his shiny gold emblem and all of a sudden his friends hand motions and random gestures now make sense! We had gotten into the car of the Chief of Police of Xi’an! No wonder his friends kept saying FBI!

So to make a long story short, we got a ride in the back seat of a cop car to our hostel in Xi’an. Believe it or not, but I swear it’s true. I’m not lying; this stuff does really happen to me. :)

*note: we were not able to meet up with the Brazilians as they hit a few transportation problems. :( Perhaps in another country another time.

How to procure a couch in China

As I sit on my lovely, albeit not as soft as desired, newly procured couch, I recall the occurrences of my last two days.

Said couch

One would normally think that buying a couch would be relatively simple. I mean if you wanted a lightly used cheap one, you could look on craigslist or drive around town in your car scavengering the alleys. Or if you wanted a new one you could choose one of the many furniture stores around such as Value Shitty Furniture, uummm I mean Value City Furniture (hehe) or go higher end with Luxury Furniture and Lighting (Really ppl? Selling luxury furniture and that's the best name you can come up with?!). You're couch shopping experience would consist of going to the store, telling the sales person what you want, giving your address and then coughing up an arm and a leg or just a few bucks, depends on which store you went to of course, and then sitting around Indian style on your floor waiting for the thing to be delivered. And that would be it. A child could do it!

Can you spot our couch?

However, my experience was slightly different. The day started with my mother and I heading out to the whole sale fabric store. Seems like a logical start to my couch story, right? Well the fabric store did not have our desired fabric, lace, so we just for kicks walked up this escalator that hasn't been used for years to the second story, still holding on to our hopes for Chinese lace. Well, no dice on the lace, however, we did stumble upon a whole room full of furniture! Do the Chinese mean to hide such goods from us Laowais or is this really where a furniture store should be located according their ultra logical thinking?

Either way, after making a quick loop around, we found our victim; the loudest, smallest couch in the entire room that wasn't a ridiculous price. And now the fun begins. We got the price relatively easily but the delivery aspect was going to take a bit longer.

Since arriving in China, I have taken to carrying around a little red notebook in my purse to write down menu items that we like to eat in Hansi, pinyin and our own little description. So I take out my little book and start very kindergarden-ly drawing a picture of a couch and a house and then an arrow connecting the two with a question mark (can anyone guess what I'm asking with my drawing!!??). The Chinese lady who owned the couch was not having it or even attempting to understand me. Frustrated, we were about to walk away, when I remembered I have a very useful and awesome friend who speaks both English and Chinese, AND is only a phone call away (Alexix I love you!). Well I don't want to bore you but let me tell you what went down in these phone calls (there were three of them!). I would call Alexis and tell her my situation, she would them tell her coworker (who is a Chinese native), who would them talk to the shop lady. After that, the coworker would tell Alexis and Alexis would tell me. It's was a real life version of telephone! Well after three such phone calls we went from having to go down stairs and find our own guy to deliver the couch, to having the shop lady deliver the couch to us for free by the next day before10:30am. I was not part of the conversation so I have no idea how this change came to be, but I was too happy to care! I had just gotten a couch and somehow managed to get free delivery! This is what Charlie Sheen would call "winning". :)

Priceless

So the next day, at 10:30 on the button, my phone rings and I pick up my phone to hear the shop lady (I recognized her voice) screaming, well that's what it sounded like, at me in Chinese (doesn't she know by now I don't speak Chinese?). After saying yes and thank you over and over to her in Chinese, I just hung up the phone. I mean I obviously have no idea what she is saying! Brandon, Mom, and I ran down stairs and are looking around for a delivery truck to no avail. We're standing there looking and looking and then all of a sudden my Mom points to the left... And there is a little old lady with the biggest grin on her face on her adult tricycle pulling our couch. *Dramatic Pause* The Chinese deliver furniture on tricycles! Priceless moment. Oh, I also want to point out that the store was 10km away! That's not particularly a short distance via tricycle. Additionally, I am sad to report I did not have my camera on me since I had been distracted by the Chinese yelling on the phone, but I found this picture instead. It's pretty representative of what went on with our little old lady and her tricycle.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I got a couch in China.


Summary for those who don't want to read the whole post:
1. Go somewhere where no one in their right mind would expect to find a couch
2. Don't bother drawing pictures, they can't read those here
3. Always have a bilingual friend at your finger tips
4. If they say they don't deliver, just keep asking the same question in as many different ways as you can come up with until you get what you want (free delivery duh!)
5. Pay for your couch and go home to wait for it
6. Go pick up your couch from the old lady delivering your couch via tricycle.

Our modest accommodations - Hangzhou

Thank you so much, Jim for getting us this fabulous room! We really appreciate it! :)

It's also the last soft bed I've slept in since.

All my worldly possessions.

I think I did an amazing job personally. However, the people picking us up were mighty confused with why we needed to bring so much!