Meeting all of these people from around the world is pretty cool. You can meet them anywhere, just ask. That night was probably the beginning of my second adventure. Yesterday I woke up and knew that I had to send my dad my broken laptop keyboard. I didn't have a clue where a UPS store was and I tried to look it up on UPS.com. Well, they have 5-6 locations in the Beijing area, I just didn't know which one was closest to me. Looking up a map of Beijing is another thing. If you can even find a decent one, its either going to be in Chinese or it will be incomplete. Most of the smaller areas with small streets are unlabeled. It took me about 45 minutes to find the first location, and I didn't really feel like trying to look up all of the locations so this was going to be the one I'd use. I took the subway there, and when I got out of the subway I was a little disoriented. I had a general idea where to go, but back to the map thing, I wasn't quite sure exactly where to go. I knew I had to walk west of the subway line, which I did, but after walking for a while I knew I should have passed it by now. I turned around to look at the buildlings. Everyone who doesn't know, I like looking at buildings and taking pictures of skyscrapers. A majority of my time in NYC, I orient myself based on skyscrapers and can get my friends and I around the city pretty well. Even in a part of town we've never been too. I turned around and saw the building I was supposed to be at. When I arrived at the UPS store, they spoke enough English to understand what I wanted to do. The only problem was this was a UPS Express store. I didn't want to burn a huge hole in my wallet, but I guess I really didn't have a choice.
The lady working at UPS didn't know how to package my keyboard. I told her it was already broken, it just couldn't break in half. They didn't believe me when I told them a few wraps of bubble wrap would make it sturdy enough, so they tried to put it in a box. It didn't fit in any smaller boxes, so they had to bubble wrap it like I said. Once the package was ready, I started to fill out the paperwork. Apparently, everyone in China needs to have a passport in order to ship things overseas. Well, I don't carry my passport in my pocket so I had to go get it. I caught a cab back to the apartment, got my wallet and took a cab back. I get back to UPS and fill out more paperwork and got it paid. But of course they don't take credit card at UPS China, and I didn't have Y288 in cash. Back out again to try and find an ATM. I took out more Yuan and walked back to the store. Paid and left. Finally. It was a short first part of my adventure but overall really a fiasco. Total time to ship a package in China: 2 hours and 45 minutes. Normally, I wouldn't even bother with this process, but I had to get the shipping done. And now I know where at least one UPS store is.
I was taking some phenonmenal pictures of downtown Beijing and the central business district, until my camera battery died. The cab driver even slowed down when we passed the twisted doughnut building and pointed to it and did camera motions, but I had to point to mine and try and use my 3 yr old vocabulary to explain that the battery died. He got the message I think, and I got a few good ones in before it died. I'll have more time to take others too.
When I got back to the apartment it was already 3:30 in the afternoon. I made some instant noodles for the apartment and took a break. Jimmy and I had basketball semi-finals that night so I had to rest up for the big game. We went all out. When I woke up from my snooze, I was all ready to take a shower and get my face painted. Thats right, stars and stripes on my face, bright red t-shirt, white Nike basketball shorts, and an American flag cape. It was glorious. I looked like Captain American. The only thing was, I didn't want a bunch of white dots on my face for the stars, so I asked Rachel to just do one big star and people would get the point. Yea yea, all of you may know that the flag of Liberia only has one big star, but I didn't know. Although the Liberian flag was on my face, I was decked out in other American apparel. I'm pretty sure people knew I was rooting for America and not Liberia.
On the way to the game, we met other Americans from Texas who had moved to China and were now working there. The guys were 27 years old and one was a lawyer in Hong Kong and the other worked in Beijing. One guy said his parents worked for Haier (a Chinese GE), and he had lived in Tokyo for most of his life. They only spent a few years in the states but they spoke perfect English. It was good to meet up with them and hear their stories and we exchanged contact info. So now when we go to Hong Kong we have someone to show us around. Arriving at the stadium was insanity. We were swarmed with people wanting to take pictures of our American group. Me and Jimmy had our faces painted, three of us had American flags on our shouders and all the girls were in either red or white. Everyone wanted tickets. Our tickets, in the 3rd tier, were fetching for about Y4000. That would be a nice chunk of change to have, but I'm pretty sure the memories are worth far more. When we got to our seats, naturally someone was already sitting in them, so we moved down a bit. Well, the only place to move was down because we were in the very last row in the highest section. It was so high up I thought I was going to hit my head on the air ducts or something. (Not really). We watched the Spain and Lithuania game first. It was a good game. I didn't think that Spain was going to win. They have Paul and Mark Gasol, but Lithuania has a huge team. Lithuania had better offense and although their defense was decent, Spain had a hard time breaking through. It was a close game, but every time Spain would score, Lithuania would come back with a matching point. Eventually, Spain worked their magic and pulled ahead. Lithuania couldn't catch up so they play for the bronze on Sunday. Then the real fun began.
When the first game was over, we all went down to the first section to try and bum tickets off of people leaving early. Jim was lucky enough to have a Lithuanian hand him his ticket...which was a behind the basket floor seat. Incredible. Of course, we passed the ticket back and got everyone through to the floor section, but security was too tight to get us any further. We spent the rest of the game standing on the railing watching the US and Argentina game. It was awesome. Not only did I get to see Kobe, LeBron, Carmelo, Dwight Howard, Dwayne Wade, and all the other all stars, I could actually see them from a great spot. We were standing next to some big shot guys. They wouldn't tell us what they did, but one lived in Miami and the other in Milwaukee. Of course the US team beat Argentina, 101 to 81 and the whole stadium erupted for America. Within 10 minutes we had a crowd of people lined up to take pictures with us. People were bringing their kids with us, we got a USA chant going and a Meiguo Jiayou chant too. We were interviewed by a German radio station and I got to speak for about 3 minutes about my opinion of this years national team. It was awesome.
Of course, no Chinese adventure would end probably without something typical happening to me. With all of the hub bub and excitement going on, I would love to snap a few pictures of the moments. I was handing my camera to a Chinese lady and somehow it slipped through both of our fingers and fell on the floor. Naturally, the camera was on and now there is a lens error. The camera turns on but the focus is off and it doesn't retract into the camera fully. I'm getting pretty sick of all my broken electronics and I didn't feel like going out to celebrate the US victory. When we left the stadium, it took my friend and I about 40 minutes to try and catch a cab, but eventually we did. We got back to the apartment, and I washed off my face paint. I woke up early this morning to write about my adventure but now I have to go to the same electronics store I bought my keyboard from and ask for a camera. Who knows, maybe they can fix the broken one (which my parents bought for me just about a week before I came over here). Who knows. Hope all is well in America. I'm going to Track & Field finals tonight at the Bird's Nest.
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| Orphanage and Downtown |
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| US Basketball Game |
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