The Post Office (Courtney)

Yesterday we headed into the city to do two things - one being have some dinner with Abby, and the other to go to the post office. We've bundled up a whole lot of stuff that we have bought whilst here and decided it was time to send it home.

The post office, I think is without doubt, one of the most frustrating experiences you can have in China. There are daily frustrations, but the post office really gets to me. It is an exhausting process and we knew yesterday when we headed off with two bags full of stuff that we were in for a long haul.

First you head to one counter to buy boxes. I swear the guy just makes up the price as he goes along, as I've never paid the same amount for a box. You then make your way over to the actual service counter. This is can be a primal free for all, and you need to hold your ground with elbows out to actually get to the counter and then stay at the front of the counter. People basically just push and shove and the counter staff end up serving about 5 people at once, I have no idea how they keep track of what they are doing.

We got to the counter and held our ground and somehow managed to get the undivided attention of one of the guys. The guys who work here generally look about the age of our students. We've had varying levels of success. The first time I went to the post office, the girl looked at my stuff, I told her where I wanted to send it, she looked at me, said no and then walked away. No explanation, just wouldn't serve me. So I had to find someone else to help, which means going through the whole push and shove process again.

Next time, we had one of the guys, who had about as much personality as a dead fish. He was so ridiculously thorough with the items we wanted to send we started to assume he thought we were drug dealers or something. Then last time when we went to the post office, we got a young girl who didn't really look at very much. Which was a god send as we had a million little things all wrapped up and I didn't fancy unwrapping them etc.

There's a point to note - don't bother wrapping anything before going to a Chinese post office because they are just going to rip through everything anyway! We saw this happen to a girl yesterday who arrived with a very carefully wrapped present. It certainly looked worse for wear by the time it got into the postage box.

So yesterday, we got Mr Personality. Seriously, can't crack a smile from this guy. We had two full bags of things (Don't worry mum, the boxes are going to take 2 months so we'll be home to collect them by the time they arrive!) and I had wrapped up most stuff in bubble wrap so it has some chance of survival. Of course, everything was pulled to pieces. What's great about this though, is he just kind of then makes a pitiful attempt at putting the bubble wrap back around the item then tosses it into the box. I'm like, here, you do the looking, I'll do the packing!! We had a number of fragile items and as he looks at them he's like "this is not good, broken." And we are saying, no they wont break, because we will wrap them up properly. He keeps going on about them being broken, we continue with they will be fine, let's just wrap them properly.

We had one thing that we weren't allowed to send...yup, as you can see below, it was a Hello Kitty cutlery set that I had bought for May because I thought it was cute. The reason for not being able to send this is that she is "famous" and therefore some sort of Chinese brand. We still aren't exactly sure why she couldn't be sent, but we needed some special ticket (like it was a bloody antique to certify where it had come from) and as we didn't have the ticket, Hello Kitty had to return home with us.

We finally get everything inspected and packed into the two boxes. The boxes get sealed up, THEN you have to fill out the customs declaration and mailing info. We have so many things in those boxes I can't remember what's even in them, so fill out the customs thing and hope for the best. The forms are 6 sheets in total, all one behind the other, so you have to write so hard that you almost rip the top sheet of paper so that the impression will be left behind on the last page. We fill out our address, my parents address, all the items, how much they cost, an alternative address incase our parcel can't be delivered etc etc. It's a long time, and that's before we even start writing on the boxes.

Then the young guy has to type all of this information into the computer, of course he can't make out all my writing, so I have to spell everything out to him then give him detailed descriptions as to what each thing was. Even though he saw everything before it was boxed up. He then can't understand why we are sending both boxes to the same address, but soon gets over this. We finally seem to be done, we've paid, the boxes have been stamped. This had taken a solid hour to get to this point. He walks the first box over to the wall where the other boxes are.....and just tosses it onto the ground. We look at him and say "THAT is how things get broken."

To illustrate the lack of care for parcels here, check out the photo below which is a care package my mum sent us. What the heck happened to this thing?? It took only 2 weeks to arrive, so obviously came by air, and it looks as though people have played football with it!!! It will be very interesting to see what state our packages are in by the time they get to Australia.