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We walked steadily, not bothering with the subway,
and eventually were at the corner of Worker's Stadium Road and Ring
Road three. I looked up toward the top of the hotel and saw, lit up
in green, “Great Dragon Hotel”. This is what Katarena had seen
nearly an hour ago, and I was so grateful for her acuity. She has
often seen and remembered things that have made this trip such a
delight and bloody well nigh impossible without. We went behind the
hotel into our hostel, and sacked out in our bunks in our room,
enjoying another excellent night of deserved sleep, most satisfied
with the outstanding conclusion of our very full day.
The satisfying sleep was of inestimable value to my
body, but it was too short as I awoke early on this, our penultimate
day in Beijing. Katarena and Enrique were quite asleep, but I had
decided to send several items back home to El Paso. Chief among them
were our water buffaloes, and lots of cheap bric-a-brac, as well as
yesterday's purchases in Xi'an, collected since Amsterdam. The
problem was not so much that it weighed down our packs as it was
just taking up valuable space. I could see no point in continuing to
carry the water bags as bottled water seemed to be available
everywhere. Carrying the full shoebox, I retraced part of our route
from last night, as I remembered seeing a Kinko's store along the
way. Unfortunately, this outlet only handled domestic packages, and
I returned to the hostel seeking another source.
“Juanito, the most reliable way to send things back
to the states is by DHL,” said one of our hostelmates after several
of us sitting in the lounge discussed the pros and cons of various
transoceanic delivery services. Since I will rarely spend more than
the minimum needed, I relied upon them for advice.
“I've used DHL before, too, while staying here,”
another hostelmate, a Canadian, Reginald, stated, “and you can go
over to the hotel to the head concierge, who will summon DHL for
you.”
I felt relief that I would soon have one less bulky item to
care for, and hastily prepared it for the journey by wrapping more
tape around it, covering up all the pinprick holes that could tear.
I walked out and around to the front of the Great Dragon Hotel, and
met the smiling concierge, who understood exactly what I needed, and
arranged for DHL to meet me here within an hour.
I was ecstatic, but I had to make a quick withdrawal from
an ATM at the Pacific Shopping Center. Inserting one of my VISA
credit cards into the machine, I punched in what I thought was the
correct PIN, but it was no good. I tried another possible PIN,
likewise no good. I swapped it out for another VISA credit card, and
went through the same routine, with the same results. I took the
card out, put in my VISA debit card, punched in the different PINs,
all having the same negative effect. I repeated this desultory
process with the other machines, all with the same outcome. I was
reminded of a definition of a alzheimer's disease: Forgetting what I
had just done and doing it over, and over, and over, with the same
result. Except this time I was sure it was more stupidity which only
increased as I became more frustrated by my lack of success. How
could I have possibly been able to obtain as much money as I did
seventy-two hours ago, yet almost lose the cards in the ATMs now?
I judged that I must've spent near to an hour trying
to get more money, so I returned to the lobby just as the DHL
courier showed up. He had a portable scale upon which he placed my
package, which read 1,435 grams. After tapping the numbers into a
calculator, he produced a bill of 1,170 ¥ ($141USD), which was
probably more than the contents were worth. Miraculously, I had
1,200 ¥ ($145USD) left in my wad, but I knew we needed more money
before we left China tomorrow.
Returning to room 315, I found neither of my
offspring. While I contemplated our planned activity for today,
registering our passports with our embassy, they returned. Katarena
fully clothed but with a wet head from showering and Enrique
exalting about having updated his blog. We knew our route, and
followed it as we had several times before, eventually arriving back
at the Friendship Store, where I bought two more jars of peanut
butter and two loafs of bread. (Just in case we needed a snack
later!) I looked down the street that Andy had directed us the last
time we were here, and saw the gate wide open.
We quickly walked to it, and this time the guards,
after looking at our passports again, sent us through a barb-wire
topped pedestrian gate. Walking along the tree-shaded lane, we came
to a compound that had our flag flying above the largest building
that had the seal of the embassy cemented to the side. We entered
into an anteroom, where a camera inspected us, then we were buzzed
into a large hallway with a Marine Sergeant blocking any further
access. He used our passports to log us in, and we were directed
through another door labeled
C
O N S U L A R A S S I S T A N C E
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