road bump

My love affair with taxi cabs has ended, because I think I left my wallet in one last night.

Coming back from Ikea, Kami, Hunter and I jammed into a taxi cab with all our Ikea stuff (mostly Hunter’s). While juggling everything in the backseat and getting out my wallet to pay, I must have forgotten it in there. I feel pretty foolish, but at least I was intelligent enough beforehand to separate my important things, so I only lost about two hundred RMB, an MCI calling card that didn’t work anyway since I don’t have a landline yet, and a bus card that I can replace. I am pretty peeved about the charms that had been in it though; many of those were gifts from my mother and her family for luck and they can’t be easily replaced. But at least it wasn’t my credit cards, identifications or more money.

This whole thing is pretty much the first bad thing that’s happened to me in China, and I can see how newcomers get so frustrated in foreign lands – I can’t call the taxi cab companies because I can’t find their number, because I can’t access their website (it’s got a virus on it), and if I could I wouldn’t be able to understand anything on it anyway, and even if I did connect to the taxi service my Chinese isn’t good enough to explain anything. But a large part of who we are is defined by how we react to things like this, and I’d like to be somebody who can deal with setbacks gracefully.

Guess the rest of my day will be spent looking for a new bus card and a new wallet. I had earlier been thinking about presenting my headmaster with his gift, but now I’m not sure which to give him: which is better, a small handcrafted wooden box made by a local Washington artist (with a salmon carving on it), or an executive pen set? Most of us would choose the wooden box, but it may be different in China. Does anybody have any suggestions?

PS: Hey Mom, so I lost that MCI calling card as well. But I still don’t have a landline in my room anyway. I’m thinking about using Skype to call you guys with though, so hang tight, that might solve our problems too. I’ll try it tomorrow morning, or for you, Thursday evening.