Road to Indonesia--- Beijing apartment

 I just spent 2 hours on the phone with our friend in Beijing. She had received permission to go into our apartment after we sent a letter with the particulars.  What a tremendous relief to have that done! After 2 hours we have a suitcase of clothes, and about 7 or 8 large bags that need to be DHLed to us.  That is the sum total of our possessions in Beijing.  We truly do leave a very small footprint. The other things belong to our organization, ERRC, for house set up when someone comes to  Beijing. I really do not know what/how they will handle the rest of the things?   Maybe have a mover pack the things and deliver to the apartment of other Peking University teacher who will eventually return to China, but that will make a tremendous mess.  It will be nice to have more summer dresses, and more spices and packages of the herbs, etc. Most importantly, our important papers will come and then maybe we can work on the next step for a visa.  And we will get our meds so maybe my arthritis will not be too bad.

It is now 2 hours later.  We had our Indonesian lesson.  Rick had mixed bread right before we started class, so it was rising. By the time class was over, it was creeping down the sides of the cabinet.  Wow, what a mess!  It is now crawling out of the pans I made buns in.  It is warm enough here that bread really does rise quickly....and well.  But I am also on the phone with our friend in Beijing who is at the DHL office, trying to write the address, but it is a Chinese person trying to write an Indonesian address as relayed by a North American into a Chinese form.  It is not going real well. 

The friend in China just asked if the more educated friend in South Korea could help her write the DHL form?  She is now contacting her by Wechat (Chinese social media) to see. We are waiting. The friend in  South Korea is going to pay the friend in China for the shipping. The friend in South Korea thinks they owe us some money for helping them out 2 years ago (They don't), but it will be much, much more than that. So we will send money to the friend in South Korea using Paypal.  Won't work to send it to the Chinese friend in Beijing. Originally, we had hoped to ship by boat, but the movers said in covid times they only would ship if had the passport at point of origin and then passport at port of entry. Not going to happen. If they air shipped the things it would be about $6000 USD.  No I did not write that wrongly.  Everything that we are shipping probably does not cost over $400.  I think that the DHL is going to be outrageous, but we really have to do something with our things, so will just have to work at it.  

Oh, and we also sent all the Chinese/English Bibles with our friend. Not to send them to us here, but  to be kept for some time in the future. It is not possible to publish them in China now, so they are very precious.  She also took away most of the rest of the Bibles in the house. She snuck them quickly into the suitcase she brought as soon as she got into the house so that the housekeeping lady overseeing her activities would not look too closely. 

The housekeeping lady will take and dispose of the rest of the clothes that we are leaving there. I have no idea where, but it is good to do that.  We also sent our instant pot and crockpot with the Chinese friend doing the packing. Not sure she can/will use them, but we do not need them here. 

So still waiting to hear that the Chinese friend in Beijing has worked it out with the Chinese friend in South Korea.  I am going to take a nap, before I start on lesson prep for tomorrow. I will write later to let you know how it turns out. I assume the bread will be ready soon too.