Our recent trip to the post office was an interesting experience. There usually is no such thing as a line that people stand in -- you just take your crowd up to the counter and hold your letters out to be weighed (because they were to overseas) and if you do not make a effort to push your way to the front, someone will push their way in front of you. To an American this would seem rather rude, but it is just the norm and no one takes anything too personally. Actually we were being polite at first and the lady in front of us was getting her package weighed while another guy was pressing his way ahead of us. When she was done, she kind of noticed our predicament and grabbed our box before we realized what she was doing and moved them onto the scale as she took hers off, thereby keeping us ahead of the guy who cut in. We did not know her -- she was just being nice. Xiexie (Thanks).

We are not done. Here is a tip if you plan to mail postcards or letters from China: take along your glue stick. Chinese stamps and envelopes are not glued. They have a big table with a 2 quart pot of white sticky glue in the middle near the counter where you buy your stamps. Once you have your stamps paid for and your letters weighed you go to this table and use the glue to put your stamps on the envelope. They have one HUGE brush that pick up lumps of glue the size of a walnut on a stamp the size of - well- the size of a postage stamp. Maybe we take too much for granted. Sometimes it takes getting out of our cultural framework to notice the details.

Note: Also, you will get to know the Post Office. It is where you pay your phone bill!