The Lady at the Post Office

It has been some time between writing entries, and this stems mostly from my lack of free time. I still live and try to assimilate myself into my British surroundings, but I have less time now that I have started work on my dissertation and have begun working for SMARTHINKING again.

I have, though, begun to feel more at home. I feel less and less like people can see the "Americanism" on me, or smell it, like funk. My housemates even integrated me into a social event, playing this game "Lyrics" (one round, my partner and I kicked ASS), and a knock-off version of Jenga in which the pieces were wider than three times their length (making for an oddly shaped, and inherently wobbly structure). All in all, I don't feel like too much of an outsider.

Accept at the post-office. There is a post at the top of the hill attached to this small grocery store that is really convenient for me. I can walk there, do my shopping and mail some post cards as the mood suits me. The first time I went there, a really pleasant woman helped me mail out a half dozen post cards, and even attached the stickers and licked the stamps for me.

Every other time, this tiny crone of a woman has helped me. And she does not make it easy on me.

The first time, I handed her a stack of post cards, like I did the other time with the other woman. She looked at me, and the post cards, like I had handed her a stack of Mormon pamphlets I wanted her to read and give her friends. She flipped through the stack, and said, "Are all of these going to America?"
Despite clearly having written U.S.A. on the bottom of each, I played along, "Yes ma'am."
She slid them back under the glass, which seemed odd to me, and huffed off her stool. She came back and tossed a handful of "Air-class" mail stickers under the glass.
"You'll be needing these," she sighed. And then added, as if I couldn't manage, "They go on the card."

She did some quick math and told me the total (which, I have to say, is really expensive). I paid her, and slid the card back under. She put a stack of stamps on top of those, and slid them back with no further instructions.
"Thank you," I said, and went to find somewhere to affix the stamps.

Today, I went to mail a package and there she was again, smiling with stiff lips, thinking of all the ways that she could make my life difficult. I walked to the window, noting the large sign that said PARCELS, and said, "Should I put this in there?"
"What? No. You put it on the scale," she replied, bitterly. Aw, hell, I thought, here we go.

She weighed the package, and started a series of half-sentences that I was supposed to understand, and then reply to:
"You...what is...where...do you...where is...what..." She stopped, looking at me, waiting for my reply. I froze. What should I say? I thought. I don't want to offend her more than my existence already seems to.

After a moment, she collected herself. "Where is it going? Do you need a customs label?"
"Umm..."
"A customs label? One of these? Here, put it on there."
She slid a customs label under the glass to me. I looked at it totally confused, first because I wasn't sure I needed it, and secondly because I couldn't read it. I mean, I could see that there were letters on it, but none that I could combine in any semblance of a sentence. I looked up at her, and she was speaking in Welsh to the other woman, casting sideways looks at me. I returned to the label trying desperately to figure out what each box was for. Finally, deciding the package was too important to have a half-assed label, I said, "Excuse me, but do you have one in English?"

You see, the one I had was in Welsh, which looks like no other language I have ever seen, and had French subtitles, another language I am not familiar with. I can speak English, read German, and have a cursory understanding of Spanish, none of which was useful here. It seemed to me that asking for an English label was not beyond the realm of understandable requests.

But that I held a Welsh sticker in my hand begged a different question: how did I end up with this sticker? That woman had a choice: a sticker in English or a sticker in Welsh. Having dealt with me to this point, American accent and all, she decided the Welsh sticker was appropriate. I started to hate this woman.

Evidently, they didn't keep a stock of these stickers around, and she sighed, loudly and in English, before hopping off her chair and staggering around looking for one. After slamming a few drawers, she found one and threw, literally forced it under the glass at me. "Can you fill this one out?" she asked. How long would I spend in jail for murdering this old woman, I thought. I could argue that, having ended her life in the most exciting way possible for her at this stage of the game, I had done her the service of avoiding a painful end that was, I assumed, just around the corner.

As I tried to make sense of what to put on this sticker, she barked out commands. I hurriedly scribbled down some vague descriptions of the contents, and estimated a value. "Here, just give it to me," she said, clearly annoyed, and letting everyone know that I was inconveniencing her, the line, and possibly the entire country. I crammed it in the little box, and handed her my credit card.

Okay: a word to the wise, if you go somewhere distant, check out the means of credit they use. Here, the cards all have chips in them instead of magnetic strips. This makes my card extremely outdated and often the focus of curiosity. Knowing that all the card readers only read the cards with chips, I have taken to handing my card to cashiers, who more often than not look at me like I just arrived off the boat. "No honey," the woman at the grocery store says slowly, enunciating clearly, "you put it in here. HERE."

The woman at the post-office did the same until I noted that it was a "slide-card," a term some people use. "Well, then, give it to me, and I'll see if I can manage."

She ran my card, eying me over the register the whole time, probably trying to figure out who I killed to get this foreign card, and how long I have been living in her city, fouling it's purity. From this point forward, she refused to look at me, and instead just eyed the non-existent line behind me. She took the plethora of receipts, had me sign one, and flipped my card and the remaining receipts under the glass. Without so much as a "thank you" she made it abundantly clear that our business was finished.

I made a decision right there to avoid the post office at all cost, using the one twenty minutes down the hill, with much longer lines instead of this convenient but off putting post. The walk is worth it to feel like I am not a strange interloper.