Fateful Night

Last friday started out to be another typical friday. with excitement for the weekend ahead and the promise to spend time with a few good local friends, the morning of classes breezed by in frigid fashion from the aftermath of a massive snow storm. the plan was to go eat lunch with a few foreign guys that have a reserved a block of time on my friday noons. we went to lunch and then walked to a coffee shop where i had another meeting with another guy. my goal was to then go home and meet a few locals for dinner and then watch a movie at my apartment. Ok, so now that the story is set up properly i well go ahead and get to the good part:

After leaving the coffee shop, i called the guys i ate lunch with and met up with them at a nearby store.after a call to my local friend to verify the time we had set to go eat dinner, my rapidly depleting phone battery died. i had some time before i had to be home so we went to will's apartment to warm up from the icy conditions. i left to go back to my end of town about 45 minutes before my planned dinner meeting. to me this seemed plenty of time seeing as how my end of town was maybe 5 miles away. this was a false assumption. i got it at least 5 cabs, all of whom bluntly refused to take me anywhere but north. one cab driver wouldn't even talk to me. he naturally assumed that i cannot speak chinese and therefore decided that i must not be driven anywhere but should wait out in the sub-zero temperatures until the entirety of the chinese standard language just popped into my head. i eventually decided that a change in location was necessary. i walked to the other side of the intersection where i had no luck. i kept walking south until finally i found guy getting into a cab who was going to my university. i hopped in and the driver promptly stopped in bumper to bumper traffic. all in all it took me half an hour of standing out in the freezing cold to find a cab and then add on the 45 minutes to get to where i was going. so by the time i got to the dinner spot i was half an hour late with no phone to call and explain. i walked around for a bit hoping to find my friend but to no avail. so i decided to jaunt over to my apartment and plug in my phone to call and meet up for the movie that we had planned on watching. when i got to my apartment building i realized that something was missing....... my keys. i frantically searched my pockets but could not find them. then it dawned on me that they were in my bag. whew. close call. naturally i went for my bag but realized i wasn't wearing it. what happened to it? i left it at will's apartment..... on the other side of town. defeated, absurdly late, cold, and without any way to call or communicate or explain anything to anyone, i decided to take the bus back the way i came and hope that will was still at his place watching the movie that he had start right before i left. i sat down on the bus and hit play on my ipod whose battery was also on empty. the battery lasted all the way back to wills apartment (which i consider a small victory). i actually had a really nice time on the bus in transit. eventually i walked up to wills apartment and rejoiced as i saw that the lights were on. i hit the buzzer but no one answered. again..... no answer. crap. i climbed up and looked in the window and to see an empty apartment. at this point i was at a complete loss. i wandered back down the street wondering vaguely about finding a vendor to sell me a spare phone battery. i passed by a supermarket and decided to give it a try. at the cell phone counter, (yes they have those in supermarkets here) i bought a universal battery charge that will charge your battery if you take it out of your phone. my next challenge was to find a place to plug it in. after a few minutes of searching i found one....... in the men's bathroom. so there i was, standing next to the sink in the mens bathroom of a chinese supermarket trying not to look like a weirdo waiting for my battery to charge just enough to make a call and find out where my friend will was and when he would get back. after about 20 minutes and 5 or 6 failed attempts, my phone made the call and i learned that will was in fact on his way home. i then went back to his apartment and waited. when he finally got there i went in and got my keys and declared surrender to the traveling obstacles that were again in front of me. we watched the end of Terminator Salvation right until the part where the audio switched over to russian and refused to change back. that night was to be spend on a friends couch sorely missing the comfort and warmth of my bed in my apartment.

The End