The continuing woes...

Here is the latest in the continuing woes of living as a foreigner who doesn't speak the language well.  Our latest adventure? Paying for internet.  Sounds simple doesn't it?  This is my tale of despair, frustration, and finally triumph.  

When we arrived last year everything felt overwhelming and difficult.  A Chinese friend helped us get our apartment set up.  She helped us pay for electricity, water, and set up internet.  At the time I was very thankful to be spared the details as to how everything was done.  She just told us how much everything cost and we gave her the money to pay it.   Later on both Sam and I regretted not asking questions.  The first issue came up a few months later when we needed to buy more electricity.  Next, how to pay for water, gas, etc.  Sam was really good about figuring out characters on bills or notices that we would have posted at our door.  I would get immediately frustrated and just call a friend.  Somehow we have paid every bill and mastered every payment process.  Every payment process that is, except the internet.  All we knew is that we paid for an entire year but we had no idea what company or what kind of internet we had.  When we signed a new contract with our landlord I asked about the internet situation and they had no clue what kind of internet we had.  They suggested asking the friend who originally helped us.  The problem was that the original friend quite abruptly moved to an undisclosed location and I had no way to contact her.  I decided to wait for a bill and hope that the internet wouldn't turn off.  Ignorance is bliss but not when your internet suddenly turns off.  Last Monday it looked like our luck (so to speak) had run out.  The internet was off and I started to panic.  Sam seemed very unconcerned about the whole thing.  I reminded him that we use the internet to contact our family and for them to contact us.  Here is the conversation we had.(as I recall it)

"What if something happens to our family and they need to contact us?" (me)

"What's going to happen? (Sam)

"I don't know..." (me)

"Exactly.  Don't worry about it." (Sam)

Since I was pretty busy with work and stuff on Monday I decided to take his advice, for the day. In fact we had some internet service for about an hour that evening.  But on Tuesday it was off again and I was on the phone calling friends asking for advice.  Some people told us that it was probably through the phone line and that there are three major phone companies.  I just needed to find out which one. One friend asked if we had received any bill recently.  That is difficult to know for sure because we didn't even have a key for the mail box.  I recalled a bill for cable on our door but since we don't have cable I didn't give much thought to it.  We thought perhaps we had our internet through the cable company so we had a friend call the cable company and ask.  The answer was no.  I then asked one of our "door ladies" for a key to the mailbox.  I eagerly looked inside the mailbox but there was nothing. I felt really frustrated.  I decided to call one last person before pleading with my landlord to help us set up with a new internet company. At last this friend said he would contact our original friend and find out what company we were using.  It turned out it was not through a phone company or cable company but it was a direct internet service.  He gave us two possible company names and magically our internet worked for about an hour that evening.  We looked up the first company and found a website all in Chinese.  We could see we needed a password to log in but we weren't sure what the password was.  We found a phone number and I called.  It was automated and there was no English option.  I pressed zero until I got a live voice.  On the other line was a very helpful lady who did not speak a word of English.  I muddled through the conversation trying to explain our problem. I dread any phone conversation where the person on the other line doesn't know any English but I felt especially nervous about this one. We had no password and no name for the account, but I could give her our address.  She confirmed that our service was through their company.  She said we could pay the bill online and didn't need a password.  Very convenient except that we don't have a Chinese bank account.  So I asked if we could pay the bill in person and she said yes but that I would need to bring the person who's name is on the account (the previous renter) with me, along with their passport and mine.  I felt like crying.  How was I supposed to do that? Then I asked how many more days of internet service did we have?  She said we had ten more days of service.  I felt a little better knowing I had some more time to figure things out. The next day the answer hit me.  I brought all my information along with the money to my school and asked my teachers for help.  They were happy to help me and said that the company was probably turning off the internet intermittently just as a warning.  They called the company, paid the bill online, and set-up an online password so that next time I can do it myself.  (We plan on getting a bank account asap.)   I feel a million times better!  I'm also glad that this blog has a happy ending.