Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2

So the next application to send out went to the University of British Columbia. I meant to send it on December 31, but I arrived at the Industrial Station Post Office in St. Paul at 3:03 to find the postal workers shooing customers out the door.

"Closed! We're closed! Sorry, we're closed," someone was saying to each person that tried to get in the door. "Closing at 3:00 for the holiday. Closed!"

Dammit.

"Is...there another post office that is open later?" I asked.

"Airport 'til 4:00," the frazzled woman said.

The airport?! I was not going to drive to the airport. No way. We all know what happened the last time I rushed somewhere on 494. So I decided to try sending them through Fed-Ex. Why not. I drove to the Kinko's/FedEx retail and mailing location on Grand Avenue and hurried inside to find a line of people there too.

A woman on her cell phone was saying, "God, I can't believe the post office is closed. I had to take these late Christmas cards to Fed-Ex. They are going to charge me way too much money."

Yikes. I really had no idea what to expect price-wise, but this was important and I just wanted to get the application off my hands.

When I found myself at the front of the line, I saw a very young Kinko's employee looking back at me. She must have been 19 at the most, with bleach blond hair and a piece of gum smacking around her mouth.

"Uh, hi. I have these packages to send, and this one is going to Vancouver."

"Vancouver?" she said, looking confused.

"Yeah, Vancouver, BC." The teenaged blondie looked dumbfounded. "In Canada," I clarified.

"Canada?" Smack, smack. She chomped on the gum and stared at me blankly.

"Uh..yep. Canada."

Appearing to use the very last bits of energy she had, she reached over and took the package. She looked at the mailing address and then looked back at me. "Are you sure this zip code is right?"

"Yes, it's right. What do you mean? Did I write the wrong postal code?"

"Well, I mean--smack-- it's got letters in it."

I blinked. "Well.....yes it does. I'm sure it's right. I copied it directly from the website."

Kinko's Girl didn't seem to buy it. "I'm going to look up the zip code anyway." She started paging through a thick book with her brightly colored fingernails. I waited patiently for her to discover that in Canada, that far away, foreign land, they actually have a different format for their postal codes! Can you believe it? Numbers and letters?!?

She couldn't find the answer she was looking for in that book, so she picked up another one. I shifted from one foot to the other, aware that time was just drifting by and I had to be somewhere in twenty minutes.

"So...did you find it?" I urged. I was trying to be understanding.

"Uh....yeah. You wrote the wrong zip code." She pulled out a fat black marker and blocked out V6T 1Z2. She wrote something else in its place, something not even close to what I had written previously.

"Are you sure that's right?" I asked skeptically.

"Yup," she said. Smack, smack. She typed something into her computer. "Ok, that'll be $57.50 to send all the way to Canada."

"What? How much?!" I could not believe that was correct. I have sent heavier packages to Australia for about 1/10 that price. It was just a packet of documents. Nothing heavy, nothing fragile, nothing that would have to go through customs.

"Yeah, and if you want someone to sign for it, it'll be an extra ten dollars."

"You're kidding. Forget it. I'll wait and mail this with the post office." I grabbed the packet and stormed out, furious that it had taken me so long to not get a damn thing done.

I decided to just send it out today, January 2nd, which was fine. There is still plenty of time because it isn't due until the 15th. And when I got home I looked up the postal code again--and I had had it right from the beginning. Ooooh, numbers and letters?????

I returned to the Industrial Station Post Office 55104 this morning with the packet headed for British Columbia. The postal worker who took the packet was very knowledgeable, and she didn't even blink at the international address.

And it cost me $5.74 to send it all the way to Canada.