Good Things

Today I got a care package from my mom, it was so sweet. To most of you, this might not sound like anything great, in fact, just about everyone I know who lives overseas gets care packages on a regular basis, but, here in this wonderfully developed country that I live in, there is no mail system. They just don't have one. It's not that it's slow or unreliable, there actually aren't addresses and definitely no postal system which makes the whole care package idea a little more difficult. You might be wondering how this whole care package thing worked. Well, my supervisor has been in the states all summer in TX not far from my parents, so my mom filled an entire suitcase with wonderful surprises (70 lbs exactly!!) and sent it with him.

This afternoon, all the girls from my team came over. We waited until everyone was here and then opened it together...it was like Christmas only better! We were all so excited to get clothes and food and good stuff from the states. M&Ms, hundreds of packets of kool aid (gotta stay hydrated in the desert), pepperoni (turkey, of course, the real stuff is contraband!), muffin mixes, pants, shorts, shirts, pens, and, my personal favorite, the rain gauge. The rain gauge might sound a little odd, but the one time it rained alot we were interested to know how much and you can't even find an umbrella here, much less a rain gauge. Plus we figure that it can be used to measure sand too!

We all even enjoyed an afternoon snack of popcorn with M&Ms and Reeses Pieces mixed in. Don't get me wrong, we're not usually just all sitting around, hanging out at 4 on a Monday afternoon, but the riots are continuing and they're moving out of downtown (ie. closer to us, but not too close yet) so just to be safe we all had to kind of stay where we were, which just happened to be in my living room!

So thanks mom and whoever else helped to put this package together. I can only begin to express how much it meant to me and to the girls here.

...At this point, most everyone I know would have included a picture of everything they got neatly arranged on a table. However, we were so excited that things got spread all over the room and no one even thought about getting out the camera. So just imagine a small living room filled with something from every aisle of WalMart and that's what we looked like!