If you ever went to summer camp as a child (even for just one week) then you know how cool/important/special it was to get mail from home (even when it was just a few miles away). Well, multiply that feeling by a lot and you will understand how AWESOME it is to get mail and packages while in China. During our stay we have received many goodies from very generous and thoughtful friends and family back home - thank you!
Normally, the packages arrive pretty battered and look like they have been shipped through a war zone. This is pretty normal and as long as everything makes it in one piece we don't really care. I immediately became suspicious yesterday, however, when my supervisor texted me and said that a package had arrived "with a bit of damage." I couldn't even begin to imagine what a "bit of damage" was if all of the other destroyed packages that had arrived in the past were considered "undamaged." I soon got my answer.
Sean and I headed eagerly out to the post office as I had been expecting a package from my college roommate, Mary. It had been a little delayed and I was worried that it had become lost in the mail. When we arrived at the post office, the lady employee who knows me pointed sadly at the plastic sack in the corner. In the bag were the remains of my package from my roommate. It looked as if the package had been dropped from a plane and then run over by several trucks. As soon as we opened the bag we discovered the problem, the box was soaking wet - it must have been rained on (heavily) or fallen off of a boat or something.
Fortunately, the only thing that was really ruined were the whopper candies. Everything else survived the horrors pretty well. It felt like Christmas as we pawed through the mound of goodies such as: magazines, jelly beans, Reese's peanut butter eggs, Hershey's chocolate, Butterfinger eggs, peeps, Cadbury cream eggs, sour patch kids, slim jim beef jerky, crystal light drink mix, 2 cake mixes, brownie mix, cookie mix, 2 containers of frosting and piles of fruit roll-ups - YUM. Thanks Mary, Jay and Stephen! They managed to squeeze a TON of stuff in the flat rate box - we are loving it.
So many friends from Holland have been especially kind lately. I've received a message from a friend saying they could help out with airport pick-ups and hosting people coming in for the wedding from out of town and another email from a friend who forwarded some job opening she noticed at her work. Thanks Shelly and Kate!
Packing up some boxes to ship home reminds me that we will be headed that way soon! It just makes me nervous to think about what kind of condition the boxes will arrive in after seeing our last mail delivery . . .
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